Brands, organizations, and institutions use social media
platforms every single day to connect with their audience, raise awareness, and
drive leads and business.
With an engaged following on one or more of the major social
networks, brands can effectively spread the word about campaigns, new
initiatives, and new products and services. However, simply having 1,000
Facebook fans or 200 Twitter followers is not the best indicator of social
media success.
It’s possible to have thousands of followers who never read
your posts or click on your links.
The key is to build a thriving online community of your
ideal fans, the ones who'll actively engage with your content, share it with
their networks, and ultimately, become paying customers.
It takes work to establish such, but that effort can pay
off, big time.
Ten Simple Ways To Build An Effective Brand As A Writer On
Social Media
1. Choose the Social Media platforms that work for you
The moment you decide to come out of your shell and build an
effective brand as a writer on Social Media, choose at least two Social Media
platforms that work for you, learn how to use them and be active in promoting
your brand and connecting with other writers in your niche.
For example, I use Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I’m
active on Facebook and Instagram. Choose yours and be active and consistent.
2. The most important thing you should do right now if you
haven't done it already is:
Make sure you have a professional profile photo across your
channels.
Use your real name.
Make sure your bio tells your audience exactly what you do
and what your skills are.
If you write romance, you can write: I write intriguing
romance stories set in Ghana.
If you solve problems for businesses using your writing skill,
tell us exactly what you do.
Example: I create content that helps businesses reach a
wider audience and sell their products and services.
This is how you
project a professional image.
Clean your Facebook profile
Here’s the truth; the Facebook profile of many writers are
dustbins. You and 99 others. You and 50 others. Posts like this fill your
timeline.
Others are shared posts of the religious activities of your
pastor who is also busy promoting his own brand on Social Media.
Are you the owner of your Facebook timeline or have you
given the people who are tagging you every day on their own posts the control
of your Facebook account?
Here’s the truth; you are confusing your audience if you
keep doing this. How will people know that you are a writer if you don’t tell
them?
Here a question you should ask yourself: if people go
through your timeline today, will they know that you are a writer?
If you want to build an effective brand as a writer on
Social Media, clean your timeline. Go to your Facebook setting and change the
tagging option so that if someone tags you on their post, you must approve it
before it appears on your timeline.
Stop sharing other people’s posts except when it is
absolutely necessary. Are you helping your pastor to promote his own brand or
are you ready to promote yours? You can’t do both. Your posts should be
consistent with who you say you are. If you want to build an effective brand as
a writer, your posts should revolve around writing.
3. When building an effective brand as a writer on Social
Media, know your why.
Ask yourself three
questions:
a. Why do I want to write?
b. What core message am I trying to share on my platform?
c. How do I want to be perceived?
When you see the name - Namso Umoh – on Social Media, what
comes to your mind? Writing, publishing, writing coach, right? This is because
I’ve built an effective brand as a writer on Social Media and AFCREWA, a fast
growing global writing community, is part of that brand.
When you go through my bio and my timeline, you will
discover that I’m a publisher, author and creative writing coach. People
connect with me because my content is consistent with my core message and what
my brand represents. You should do the same.
Don’t create an account and begin immediately to tell people
to buy your books or products/services. It won’t work that way.
Remember, Social Media platforms are not built primarily for
selling. They are designed as a place where people can connect with each other,
socialize and build relationships. Build relationships first. Connect with
others. When they like and trust you, they will buy your products.
Here are three types of posts you should make on Social
Media as a writer:
(1) Posts that connect with your ideal reader (Engagement
prompts, conversation starters)
(2) Posts that captivate your ideal reader (Your short
stories, snippets of your fictional world, behind the scenes of the life of a
writer)
(3) Posts that convert your ideal reader into customers
(promo posts, sales, invitations)
You need to create a template that will help you create
valuable content in your niche consistently.
Here’s the truth, the big authors or top brands you see on
social media work with a template. Check my posts on social media and you will
know that everything connects to my core message. I work with a content
calendar.
Every post I make has a goal.
Every post you make should have a goal.
If you are just making random posts, you won’t get the
results you need. You need to work with a template or content calendar. Every
post you make should be part of the bigger plan of:
A. Engaging your audience
B. Getting new readers
C. Growing your brand
4. Become a content machine
When you start creating valuable content, stay consistent. I
advise that you make posts in your niche everyday. That’s the requirement right
now. It’s like a pastor growing his church. You need to maintain that energy.
If you are using Facebook, that’s your platform. Your audience are like members
of your church. You need to keep feeding them value.
If they like your brand, they will start sharing your posts.
Soon, they will start telling their friends about you. Soon, they will start
recommending you to companies who need the services of a writer.
Do this this year, and you will transform your brand. Change
the way you use social media. Use it as a producer, not a consumer.
The rule of thumb is to BE AS WIDELY KNOWN AS POSSIBLE…
whether it is your idea or passion or business or goal.
This is marketing. Nothing beats marketing. This is the best
way to promote yourself and what you do.
5. Include a visual (a good image) with every post
Visuals are high-performers on social media, so be sure to
include an eye-catching, colourful image or graphic with each post.
Consider these visual marketing statistics, compiled by
HubSpot:
• Content with relevant images rack up 94% more views than
content without images.
• Compared to other types of content, visual content is more
than 40x more likely to get shared on social media.
• Instagram photos showing faces get 38% more likes than
photos without faces.
