Your Author Platform

Before you ask, that photo is my cat, Billy. He's a very special member of the family, and he knows it. But back to business.

I almost skipped blogging today, since it's Memorial Day, but I thought I would post this short article since it's Marketing Monday. So, let's talk about marketing. And let's be very specific and talk about marketing YOU!

We've all heard the news. If you're going to be an author—especially a self-published one—you need a platform. I wrote a previous article on this very subject, but it's so important that I wanted to post another one just to drive the point home. If you'd like to read the first one, (which is a bit more detailed and includes a good smattering of great links on the same subject) here's a LINK to it.

What I wanted to concentrate on in this post is the Facebook phenomenon. Nearly everyone has a FB presence today. And there are new pages being set up every hour of the day, even as I write this, and even as you're reading it. So, because it is such a popular social media site, and growing because it's now considered the "thing to do," you need to be there.

You can start out with a simple personal home page. Then, you can create a professional page. And it's all free. Most writers create an author page that their fans can visit and post questions or comments, or learn about the author's newest projects or releases. With your own author page, you can post the art for your new cover (that's always exciting!). Or you can include a link to your "buy" page on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. You can link to your blog where you've posted an excerpt or a character interview. You can include your YouTube videos if you have a YouTube channel. There's lots of things you can do. The important aspect of all this is that your author page will give you another marketing channel. You'll have different visitors than you have on your blog. Different friends than you have on Twitter. It helps expand your universe in a multi-directional manner.

On a personal note, my personal page is getting very close to the 5,000 friend limit that Facebook imposes. Because of that, I've created an author page. It's currently gaining some new followers. It's important that you promote your own page so you can increase the number of friends who follow you. Those are members of your potential market.

If you'd like to visit my author page, here's another LINK. I hope you'll "LIKE" it.

And just so you know, since we said at the start that we were going to talk about you, I used the word "you" (or a form of it) 39 times in this post.