What does it really mean to market yourself? What does building your authorial brand look like?

You have to use social media they say – for what? And how? I mean it’s absurd. People invented these ‘cool’ platforms for sharing with our friends in real time. That is what we should be using them for – their intended purpose. But instead we all feel the pressure to leverage our platforms, to sell ourselves, our lives, somebody else’s product.

Like man that’s fucked-up. It doesn’t need to be this way.

And actually I’m not sure anybody knows how this works. Nobody seems to have a fool-proof plan to get yourself noticed on these platforms. ‘Cos its all done by mystery algorithm now.

And if you keep an eyeball on these spaces you certainly see a lot of contradictory info floating around. Like a few years ago I saw a lot of established book people complaining that the age of the blog was dead – nobody reads blogs anymore, they are worthless – all these people said. Then twitter collapsed in a fiery inferno and the internet was full of articles about why you should absolutely make a website and newsletter ‘cos how else can you keep track of your loyal customers?

Don’t sell your customers to social media was the new buzzword – like no shit dude.

But much as I would like to deny it, this stuff does help. When someone reads your books and likes them they want to be able to find out when the next one will come out. They want to support you and you want to share your work with them. Its a sympatric relationship – one of mutual benefit.

I try to keep that idea central.

The Plan

Then I start looking at what the people I follow, whose work I love, do. What do they post about? How often? What do I like about their stuff.

I ask myself, what could I do like that?

I start simple.

I am only using one social platform. I chose it ‘cos it’s my preferred platform. I post about inspiring or creative things I have done. I just started posting whenever a new blog goes up. Actually that was hard, and I’m still not comfortable with it. I like to pretend nobody reads my blog, that it is my little secret. But I don’t think those feelings are coming from a good place so I’m challenging them. How many people are likely to follow through and go read the blog after all? Ah, still hiding.

I don’t yet have a newsletter sign-up – its in the pipeline.

Every time I write a new blog post I get a red-face score for the SEO, ‘cos the keywords don’t appear often enough or in the right places…bla, bla, bla. But I rate the article structure and my voice as more important.

It is the difference between algorithms and people.

Because I think that is what all of this comes down to. How can you share what you do that gives an authentic view of who you are as a writer. And that feels authentic to you in the doing.

For me it’s a work in progress, and that is not a bad thing. And I can always consult with ‘experts’ in the hypothetical future in which I suddenly need a massive following.

Or maybe not. Maybe it doesn’t matter what you do.

After all, there is a lid for every pot. Maybe what matters is that you keep doing what works for you, consistently, whether you have 10 followers or 10 000. Maybe followers really are like friendships, like the writing itself, the thing you need to invest is time, to keep showing up to the page.

Postscript: This is my idle ramblings, based on neither expertise nor much experience. I promise I will get back to you when I have either amassed a hoard of ‘do anything for me’ followers or have collapsed my social accounts in despair, and report back on whether there was any truth to my theories.