Writers, Dont Give Up On Social Media - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Writers, Dont Give Up On Social Media - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Writer Randy Ross recently wondered on his blog whether social media was turning out to be a waste of time for promoting his writing. He wrote in a blog post that Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn seem to be over-saturated with users generating useless crap. Randy has seen both his web traffic and Facebook Reach drop by 50%; Twitter is still fairly new to him, but all hes seeing so far is spam, crap, and inane comments; and, LinkedIn has just created a nuclear arms race as everyone scrambles to get more of these new Endorsements. My response to him was the same I give to all other writers who are struggling with social media. Social media is not a waste of time, because this is where everyone is spending most of their time and energy gathering new information and sharing their work. But it is becoming harder to stand out, especially if you dont put in the effort. With more and more meh content and dreck, people are narrowing down how much they read. That makes it harder for the really good writers to stand out. (Theyre having the same problems with self-publishing versus traditional publishing.) Remember, rule #1 of social media is to write good shit. (Or as the hoity-toity, jargony people like to say, create interesting content.) Write stuff thats not only interesting, persuasive, and even educational, but make sure its well-written and coherent. You can have great ideas, but if you dont express them well, people wont care. And if you write beautifully about half-baked ideas, no one is going to care either. Dont forget rule #2 either. Share others content. Not only that, share it more than you share your own. Retweet other peoples interesting tweets. Tweet their own articles to your network. Like and share their cool status updates on Facebook. Then, if theres time, you can talk about your own stuff. In Branding Yourself, we said the ratio should be 90% someone elses stuff, 10% yours. That shows people youre interested in them, care about them, and want them to do well. Ultimately, that makes them want to be your advocates as well. Theyll tweet your blog posts, like and share your Facebook updates, and retweet your cool tweets. Now, heres the big secret to winning at personal branding: You have to outlast the people that put out mediocre crap. Thats it. You dont have to do it better; although just by putting in a conscious effort, you will. You dont have to resort to trickery; the spammers will burn themselves out with trickery that yields nothing. You dont have to double your energy or time spent on social media; just put in 30 60 minutes per day, spread throughout the day. As you do social media more and more, you will finally reach that tipping point where people are paying attention to your stuff, they are sharing it with everyone, and they are visiting your website on a regular basis. Its just a matter of being tenacious. Put the same energy into being a social media rockstar that you have into being a literary rockstar. If you write good shit, and promote everyone elses stuff on a consistent basis, you will begin to see success. And success begets success. The more you do it, the more youll have. Author: Erik Deckers  is the owner of  Professional Blog Service, and the co-author of  Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself. His new book,  No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing. His wife is a jazz singer and is building her own audience.