Promoting your work using social media – focus on relationship building

Two years ago I presented Blogging for Beginners at the First Nations Australia Writers National Workshop at the State Library of Queensland in Brisbane. This year I’ve been invited back to talk about how writers can use social media to promote their work.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to approach the talk as I’ve done a couple of ‘how to use social media’ presentations this year – most of them have focused on the what and how. In this presentation though I would like to bring the conversation to building relationships.

I wrote recently about how the networking is about forming relationships. Just as we create, build and foster real-life/face-to-face relationships, as authors, writers and storytellers we can create and build relationships with our audiences. Using social media tools can facilitate this relationship building.

What a good relationship looks like will vary from person to person. But there are some common elements – good listening, sharing, regular communication, interesting interactions. These four elements can be easily replicated online. Making posts that are interesting, replying when your audience comments, posting regularly and sharing stories about yourself are all aspects of that regardless of which platform you might be on.

You can see my workshop notes on Slideshare.

 

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