DON’T wait till you’re published to start building your platform.

Launching your blog or getting started on Twitter right before your book is published is like sending out invitations to a party on the day of the party. Start connecting with readers BEFORE your book comes out – as soon as possible – so that you have an audience that already loves your writing.

DON’T be all about your book.

Social media isn’t all SELL, SELL, SELL. It’s more about CONNECT, CONNECT, CONNECT. Use social media to tell about your writing process, your hobbies, your characters, what you’re working on next. Let readers see you’re a person, not a product.

DON’T be a temperamental artist.

It’s tempting to think, “I’m a writer, not a Kardashian. My work should speak for itself.” The sad truth is no one can fall in love with your book if they don’t know about it. Embrace social media. Be brave.

DON’T let marketing take over your writing.

Between Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, your blog and book tour…when are you supposed to WRITE? It’s a struggle, no lie, but you have to find the balance that works for you. Remember, nothing promotes Book 1 like Book 2. Writing comes first.

DO approach social media as another form of writing.

Social media is primarily a writing exercise and guess what…you’re a writer. Instead of thinking “I’m no good at social media,” think of each tweet as a sentence, each blog post as a short story. These are things you’re good at, remember? Use the voice from your book, your strengths as a writer and you can’t go wrong.

DO think beyond Facebook and Twitter.

There are lots of fun social media platforms out there to try. Goodreads lets you connect with readers and even have book giveaways. Does your main character love to cook? Write a blog post about their favorite recipe and put it on Pinterest. Lots of real locations in your book? Snap some pics and put them on Instagram.

DO use social media to network with other writers as well as readers.

Writing isn’t a competitive sport. Promoting other writers can actually bring more readers to your work. So host writers on your blog and make guest appearances on theirs. Cross-promote. Networking with other writers really helps make marketing your book more fun.

DO embrace the platform you’re most comfortable with.

There is no magic formula for promoting books via social media. However, it just makes sense that you’ll do your best work on the platform you’re most comfortable with. Make that your “go-to” and use the other ones more sparingly. Once you’re in your groove – and you WILL get in a groove once you’ve been doing it a while – you’ll realize it’s second nature, and maybe even fun.

When she’s not writing mysteries under the pen name, Billie Thomas, Stephanie Naman works at an advertising agency in Birmingham – which might explain why she’s constantly thinking up ways to kill people without getting caught. MURDER ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS is her first novel. She blogs as her main character Chloe Carstairs at chloegetsaclue.com and you can follow her on Twitter at @ChloeGetsaClue. 

For more social media tips visit the See Jane Write Birmingham blog for a recap of our recent event I Tweet, Therefore I Am: A Social Media Panel Discussion. 

By Javacia Harris Bowser, See Jane Write Magazine Founding Editor

Dirty dishes, dirty laundry, and old episodes of NCIS — all these things posed a serious threat to the launch of See Jane Write Magazine. 

This summer Atticus gave me the opportunity to work in one of the co-working spaces at SocialVenture. The first day I worked at SocialVenture I got more done in two hours than I had in two weeks! Currently, SocialVenture serves as the workspace for programs like Teach for America. 

 

 

 

SocialVenture also has great meeting spaces — including small meeting rooms and a large conference room equipped with Wi-Fi, high quality audio capabilities, large HD monitors, projectors and more. This month’s Birmingham Girls Club Conference, at which I had the honor of leading a session on writing, was held at SocialVenture. 

 

 

Whether you’re a blogger, entrepreneur, journalist or author, social media should be part of your personal marketing strategy. Social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google + can help business owners connect with current and potential customers, authors and bloggers connect with readers, and journalists connect with editors and sources.

On Tuesday, Oct. 29 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. See Jane Write Birmingham and See Jane Write Magazine present I Tweet, Therefore I Am: A Social Media Panel Discussion. This event will answer the questions you have about social media and help you determine how to make social networking work for you.

