Are you out there?

Hey guys! I hope your weeks are going well. Me, I’m just hoping I get everything done this week. Holidays really throw off the schedule, you know? Especially ones on weekdays. Thanksgiving is great fun though, and I’m really looking forward to it… it’d just be nicer if I had some extra time beforehand, to get my work done.

Awesome stuff coming your way starting Black Friday, by the way. Be sure to sign up for emails from RAD, if you want to be kept in the loop.

All this month, we’ve been talking about ways to expand our markets. How do we get fans, followings, which we can turn into sales? I swear it’s the hardest part of being an author, sometimes.

So, how often are you online?

With the way social media works these days, the more you post and the more people who like your posts, the better chance you have of being seen in the market. People like to follow pages who post things all the time, but we also like to follow pages who post relevant things, all the time, so it can’t just be drivel. We get enough of that from ads, am I right?

All right, so we have to be online all the time, and posting as often as we can on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, what have you… but how do we do that without spending all our time on social media instead of writing? How do we look like we’re online without actually being online?

Allow me to introduce you to scheduling. Also, programs like Hootsuite can be beneficial.

I actually need to get better at doing this… but my biggest problem is trying to think of what to post. Which, really, is the struggle a lot of us have.

Okay, so I’ll use RAD as an example. They post on social media five days a week. Monday-Friday, they post something. They’re also pretty good about responding to messages and comments on Facebook, within a few hours at most.

But RAD has things they can post. They talk about the items in their store and the newer features on the site, they share information on writing and post their blogs on Fridays… what if we don’t have all that?

Easy. Find some videos. Some images. Anything you can share that is relevant to what you’re doing. Things that will help garner you a bigger following, but a following which you can turn into a sales list. A group of people who follow you because you continually post old George Takei links probably aren’t going to buy what you’re selling. They just want to see what George posted a few years ago.

Scour YouTube. Do a Google search. There’s plenty of material out there, just waiting to be found and used by you.

And me.

Because yeah, I need to get better at this, too. A lot better.

Notice how most of what I post online lately is from my blog? Yeah… that happens during editing season, and I don’t want that to be the case anymore.

[love]

{Rani Divine}