Ever Built A Platform?

As a writer, you need to build a platform to support your career over the long run. That’s why it’s important to build it right.

Don’t jump!
Many eager writers hear about the need to build a platform and, being intrepid folk, leap right into social media with little thought.
But that’s the wrong approach, according to T. Suzanne Eller (right), a Christian Writers Guild mentor, who wrote about conquering social media recently in the Guild’s member newsletter, WordSmith.

Build it and they will come. Right?

Maybe that worked for Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, but it doesn’t work for social media. Before you start a Facebook fan or group page, start tweeting, or blogging, you need a blueprint. To create an effective social media platform that will draw your niche audience to your message, you need to answer:

• What is your message?
  
  
  
• How do you communicate it throughout your social media platform?
  
  
  
• Who is Googling questions for which you have answers?
  
  
  
• How do you reach that person with content and value?
  
  
  
• How do you help that person find you?
  
  
  
• What will draw readers and create synergy and word of mouth?
  
  
  
• How much time are you willing to devote?
  
  
  
• How can you avoid mistakes that will alienate potential readers?

Suzie’s right. You need a plan when building your platform.

Build it right and they will come
Because of her experience, Suzie wrote the Guild's new course, Building Your Social Media Platform, to teach writers how to effectively use social media. She is also one of the professionals who will provide one-on-one mentoring for the course.

If you need help in this area, the Guild invites you to consider our course . Alternately, another platform guru, Randy Ingermanson, will teach a four-hour course on the same subject at the Guild’s Writing for the Soul conference this February in Denver CO.

Of course, there are other places to receive platform-building help. Find a way to make it work for you and your writing.

In what ways have you built your platform? I love Facebook and plan to start a blog next year. What tools do you use? Which do you avoid?

Michael Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief for the Jerry B. Jenkins Christian Writers Guild. He has written for newspapers and other print and online outlets. He edited several nonfiction books, was the senior editor for a faith-based financial services and insurance organization, and is the editor of Afictionado, the ezine for American Christian Fiction Writers.