Should I start a blog? This question often comes up during meetings of the London Writers’ Club.
When it comes to non-fiction the answer is clear: yes. Agents, publishers and publicists all agree that these writers should build up a social media platform. By ‘platform’ they mean, for example, a regular blog or a lively Twitter account. This gives you a warm audience who will hopefully receive your book well and might even help you publicise it.
With fiction, however, it is less clear. The experts coming along to the club’s meetings haven’t been as exacting on this. Some say it isn’t particularly what they are looking for. But, I’m thinking, it couldn’t do any harm, could it? And it might actually help quite a lot, mightn’t it? It’s not as if promoting a novel across different platforms is a new idea – the famous radio introduction to War of The Worlds in 1938 certainly didn’t do harm to book sales.
As someone who has nearly finished writing a novel and who is beginning to think about the marketing, I have decided to dive into the world of social media and just, well, try it and see what happens. So this week I’m launching a new blog and Twitter account @PattiLashe. They are written from the point of view of one of the characters in my book, Patti Lashe. Patti writes self help for cynics and is the main source of advice to another character, Colin, a downtrodden man who decides to turn his life around. The blog and the novel share the title: Complete Bastards & How to Deal with Them. They all take inspiration from the difficult people we meet in everyday life.
To get started I have spoken to some social media experts. See my layman’s interpretation of their tips below. I’ll be letting fellow writers know how I get on here on the London Writers’ club website.
One thing the social media experts say is: end your blog posts on a question to help engage readers. So, well then, what do you think? I mean, can you blog your fiction? And should you?
Tips from the experts, interpreted by a layperson:
• If you haven’t set up a blog before, clear a weekend for this task. And get in a bottle of wine while you are at it. Believe me you’ll be ready for a glug after a few hours in the backend of a blogsite for the first time. To begin with it is all quite confusing and bit of a faff but, keep going, you will get there in the end.
• Alternatively, cheat: pay someone to do it for you. Would you believe there are people out there who make a whole living out just setting up WordPress blogs?
• Either way, if you are a beginner at things-webby, keep it simple. Choose a nice neat ‘theme’ (blog design) from WordPress or Blogger or Tumblr. There are plenty of good-looking themes you can use for free and which give you some control over the appearance. Go for a theme with, perhaps two or three columns and make sure it allows widgets. Widgets do clever things automatically, for example, offering your readers a way of sharing your blog and ‘liking’ it on other platforms such as Facebook.
• Be prepared to spend some time on admin. Sourcing pictures alone can take as much time as the writing. On that front I’ve opted for a cartoon to represent my fictional character. My artistic sister kindly drew one for me as a favour but, if you want to go down the same route and you don’t have an arty friend to hand, you can commission graphics work from online sites like Odesk.
• Think like a spider. Clever social media people are like happy little arachnids: they sit in a nice web social media web where all their activities link up, for example, their Twitter account has the same name as their blog and their Facebook page or website. The key is to be sure your activities are reinforcing each other and helping you achieve your aims.
• A dull but important thing: set up a separate email address for your blog, both for security and to avoid getting it tangled up in your other life admin.
• Finally, don’t panic. Social media platforms are breeding like bunnies in an abandoned army base. Keep half an eye on trends but don’t feel you need to engage in them all or you’ll drown in the deluge of Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+ etc. Don’t forget you need to leave some time for writing. So start with two or three and see how you get on.
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You know that Arvon were running a whole social networking/blogging week last year. I was tempted by it but opted out. And you’ve probably told me most of what I needed to know without it (and I’ve saved £600.00 too).
Just read the blog – and thought how very true to life. Can’t Patti just dump the negative bastard (or does she work with him – I’ve met a few of those and that is tougher). Anyway a promising start (I need a bit of self help).
Hello Ade,
Thank you for having a look at the blog. You are right, we could probably just dump all those negative Bs (although that would kind of kill the premise of my novel – :/ – so Patti will carry on battling them for a while longer).
Do hope to meet you at one of the LWC events,
Best wishes,
Jules