Today I'm shaking my Cowbell about social media, with an emphasis on your profiles. Those header graphics and text are one of the biggest tools in your arsenal to catch people's eyes.

[I just heard some of you writers groan: More social media?! Didn't Fae give us permission yesterday to just write?]

I know, I know. I’ve got writing pals who are worried their heads might explode. I’m already on Facebook, they whine. I just want to stay home and write in my pajamas. Why do I have to talk to people?

Because you do.

We all need to build a writing team to survive in this crazy business. The process of getting a book published requires a massive amount of teamwork.

The easiest place to find those team members is online. Programs like LinkedIn can be a big part of your team-building success once you understand how it works and how to navigate it like a rockstar.

The most important thing to remember?

You get two inches, or six seconds, to make your first impression.

(Get your mind out of the gutter! You’ve gotta hang out at More Cowbell for thoughts like that.)

Seriously, it’s a common saying in the business world. Get your most important point into the subject line and the first paragraph of an email because that’s all most people will read. Even as an author, we’re aware that we have anywhere from two paragraphs to two pages to engage an editor, agent or reader.

Hook people quick, or they’re moving on.

The average resume or LinkedIn profile gets no more than 6 seconds to engage someone. The same goes for a tweet or a Facebook author page header. To be fair, the average person is looking for different things than the recruiters I mention in the link above, but 6 seconds is still the average browse time.

What makes people scroll past your "top two inches?"

1. Your pictures and graphics.

Whether it's a profile, a blog header, or a newsletter, the very top needs to capture the essence of your brand.

• On Facebook, this might include a photo of you and your book cover.
• Any photos should be a clear, close, front-facing shot.
• If you're included, it's best for you to look friendly and attentive.
• Unless you work with kids or animals, there shouldn't be anyone else in the picture with you. No spouses, no kids, and on LinkedIn no hats and sunglasses in that profile picture.

Note: If you've ever wondered what the dimensions are for all the different platforms (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc), The Complete Social Media Cover Photo Guide.

Here is an example of a great header graphic. Below is the blog header for August McLaughlin's blog. She is a thriller writer, a health writer and is building an amazing platform on sexuality called GirlBoner. August has been doing some really smart branding.

Before you read a single word, you can see what August looks like, that she's written a book, and that you can find her online using the #GirlBoner hashtag. You can also see from that flirty heart on the left that she equates GirlBoner with love and sexuality.

2. Professional Summary

What are you doing now? What have you done in the past? Many authors build a profile in a program like LinkedIn and then let it moulder. They don't update it as their career develops, even though these updates are usually quick. By adding current and past positions to your profiles, space allowing, you get a quick summary of this in your top profile block on LinkedIn (I'll show this below) or at least a more updated profile in a program like Twitter.

For example, my pal, Marcy Kennedy, is a Twitter expert, but she is also an amazing freelance editor. By adding those two little words to her Twitter profile, she gives a much more comprehensive 140 character portrait.

Thriller writer and pet expert, Amy Shojai, joined LinkedIn about a year ago and she has been rocking the platform. Below you can see how important it is that she keeps up her work experience. It's a mini-resume in a two-inch space.

3. An easy-to-remember address

Not enough people remember to customize their addresses on social media. Kristen Lamb, author and social media jedi knows that http://www.linkedin.com/in/kristenlamb will be easier to remember than http://www.linkedin.com/pub/writername/11/442/b42/.

One I can type from memory and share easily. And the other...I can't, and won't.

When we started the Writers In The Storm Facebook page, one of the first things we did was customize our URL. It started as some ridiculous sequence of numbers that no one was going to remember. The same thing was true for my Jenny Hansen personal profile. All you have to do is go to your Settings and edit your "username" under General Account Settings.

4. Multiple points of contact

If you don't want to be called, you don't need to put out your phone number. But you should have an email, blog, website or a social media account like Twitter listed in your About page on your website/blog or in your contact info on LinkedIn.

An added bonus: Changing your profile picture on Facebook or updating your contact settings sends out an update, which puts you at the top of your connections' feeds. That is always a win.

Here's Amy Shojai's contact page on LinkedIn, a platform where you can have LOTS of data showing:

What about a program like Twitter where you don't get a lot of space? 

Note how Marcy's in-page Twitter profile to the right shows only her website. You only get room to list a single site on Twitter, unless you want to take space from your 140 characters.

This is why it's so important to have an updated website, or if you live at your blog, to have an updated About page that allows people to find you.

Facebook expert, Lisa Hall-Wilson, recommends that your header graphic include your website for this exact reason. You don't want to make people scroll down for your information, because they won't.

We have become a skimming society of quick readers, a point that is well illustrated by our own Sharla Rae in a recent post about the benefits of slow reading.

I chose the graphics above as great examples because:

• They give a complete impression of the person, including picture, blog, and other social media info.
• They clearly list what that person is up to.
• They’re friendly and engaging, yet professional.
• Where possible, they include contact information.
• Most give a very clear sense of the person's brand.

