SOCIAL MEDIA: AN EXCITING NEW FRONTIER
By Gael McCarte, award winning blogger, author, psychologist.
The internet is awash with information on how to “do” social media. Those who can read can learn. There are literally thousands of experts available to assist you with free webinars and ebooks Why? They need listeners, “likes” and twitter follows, to be acknowledged as experts. Free and at cost webinars are comparable in content. If after attending you cannot grasp a task, hire help for minimal cost. See notes on fiverr.com
Remember – WIIFM – What’s In It For Me: no not you, the reader, the one you wish to bless, sell to, give to. If you serve, encourage, give information or kind advice, pray for and establish a relationship they will buy or take from you much more readily. It is a Biblical principle; sow first then reap. No way around that sequence. Cast your bread on the water and after many days it will return to you. Cast love, help, information, prayer first.
Next you need to brand, find a niche, a market, an audience and write everything as though you are writing to them. That advice frustrated me. How to narrow down my many interests? Impossible! But I did it, how? I defined my goals: 1. Exposure for my book. 2. Speaking invitations. My novel, The Con features my work as a psychologist with criminals in Australia. What message would establish me as an authority and encourage others to learn from me? I got it! Like Aladdin I can be taught. I chose three topics, crime, psychology and Australia. This focused me and I now know what I am doing.
My second book is an ebook, Jayden Daze. I wrote it for grandparents to read to grandchildren. It is about an ADDish boy. His grandparents know more than which battles to pick, they know to not to pick battles at all, but to nurture.
I had to find my audience. Searching twitter and facebook located sites that either deal with psychology, crime, Australia or grandparents. I learned how to use twitter hash tags. I posted and twittered to them. I sent my articles and blogs about the topics to groups and individuals within my audience group. I won awards for blogging. One of my pieces was retweeted 13,000 times. I could not afford to buy that exposure to a targeted audience.
I keep my work current by reading online news sourvces or follow Digg trends. I quote, I cut and paste my sources and quote established experts. I post all blogs with photographs. I use Photobucket.com (free). I resize or convert my own pictures to URL’s through imageshack.com
To summarize, there are almost limitless sources of knowledge, YouTube, blogs, webinars, free material. Access it, learn from it. What you can’t learn you can hire done cheaply. Define your goal and your brand. Distribute your message free to targeted groups and individuals.
I am not an expert, I am a continual learner. It is the only way to maintain a working knowledge of this evolving new frontier. I repeat the words of a true expert Susannah Breslin, of Forbeswoman, “Today’s expert is tomorrow’s idiot.”
My 3 most prized sources are: fiverr.com I bought a landing page for my author facebook page, a voice introduction to my future podcast and a cover for my book. The products are stunning, and professional, and they redid or refunded work I did not like. I paid $5.00 for each task.
Imageshack I get URL’s for photographs, I can also resize and reformat photographs that will not load because of size errors, free.
Photobucket – blogs with pictures are read at a far higher rate than those without, this source has thousands of free photographs for use.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/GaelMcCarte.author.speaker
twitter @GaelMcCarte
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/WritingMatters
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