Platform is your ability to sell books because people know who you are. Your “audience” may have supported you in other ways (purchased your programs, attended your presentations), but what’s important to know is that they know you. If it’s a first book you’re readying for launch (even a second or third book!), they are your target audience.
Building your platform takes effort. What it does is help you reach these ideal readers easily. If you have a big platform, that means you have a lot of potential readers waiting to hear from you.
Visibility is often confused with marketing practices—social media, blogging, public speaking, and publicity. But what marketing practices do is build your platform and demonstrate an interest in what you have to say.
Over time, your marketing efforts let people know what you are writing and what you stand for. The people who follow you are the most likely to also purchase your book, and they do because they know who you are, and love what you write.
So, to build my platform I should be producing relevant content on a weekly basis, right? Posting on my blog, and social media, too? Yes, those are two ways to build your platform. There are others, but we will limit the discussion today to just one–blogging.
Writing and publishing blog posts is a tried and true way to achieve visibility. Writers have the unique position of being able to self-publish virtually anything they create—from their writing, to graphics, to podcasts and videos to online magazines, and more. Take advantage of the enormous opportunities you have available to get the word out.
Build Your Platform. Start with a Blog.
Don’t have one? Hop onto WordPress.com and start writing. Or Blogger.com, WordPress.com, or if you self-host, WordPress.org. There are other free sites that allow you to showcase your knowledge about a topic.
Select three topics you love and work on with your clients and then brainstorm all sorts of angles related to those core topics. You can create a list of at least a dozen topics to write about.
You actually want to be known for what you know, so don’t think that articles all about those three topics are going to make you sound like you repeat yourself. You want to show consistency and a thorough knowledge of a topic. So slice and dice a topic, look at it from different perspectives. Some people will respond to one of your articles. Another person will love a different article. That’s how it works.
The act of writing to build your platform creates all sorts of other positive side effects. For now, consider writing articles (you can also call them personal essays and posts) that reflect your business philosophy and the services or products you sell.
So, start with a blog–your own, or as a guest blogger for a colleague. You can then branch out to writing for publications offline and online and possibly make a little money doing so.
Know that blogging is a good start. It’s a good way to develop an audience. But also know that it’s a start. You want to add additional platform-building activities. Come back to see what else you can do–I will feature another activity in future posts.
As with most things, consistency is key. That includes posting to your blog. The more people see and read you, the more they will want to see and read you, and to do that, post with regularity.
And let me know–what are you doing to build your platform?