I nearly didn’t write this blog post today. I had every intention of writing it but I found a million other things to do.
I played on the Nintendo Switch with my 10 year old.
I walked the dog.
I repotted our Peace Lily plant that was half dying in the living room.
I drank coffee.
I drank more coffee.
In short, I procrastinated.
We all do this, I know, it’s the mainstay of a writer.
But it’s the enemy of building a social media profile even more than achieving your daily word counts.
Worse, you’re procrastinating for nothing. Building your social media profile doesn’t have to be overwhelming or time consuming at all.
Most of us think producing and pushing out ‘content’ on social – posts and tweets and the like – is everything.
Because we believe that, we also feel we don’t have time to build our author profiles on social media. It’s becomes another job in our mind – and most of us writers have more than one job already.
Here’s the truth: building your profile on social only takes a commitment to be consistent.
You can do it in less than half an hour a day.
To build your author profile, all you need to do is commit to being present on social media each day – to start with, that might just mean a like or a comment.
Some days you’ll post your own content, of course (more on how to get started quickly with that here).
Some days you’ll only follow other people and read other people’s posts to get an idea of the landscape.
Other days you’ll actually comment on other people’s posts (which can be scary in itself).
You honestly don’t need to put pressure on yourself to create amazing content everyday. That’s not going to happen, even for the best of us.
Content is king but in reality, consistency and engagement with others online are by far the most important things you can do when it comes to building your social media profile.
The biggest thing you have to be is PRESENT.
You need to follow people you’re interested in (and who might be interested in you).
You need to read their posts and comment on them.
You need to genuinely engage with those you follow and who follow you and listen to them.
Then, when you do post, those people will reciprocate and engage.
Stop procrastinating and start building your social media profile today, because small, manageable actions add up to huge results.
About The Author
Nigel Cooper
Nigel’s debut novel Beat The Rain was a semi-finalist for Best Debut Author in the Goodreads Choice Awards 2016. His second novel The Pursuit of Ordinary was a finalist in the People’s Book Prize for Fiction 2019. It was also one of the 8-12 titles ‘called in’ for the Man Booker Prize, a first for his publisher. It was also long-listed for The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize. His third novel will be released in September 2022 and is now available for pre-order. Nigel brings his own experience of the trials of getting published, building an author profile and marketing his own novels to AuthorSpark. As well as co-founding AuthorSpark, Nigel co-founded digital marketing agency and employee advocacy platform We Are Togethr alongside Andrew, alongside online content sister company Togethr Lab. Prior to that he was a newspaper subeditor and a writer and editor for Channel 4 Interactive.