I Tweet, Therefore I Am: A Social Media Panel Discussion will be held at REV Birmingham’s SocialVenture, 5529 1st Ave. South in Woodlawn.

The event costs $5 in advance, $10 (cash only) at the door. You can purchase advance tickets here. The event is free for official See Jane Write members. (Visit the See Jane Write Birmingham blog to learn how to become a member.)

I’m a huge proponent of using social media to connect with others. I’m not talking about Facebook-stalking your old classmates or tweeting where you ate lunch. I mean real, honest-to-goodness relationship building­­—the way Zuckerberg and Dorsey intended.

I met 95 percent of my friends in Birmingham on Twitter—before I even lived here. When my husband, Zack, and I moved here, we should have been the odd couple out: two New Jerseyans in a new city with a small-town feel where everyone knows each other. Instead, we were embraced offline by the online community who knew us only as @tlsylvan and @zacksyl.

Despite it being a great procrastination device and seemingly easy to navigate, having a strong social media presence takes effort. Here are some key things to keep in mind:

Connect wisely. Social channels all have different purposes, so use them properly. Don’t send a friend request to the HR person who interviewed you or job inquiries to someone’s personal Facebook account. When you tweet, make sure you add value to your network by adding your own unique perspectives to articles instead of just passively retweeting information.

Make your voice memorable… Do something that will stand out in a crowd—consistently. Whether it is being known for your food commentary or your sense of humor, make it easy for people to remember you.

…but be yourself. There’s nothing worse than a social media faker. You know, the person who is clever and engaging online, but has the personality of a dirty paper plate offline. People want to get to know the “real” you and this will help you create real, offline relationships.

Be relevant. Make your updates, tweets, and posts carry value. If you’re in advertising, discuss recent campaigns with others in your field, or comment on updates from local agencies. At the same time, find a balance between posting about your work and your interests while still letting your personality shine through.

Meet offline. The real magic happens when your connections turn into friendships. Take the plunge and ask to meet IRL (in real life) over coffee or a beer. Risky, you say? I do it all the time and haven’t died—yet—so you should be safe.

Attend events. Birmingham is always full of networking opportunities. Slap your Twitter handle on your name tag and go meet some of your social media icons. Or be a social media butterfly and create your own tweet-up.

So I encourage you to look at social networks with a new set of eyes. Who knows, you may meet your new employer, BFF, or significant other through them!

Tanya Sylvan graduated from the University of Alabama with her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Advertising and Public Relations. A native of Kendall Park, N.J., Tanya currently works in marketing at CRC Insurance Services, Inc. and Moosedog & Co. She is an ultra runner and can’t live without mountains, ethnic food, and her husband Zack. She blogs about running at tanyasylvan.com.

I have a confession.

When I first met Darlynn Nangano Tacinelli (pictured left) two years ago at a writing conference hosted by Skirt! Magazine I developed an instant girl crush.

Sure, the wannabe fashionista in me was drawn to Darlynn’s trendy outfits and her ridiculously cute Kate Spade iPhone case, but a true girl crush isn’t based on such superficial things.

When I develop a girl crush — platonic feelings of awe and admiration that one woman has for another — it’s because the woman I’m crushing on has done something awesome. And Darlynn had done just that.

In Oct. 2010 Darlynn started a social media marketing firm that she calls . Just as every woman needs a little black dress, all companies need a social media presence, Darlynn believes.

I was so impressed with Darylynn for taking something she loved and finding a way to turn it into a business and into her career – especially since she did so at a time when social media jobs were still rare.

Last year Little Blog Dress, which is based in Ormond Beach, Fla., was named Best in Social Media for Volusia County by Daytona Beach News Journal readers.

Little Blog strives to help your businesses maintain relationships with existing customers while attracting new consumers using Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and more.

As Darlynn states on her company’s website, the world of social media “is not a trend; it is not a fad, but it is essential for you to do it the right way to put yourself ahead of your competition.”

