10 Social Media Tips for Authors

Guy Kawasaki recently posted a list of 10 Social Media Tips for Authors. It's a good list, with expanded discussion of each. As a quick test, let's see how I stack up.

1. Start yesterday My score: B. I'm an early adopter of Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+, less so for Facebook and Goodreads.

2. Segment the services My score: D. I rely on Twitter primarily, with all the others used cursorily if at all.

3. Make a great profile My score: C. Where I have profiles, they are mostly filled out and personalized.

4. Curate, don’t create My score: D. I don't spend a lot of time trawling the web for cool stuff to pass along to others.

5. Act like NPR My score: C+. He means "give such great content that people will forgive you the promotional stuff". I gave myself a C+ because I can't claim to be as great as NPR.

6. Restrain yourself My score: B. This is the "98% great content, 2% pledge drives" standard.

7. Candy-fy My score: D. If every post should come with a funny video, snappy tune or clever graphic, I'm screwed. I practically never do that.

8. Respond My score: A-. It's pretty rare that I don't respond when people say things to me in a social media context.

9. Stay positive or stay silent My score: C-. Those smiling, happy people who are always upbeat and always positive make me nervous.

10. Repeat My score: B. I like to think that I repeat my links often enough to catch people who might have missed them due to timezones & locational constraints, but not so often as to be spammy.

Final score: C.

How do you stack up?

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2 comments:

  1. Just discovered you through a blog post/interview you did about Assembling an Anthology. That led me to Blood Picnic. I read some of your flash fiction and I liked it. I am active mostly on Facebook so I checked you out there first. Sad :( Then I found your Twitter - so I "followed" you with my husband's account. Because when it comes to Twitter I am the sad one :) Anyway - just wanted to say you have another fan. Nice work. Best of luck!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying the output!

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