Let's get social! A few tips for pumping up your social sites

As part of our ongoing blog series dedicated to marketing books, we'd like to talk this week about getting social! Once you've checked out all the available social media sites (see our previous post about getting started) it's time to start connecting and building an audience. This may seem simple, but it really does begin one connection at a time - one like, one follow, one direct message. It may take a bit of time to build a following but you can start by following the authors, film makers, singers, celebrities, and sports figures that interest you. You'll get a sense of the types of content that professionals (or the pro's that manage sites for them) feel is important and will grab the attention of their followers. 

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The rule of three . . .
According to Wikipedia and numerous pundits and internet articles and lots of books on Amazon, the rule of three is a general writing principle that groups of three are generally more satisfying and easier to remember for readers or audience members. The same can be said of social media practices.

This principle is a lot simpler than it sounds – so don’t be scared off by it! Simply think of your posts as clusters of three. For one of the posts, you will promote yourself (things like your book, business, or brand). For another, you will promote someone else (things like their book, business, or brand). For the final post, you will post something unrelated to your book or business, but still connected to you and your brand (things like a hobby, vacation, family picture, etc.). Simply rotate through these three kinds of posts! It’s so simple, but it gives you a great starting place when it comes to knowing what kind of content to create. And we follow the rule . . . with three images below!

At the end of the day, when it comes to building your brand, you have to start somewhere! Don’t let fear or intimidation keep you from beginning. Do your research ahead of time when it comes to picking your lane and finding places like conferences and online forums. Spend the time upfront setting up your social media and becoming comfortable with how it works so that, as your brand begins to take off, you can focus less on the logistics and more on building relationships with your readers and other authors.

One more thing . . .
You don't have to do it alone! While it's important to make your voice and personality shine throughout your social media presences, you can get help. Take a tour through LinkedIn and search for virtual assistants. You can specify marketing assistants or social media assistants and hire someone to help build your brand, keep your sites fresh, and work with you on connecting to followers.