SJW Mag: What prompted you to start helping businesses with their online presence? 

Darlynn: My background is in radio and after the recession in 2008 I started looking at other options and ways to promote small businesses. My best friend and I had a blog and we learned a lot about social media and how to promote using the different channels and thought it would be great if a business could be created around it.

How did you decide to take the leap and start your own business?

Like I said, my background is in radio, I was there in a bunch of different capacities for 17 years, lastly in sales. When everyone pulled back on their advertising when the recession hit, my paycheck suffered. I did work at a couple of “safe,” salary paying jobs and started working on LBD on the side, taking the plunge after a part-time situation went really nutty.

What advice would you give to other women hoping to start businesses of their own? 

Truly and honestly, if I can do it, anyone can. Just remember that you are the boss of you, you make the rules and you can make your business however you want it to go. It’s exciting and nauseating at the very same time!

What are some of the biggest mistakes you see businesses make when it comes to their online presence? 

I could talk about this for days, but the one glaring error is that they use their social media marketing in the same way they have used any other form of advertising. You have to be a little more discreet, a little more subconscious and a little less “shout from the rooftops” when you are trying to promote your business using social media.

Are there any social media tips that you give businesses that you think would be just as helpful for individuals (who are writers and bloggers)?

Brevity is key. Don’t always be one-sided. Be engaging with others. And please, watch your spelling!

Dear Social Media,

The last time I wrote you a letter it was just after our trial separation. We were apart for only three weeks, but I spent most of those 21 days feeling like I couldn’t live without you.

I depended on you for news and weather updates and you helped me keep in touch with friends. You made everything better. In that letter I wrote about how you could, thanks to Foursquare, turn an ordinary trip to the grocery store or pharmacy into an exciting race to be crowned mayor of my favorite local establishments. And when I was too tired to write or read and needed a break I could browse beautiful photographs on Pinterest and relax my mind a bit.

But now things have changed. Now, the thrill is gone. We’re like an unhappy married couple, a husband and wife who treat each other more like business partners than lovers.

Our relationship has become all work and no play – just tweets and Facebook posts about articles I’ve written or read, See Jane Write Birmingham workshops I’m planning, and blogging conferences I’ve attended.  And these things are important; they should be shared just as, in marriage, bills must be paid and dirty dishes must be washed. But I want more.

I want my life with you, social media, to be fun again.

And isn’t that what the people watching us, the people rooting for us, want too? My Twitter followers and Facebook fans want to see my perky personality, not just my professional progress.  Right?

I’ve been told over and over at all those conferences I tweet about that when it comes to our relationship there should be a focus on quality, not quantity. I know that having thousands of virtual followers and fans means nothing if those people aren’t actual followers and fans – if they aren’t actively reading and sharing my writing and attending my workshops. And as I think about the folks who I know are truly in my corner, I realize I didn’t win them over by always talking shop. I showed them I cared about them and I showed them I knew how to have a good time.

My online persona and my relationship you need to be just as well-rounded.

So this month as we focus on social media at See Jane Write Magazine, I am hoping we can get things back to the way they used to be.

I miss you. I miss us.

Love,

Javacia

The traditional steps in creating a brand include a logo, often with a specific Pantone color, a blog, and a multi-platform social media presence. Yet, the Olsen Twins have managed to capture the nation’s attention for 27 years, their entire lives, without the traditional approach. Jessica Nell Graves, Creative Director at Shops Around Lenox and early blog adopter at The Love List, explained the secret to the Olsen Twins’ branding success at the Southern Coterie Summit earlier this month in Athens, Ga.

“The Olsen Twins are a great example of branding success because they’re not just selling a product or information. They’re selling a lifestyle, which has evolved as they’ve gotten older. Because what they’re selling has changed over time and they don’t have the traditional branding logo and Pantone color, that means their brand has always been them,” Graves explained.