6. Share more video content
Video is the most engaging content type on every social
media platform, so if you can, it's a good idea to create at least some form of
video content to maximize engagement.
Be sure to upload your video directly to your platform of
choice, rather than posting a link to an outside website (like YouTube). This
way, your video will autoplay as people land on it while scrolling through
their feeds, grabbing more attention.
Lots of views can lead to increased reach, engagement, and
exposure for your brand.
I advise you to start going live on Facebook and Instagram.
Post 30 second videos on your Whatsapp status. Use Facebook and Instagram reel.
Talk about yourself and your work. Blow your trumpet so that
the world will know what you do.
7. Use Relevant Hashtags to Expand Your Reach
Hashtags help you grow your audience by linking your posts
to trending topics. Most social media networks highlight trending hashtags and
let you see other posts that use those hashtags. When you use a hashtag that is
trending, people who are not yet your followers, but who are interested in the
trending topic that you are posting about, will discover your posts.
A 2017 experiment by Agorapulse found that Instagram posts
that used hashtags had 70% more likes and 392% more comments than posts that
didn’t use hashtags.
Stay true to your brand when using hashtags. Don’t post
about something that’s trending if you wouldn’t normally talk about that topic.
If you are using Instagram, make sure every post you make contains hashtags
relevant to your content. Include hashtag about your brand name in your
facebook posts too.
8. Be Authentic
It’s sad that many writers use fake names, pictures and
addresses on their Social Media accounts.
They do that and
still expect to connect with readers and other writers.
Your Facebook name is It’z Petriz. You don’t have a picture
on your profile. In your bio, you stated you live in Houston, in United States
but one look at your Facebook timeline shows that you live in Sokoto, Nigeria
and that everything about you and who you say you are is fake.
Here’s my message to you; wake up and be real. In this time
and age, your Social Media profile is your CV. If it’s messed up, you may lose
huge opportunities because organizations and individuals who would have loved
to work with you would decline when they discover that you are not authentic.
Use your real name and picture. Your bio should show that you are a writer.
Your posts should be consistent with your core message and
your brand. Be professional in what you post on Social Media. Readers want you
to be professional. Approach writing with professionalism.
With technology and the internet, the world is now at your
doorstep. This is the internet. This is Social Media. You don’t know who is
watching. Always put your best out there.
9. Build long lasting relationships
Social Media will give you the opportunity to come out of
your shell and join trusted writing communities like AFCREWA and others. As you
do this, connect with other writers all over the world and comment meaningfully
on their posts. When people know you support and care about them, they will
support and care about you too.
Let me tell you a brief story about my writing career; the
people who have given me the greatest support in my writing career are writers
and authors from different parts of the world who I met online. Here’s the
shocker, I’ve not met most of them offline, but we care and support each other
as though we’ve known each other for a long time. That’s the power of building
meaningful relationships on Social Media.
Remove the people who should not be your friends on Facebook
and connect with writers and authors in your niche.
Connect with people who have reached where you want to go to
and you will get there faster than you thought. Surround yourself with highly
productive writers in your niche who have built effective brands as writers on
Social Media and are getting huge results and continue to learn from them. You
will be the next writer everyone will celebrate.
When you build an effective brand as a writer on Social
Media, you will get to your destination faster that you thought possible and
achieve amazing success in your writing career. Here’s the best news; as you
build an effective brand as a writer on Social Media, you will automatically
build the right audience – readers who will keep supporting you and would keep
buying your books every time you publish your work.
10. Ask yourself,
what problems can I solve with my writing skill?
Don’t just be a passionate content writer or fiction writer.
If I was just like that, I would be broke today. To master the business of
writing, you need to solve a problem using your writing skill that can help you
attract wealth. Even the bestselling authors you admire provide writing
services for companies. Others are editors and ghostwriters.
Can you work with a company as a writer?
Can you be a social media manager? Can you help other businesses
grow their brands by creating valuable content in their niche? Can you do
ghost-writing? Can you edit another person’s manuscript? These are ways to
attract wealth as a writer.
In today’s digital world, brands and businesses need to
create content in order to capture the attention of their target audience and
sell their products and services. They need writers urgently to help them
achieve this.
If you have these writing skills, how will individuals,
organizations and your followers know so they can recommend you or seek your
services?
If you are determined to wear your business hat properly,
here’s what you should do?
Create your own brand where you specify writing services you
provide. Give it a name and register it as a business name. Introduce yourself
and your services on social media and boom, you are in business.
Once the first customer pays you and you deliver, know that
you have activated it. As a writer, you are in a unique position to give brands
and organizations exactly what they need – content with captivating
storytelling which converts and generates massive income for the brand.
There are writers who have been booked for a whole year.
They are paid a large amount of money every month to create content for brands
on Social Media. Others are editors, ghostwriters, content creators for
companies etc. You are better than most of them. But because they told the
world what they can do and announced their writing services, everyone is now
paying them.
If you can do something but no one knows, you will be a
broke genius. A closed mouth is a closed destiny. Go ahead and blow your
trumpet.
When you build an effective brand as a writer on Social
Media, you will get to your destination faster that you thought possible and
achieve amazing success in your writing career.
Here’s the best news; as you build an effective brand as a
writer on Social Media, you will automatically build the right audience –
readers who will keep supporting you and would keep buying your books every
time you publish your work.
Start today and do it right.
Cheers to your success.