This post, by Kristen Lamb, originally appeared on her blog on 10/6/10.
Welcome to WANA Wednesday, based off my best-selling book We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media. This is the day I dedicate to making your social media experience more enjoyable and productive. Many authors have gotten the message that they need to be on social media and they need to be blogging. But one of the big problems I notice is there is a failure to understand how search engines work and how to use them in our favor. What good is posting content if no one can find it, right?
What I am going to teach you today is going to help you rise even more above the masses of competition all clamoring for the public’s attention and money.
These days the competition is fierce. Barnes and Noble just announced its self-publishing service PubIt so everybody can get published. The gates have been thrown open and it is every writer for himself. Why I brought up this new development in self-publishing is that it highlights why it is even more critical for authors to have a platform. Unless you happen to already be a household name, your social media platform is more critical now than ever.
As a debut fiction author you will be competing against counterparts who have a solid social media presence and a blog following. Are you prepared? The odds are not in our favor. According to the BEA, 93% of novels sell less than 1000 copies. A solid social media platform can make all the difference. In earlier blogs, we have discussed using your name as a brand. Anything else will cripple a platform and leave an author stressed out and spread too thinly. Our goal is to get our names to do the heavy lifting (sales) so we have time to write.
So why is a name so important?
Today we are going to have a quick lesson on how search engines work. By the end of this lesson, I am sure it will be much clearer why your name is so critical.
Read the rest of the post on Kristen Lamb’s blog.