Remember, if you don't put "the good stuff" at the beginning, there is a fine chance people will miss it.

 

Do you think of these issues when setting up your social media? Do you have any how-to questions? What elements do you think are missing from your own profiles? Feel free to list your social media links in the comments so we can all follow you!

About Jenny Hansen

By day, Jenny provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. By night she writes news articles, humor, memoir, women’s fiction and short stories. After 18+ years as a corporate software trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

When she’s not at her personal blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Twitter at JennyHansenCA or at Writers In The Storm.

Writing is the Best Job Ever!

Where else can you show up to your desk for work in your comfortable robe and slippers? No commute, no bossy co-workers, no meetings.

Writing is a great excuse to get out of social obligations -"I'm working on deadline"- and the perfect write-off for visiting, uh-researching, areas of interest.

You are your own boss and you set your own schedule.

The problem is...

Well, there are a number of problems.

As with any job, you've got to show up. If you don't sit at the computer, the book doesn't get written. And it's easy to get distracted at home with all those pesky adult responsibilities. Particularly when the words are not flowing out of your fingertips. If you don't already know how many hours it takes to get ten pages of first draft work completed, time yourself. Multiply that by forty for a four-hundred-page book (it'll be edited down) to get an idea of just how much seat time is necessary to finish your manuscript, and maybe you'll see why it's taking so long to finish your novel.

You do have "bosses", even if you self-publish. Someone is giving you completion dates, critiquing your work, designing your cover, writing your blurb–even if that someone is you.

You have a whole new set of social obligations: setting up your platform and social media presence. That two-hour luncheon with your friends is nothing, compared with the time sump Facebook and Twitter can become, to say nothing of Pinterest and Instagram.

Research takes time. If you like to research before you start a book, you know how research can put off the start of your novel as you acquire more and more juicy details to reveal to your readers.

It's only you. You must be your own boss and you must stick to a writing schedule. The sad truth is your book is not going to write itself. Words will not magically appear in the computer file. (I know this--I've done the research!) If you cannot "be the boss" and show up for work every day, writing is not your job. And, particularly with this configuration of publishing and self-publishing, you need content to market. That content is how you will earn your paycheck.

So how can you make the Best Job Ever work for you?

• Make a schedule for your writing. Choose a reasonable amount of time to work, based on your other 'jobs'. Try your schedule out for a week. Stick with it, even when it's difficult or "life happens." Note difficulties, time crunches, places where you have "wiggle room." Refrain from cleaning the bathroom during your writing time. After that first week, adjust your schedule to fit your other needs. Set a goal for a certain number of words every week.

• Accountability. Share your writing schedule and word count goal with those closest to you. The people who will be most affected by your success as an author deserve a chance to support you. You may be pleasantly surprised when you enlist their aid, even if it's simply a remark at the dinner table or a quick e-mail note. Writers in particular do not work best in a vacuum.

• Marketability. Part of your job as a writer is your social media. Setting up and maintaining your accounts and website "count" as work hours. However, published authors agree that every hour on professional social media contacts should be balanced with three hours of writing. Games and Facebook videos of cute animals do not count in your work time. Save them for your "off hours."

• Feedback. When I'm writing, I make sure I have at least ten pages a week to send to my critique partners. I critique their pages. You will improve your craft by consistent writing, editing others work, and revising your own work based on critiques from trusted partners. Set aside time in your schedule for critiquing.

• Education. Include at least an hour a week to read blogs about writing, an online class, or books about specific areas you want to improve. A professional needs ongoing education and strives for excellence. As a professional writer, this is part of your job, too.

Even if you can only schedule five hours a week– three hours of writing with a goal of ten rough-draft pages, one hour for social media, and one hour for growing your craft– at the end of a year you'll have finished a book and have a platform. Yes, it boggles the mind. But what blows my mind even more is how much more I can accomplish with double that investment.

I know it's a little early for New Year's Resolutions. I'm no good with those anyway. But this is a workable plan for me. It's got accountability, motivation with goals for word count, new learning to keep me interested, time for my critiquing responsibilities here at Writers in the Storm, and space for that time sump called social media.

So, I'm sharing my new schedule with you, my writer friends. I'll check in periodically and let you know how it's going.

How many hours a week are you writing now? Do you have any other tips for showing up for this job of ours? How do you manage to stay on track to finish your book? 

About Fae

Fae Rowen discovered the romance genre after years as a science fiction freak.  Writing futuristics and medieval paranormals, she jokes  that she can live anywhere but the present.  As a mathematician, she knows life’s a lot more fun when you get to define your world and its rules.

Punished, oh-no, that’s published as a co-author of a math textbook, she yearns to hear personal stories about finding love from those who read her books, rather than horrors of algebra lessons gone wrong.  She is grateful for good friends who remind her to do the practical things in life like grocery shop, show up at the airport for a flight and pay bills.