She urged bloggers and entrepreneurs to humanize their brand as a means of better connecting with followers. Seeing the faces behind the brand leaves followers confident in the brand’s transparency and helps customers identify with the brand.

“If you want to see how adding a face to the brand can boost business, just look at Jenna Lyons, the Creative Director of J. Crew. She’s almost as famous as J. Crew itself and international fashion magazines detail what she’s wearing each new season. The J in J. Crew might as well stand for Jenna,” said Graves.

Like Lyons, the Olsen Twins own their brand and they’re their own ambassadors. They’ve inserted themselves into their brand and found their voice in dialogue with their followers.

“Don’t be afraid to own your brand and post pictures of yourself doing so. Mary-Kate and Ashley aren’t afraid of being photographed slinking all over New York City in black, rockabilly garb and smoking cigarettes. They’ve nailed down who they are and are comfortable in their own skin. That’s what it takes,” Graves said. “Your face is your brand.”

Graves suggest openly sharing your ideas, opinions, and tastes, and writing in first-person to do so. Although there’s a certain vulnerability in doing this, it’s ultimately forwarding your brand, she argues. And if there comes a time when someone disagrees, don’t apologize for your taste.

“You have to defend your brand while showing that you don’t just have a knack for whatever you’re doing,” said Graves, “you have a unique take on it.”

Another way you can improve your blog, and therefore your brand, is to make it look more professional by forming a partnership with a local photographer. Having someone in charge of photography means better photos of you sporting your brand. It’s a partnership that’s good exposure for both parties and shows that you’re open to collaboration, which Graves says you shouldn’t be afraid to embrace.

“Don’t get angry if others are doing something similar to what you’re doing. Either embrace a collaboration or move on because the idea is so old someone else is using it. Brand success doesn’t happen in a vacuum,” Graves said.

If you still feel uneasy about personalizing your brand start by focusing on and sharing who you are within the context of your brand. Later you can open up more as an individual in other contexts because you’ll then be identified as your brand.

About the Southern Coterie Summit: The Southern Coterie Summit, or Southern C Summit, is a conference series that brings the together “best of Southern brands, bloggers, businesses and an assortment of Southern creatives to collaborate, create and innovate.” The conference is an extension of The Southern Coterie: The Social Network of the South. For more information on the next conference in Nashville, Tenn., on Oct. 17, check out the Southern Coterie Summit website.

Mandy Shunnarah is a freelance writer and editor, and an aspiring novelist. When she’s not writing, she can be found reading, learning to letterpress, watching Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones, and finding stray cats to cuddle with. Follow her on Twitter at @fixedbaroque and @awhitewrites.  

When asked about her views on women working in the search engine optimization (SEO) industry Rebecca Haden replies, “No client has ever said ‘I don’t know, I’m hesitant. After all, you’re girls!’”

Rebecca is the owner and creative director of Haden Interactive, a content marketing, SEO, and website building and management firm based in Fayetteville, Ark. I work as a professional blogger and link builder for Haden Interactive.

Rebecca and I both are in a field in which few women work and even fewer are thought leaders. While this isn’t due to the fact that women aren’t capable of working in the Internet tech industry, Rebecca says, it’s because they seem to be interested in different things. Line up attendees at a local WordCamp conference, she tells me, and you’ll see all the women are mommy bloggers. It’s the men who do development and design.

Rebecca started out on the Internet as a writer for Rootsweb and the Arkansas Encyclopedia of History and Culture, doing a style of writing more similar to that of print publications than online outlets. She eventually became a hobbyist mommy blogger, just like the countless women who dominate the lifestyle blogging niche whom many young women aspiring to write for a living see as role models. But that’s where the similarities end between Rebecca and most women bloggers. Her path to owning her own firm has a lot more to do with her skills as a writer-for-hire and her technical knowledge of SEO than her ability to make photos “pinnable.”

