Social Media for Writers

The Writer’s Workshop Blog highlights my adventures teaching writing classes, writing stories, articles and books, leading travel, food and wine writing classes to France and Italy, traveling the globe, promoting my books including the novel, The Storms of Denali, and other aspects of the wild and crazy world of writing and publishing. Writing and publishing are changing enormously and I hope this blog will help keep you up to date on some of the changes.

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR AUTHORS

Social media are a great way to get the word out about your book and to develop a community interested in hearing about your work. There are lots of social media useful for authors, including Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and Good Reads.

You probably won’t be able to use all these media, so ideally choose one or two to concentrate on. Pick one that you like and can update regularly. Andrea Dunlop of Girl Friday Productions recently spoke to my class at The Writer’s Workshop about how authors can best use social media to promote their work.

“It’s an exciting time to be an author,” she says. “Facebook, Twitter and other social media are the main tools to promote books.”

Reviews in traditional media like the New York Times or Seattle Times are also important, but newspapers are running fewer reviews and most people are getting their recommendations from friends, a definition which has grown to include Facebook and other friends.

“Don’t get too obsessed with numbers,” she says. “Focus more on quality rather than quantity. You want to cultivate an interesting stream of information. Get people interested in you as a person, and then bring up the book.”