A “hard” scientist who avoided writing classes like the plague, she now enjoys sharing her brain with characters who demand that their stories be told.  Amazing, gifted critique partners keep her on the straight and narrow. Feedback from readers keeps her fingers on the keyboard.

When she’s not hanging out at Writers in the Storm, you can visit Fae at http://faerowen.com  or www.facebook.com/fae.rowen

Kathryn Craft

Turning Whine into Gold

This month I’ve been seeing a lot on social media about the benefit of positivity. It is the simplest and most immediate cure for whining!

A positive attitude will keep you in problem-solving gear and
win you many champions in the publishing business.

In this great interview between Porter Anderson and my friend and NYT bestselling author Jonathan Maberry, Jonathan says, “more doors will open if you go into the business with happiness and joy and optimism.”

No truer words, my friends.

As storytellers we get to play God. We can make good and bad things happen, and have it all come out the way we want it to in the end. But real life is less ordered. It requires us to deal with circumstances beyond our control. To surrender. Reframe. This skill set will help you leave despair behind and turn toward optimism and hope.

Dealing with it

If you have truly been wronged, it is important to note your emotional reaction—after all, we can’t have people walking all over us all the time. Best not get stuck there, though.

Harsh, angry words, especially when used to embellish a diatribe on public record about how you’ve been wronged—an f-ing agent rejected you, your book was orphaned when your f-ing editor retired, you lost your super publicist when she f-ing decided to switch lines of work, a major review is a f-ing personal vendetta—tend to whip you into a decidedly unhelpful, self-justified frenzy.

If you love to ride the downward spiral, I suggest you do so off-line. Your fury will damage your friends if they engage with it, and will stall all forward movement in your writing and your career until you get over it.

Instead, after you note your anger, let it go as soon as possible so you can surrender to your new circumstances.

Surrender

If we think of change in terms of loss—even if all we’ve lost is our expectation of how something will go—we adapt by moving through the stages of grief. If denial is the first (tweet: “Oh no! It can’t be true—my editor is going into the restaurant business?!”), accepting your circumstances allows healing (tweet: “Best wishes to Dream Publicist as she opens NY Sushi—if she can gussy up raw fish like she did my raw words, can’t wait to try some!”). During the intermediate grieving stages of anger, bargaining, and depression, consider staying off-line—and the sooner you can push through them in private, the better.

Whether or not you want to accept it, reality is, the agent doesn’t want you, this book may not get published without an in-house advocate, your publicist is gone, that bad review won’t get unpublished. Invectives and self-pity won’t change that. If you still need to tweet, do so in a way that helps you reach for positivity: “No publishing news today. There’s been a plot twist. Researching Plan B—stay tuned!”

Once you’ve fully surrendered, you’ll free up energy to reframe.

Reframing

The trick to reframing a situation requires that you embrace paradox: you must think of yourself both as the hero of your own small story and as a pawn who must surrender to a much larger one.

Examples:

The orphaned book. If no one else in the house (or the industry) believes in the book, was it really all that marketable? A book needs staunch advocates to make it in the business; without this it will not get the send-off it deserves. The pawn must surrender, because the only thing worse than no publishing record is a poor publishing record. Your inner hero can decide whether to re-submit elsewhere, self-publish—or, heartened by getting this close—set it aside to write the next.

The lost publicist. “I’m screwed,” you think—but are you? As a pawn, even though you loved everything your last publicist did, you’ve got to let her go. But your inner hero has already learned her techniques, and could teach them to someone new if need be. What if the next publicist, with a different way of thinking, comes up with alternate approaches that help your work reach a wider audience?

The bad review. The pawn cringes as he reads—then the hero laughs. He knows that many books that rise to popular success have been scorned by critics (Twilight, anyone? Da Vinci Code?). And clearly you must not have seen this video, in which Brad Meltzer turns the bad reviews of his The Book of Lies into a YouTube trailer with almost 20K hits.

If you doubt that Brad’s creative approach was effective, check out all the comments beneath the video on YouTube! And we have to believe Brad felt a whole lot better after taking on this creative project than if he had simply stewed in self-righteous anger.

When your life in publishing hits a pothole, deal with it, surrender, and re-frame. You’ll be happier, and you’ll find a lot more people willing to help you reach your goals.

After all: do you want to lead a life you love, or one you only whine about?

If you want to practice: share an example of a speed bump you hit in your writing life, requiring that your inner pawn surrender even as your inner hero found a way to turn it into a positive.

About Kathryn

Kathryn Craft is the author of two novels from Sourcebooks: The Art of Falling, and The Far End of Happy, due May 2015. Her work as a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, specializing in storytelling structure and writing craft, follows a nineteen-year career as a dance critic. Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania writing scene, she now serves as book club liaison for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. She hosts lakeside writing retreats for women in northern New York State, leads workshops, and speaks often about writing. She lives with her husband in Bucks County, PA. Although a member of The Liars Club, she swears that everything in this bio is true.