Back in pre-crash days in 2006, Rebecca worked for a bookstore and was asked to manage their website. One day she commented aloud that she didn’t understand why their website wouldn’t come up on Google when she searched for it, one of the most common problems business owners face when dealing with the Internet, and her daughter’s boyfriend told her to look up the word SEO.  At the time, she didn’t even know what a server was and had a 1970s computer science skillset.

When the bookstore closed and she lost her job, Rebecca lamented that she would have to stop running the website but the owner urged her to try providing the same services for other business owners.

“He said ‘We couldn’t have done it without you’ and I scoffed at his comments that I should try to continue,” says Rebecca, a mother of four who had two kids in college at the time. She had a lot to lose. For the first two weeks after losing her job, Rebecca collected unemployment but quickly freelance writing gigs replaced unemployment. Every day Rebecca spent freelancing she thought would be the last and that she would have to take the most recent job offer and give up writing. After six months of turning down other less exciting job offers, Rebecca finally decided being a writer-for-hire was a real job with a real income on which she could rely.

Rebecca worried about her success a lot in the beginning, but you wouldn’t know it now with Rebecca’s confidence in her abilities and immense knowledge on the industry.

“There’s no such thing as a saturated market,” Rebecca now notes. “They need new words all the time.”

Writers who have knowledge in SEO, Rebecca believes, have ample opportunities to make a living writing online because of the huge demand for well-written material. After writing for the likes of the Kennedy Center and being featured in the Wall Street Journal, Rebecca is continuing to expand Haden Interactive into the consumer packaged goods industry, due to their proximity to Walmart’s Home Office in Bentonville.

Most days you’ll find Rebecca in her office in her Fayetteville home, two dogs at her feet, writing for a wide range of clients across the globe and managing her seven-employee business. She advises that women who want to break into the writer-for-hire market heed those basic tenants of writing we’ve all heard before—have real writing skills, always meet deadlines instead of waiting for inspiration to strike, pay attention to the needs of the audience, and constantly build technical knowledge for online writing.

Kim Herrington, a graduate of Hendrix College, is a professional blogger and link builder for Haden Interactive and lives in Arkansas. She writes on her personal blog, The Made Thing, about blogging and SEO, food, and life in Arkansas.

Everyone has a story. And blogging and social media are great ways to share yours. But as you do so, remember it’s not all about you.

This is the main lesson I took away from Y’all Connect Presented by Alabama Power, a digital conference for corporate storytelling held in Birmingham, Ala., last week.

In his opening keynote communications expert Ike Pigott told attendees that we must remember the role we play in the stories of our readers.

“Figure out what your place in their story is,” he said.

Speaker, author, and brand strategist Erika Napoletano of the popular blog Redhead Writing is known for being raw and real and encouraged Y’all Connect attendees to do the same.

“Your willingness to tell your story is the most powerful thing you have,” Napoletano said.

But the stories you tell, she added, should honor you and your readers. Invite your readers into your story. Find ways to interact with your readers and give them opportunities to help you tell your story and chances to share their own.

One of the best ways to show your social media followers that you don’t think it’s all about you is to, well, make sure your social media shares aren’t all about you! WordPress designer and front-end developer Mitch Canter, who also spoke at Y’all Connect, reminded us that social media marketing expert Chris Brogan has a rule that for every 10 things he shares via social media, only one will be of self-promotion.

Canter recommends that we think of ourselves as content curators. For example, if you’re a niche blogger don’t send out dozens of tweets and Facebook status updates each day promoting your blog posts. Instead share interesting, entertaining, and compelling articles and information related to your niche.

Soon you’ll evolve from content curator to content leader.

 What’s your social media strategy?

For more Y’all Connect reflections check out the See Jane Write Birmingham blog for the post, What Writers and Bloggers Can Learn from Taylor Swift. 

“Mitzi Jane Media can help correct these mistakes by helping people think through their online presence and brand,” Eaker says.  “And secondly, we can correct these mistakes by helping clients to figure out what platforms are best for them and how to really maximize the time they have online.”