I recently decided to make the most insane decision ever.

I gave up Twitter and Facebook for Lent.

*taking a deep breath and wiping sweat from my brow*

When I told my husband he had an interesting reaction. He said, “Aren’t you just going to be hurting your platform by doing that instead of helping?”

To which I said, “I don’t think so. I’ll still be blogging.”

Bu then I sat back and thought about all the tweeting I do with agents and other authors and began to wonder, am I hurting myself more than helping?

Well regardless the choice has been made and I intend to stick with it.

Do you think taking a break from social networking would hinder your career as a writer? Would you be able to give it up for a full 40 days and 40 nights?

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Marybeth is an aspiring novelist currently working on her second novel. For more information visit her website www.marybethsmith.com. She also has a blog Desperately Searching for my Inner Mary Poppins where you can keep up on her moments as mother, wife and writer..

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For an extended period of time, I have been influenced by Audre Lorde and her essays. Unsure if it is because of all the new writing deadlines that are emerging compiled with balancing “real world” demands but she has been circling my thought process. Will she ever land and assist me in sorting out all these thoughts? Its as though I have writers block with a tea kettle full of thoughts and nothing is taking true form. What a conundrum! As writers, is the ability to write/express be a luxury with the words and sounds we do not have yet?

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Every day, as a writer, I get up and get online and check out different things –blogs, news, email, etc…  I spend a good amount of time on the computer every day. On the days I’m lucky enough to actually write, it never fails that I visit each one of these five sites.

1) Dictionary.com

Along with this site comes thesaurus.com. A writer’s best friend. Whether I’m working on my novel, a short story, or an article, this site is invaluable to me. You’re all smart; no explanation needed, right?!

2) Webmonkey.com

This site is an HTML cheatsheet. Of course a writer wouldn’t need this for a story or novel, but every writer should have it bookmarked and use it. Why? Because every writer should have a blog. I’ve preached about platforms before, so I won’t prattle on here.
Blog owners need to know how to do links and font sizes and colors and such to make their posts more appealing to the reader’s eye. Webmonkey is only one of many sites that has a page of these cheats.

3) Flogging the Quill

This may be another one that you’re asking, ‘why?’ about. Well, it’s because Ray points out the obvious about the work people send in to him. And he’s nice about it. Other writers weigh in as well.
New posts are put up only three times a week, but blog readers visit daily. There is always something new to learn about editing, revising, and what readers want. This site helps teach us what works and what doesn’t in our own writing.

4) Twitter

Yup. That’s right. Twitter. Reason being, all of the people I follow are either writers/authors, agents, editors, or publishers. I get some great advice and tweet about what I’m up to and it lights a fire—gives me drive. Every time I used to get on Twitter, I ended up writing more than days I didn’t. So now, I visit the site daily. The “#” searches are great and I’ve solved many a problem just by chatting.

5. News site of your own choosing.

I have my own preference, but I don’t want this to get political. The news site is my homepage on my phone and I always visit it for a reality check. Get out of my own head for a bit. Writing is my world, but there is another world out there… Plus, one can gather many ideas from the news — art imitates life, right? Or is that the other way around?

Anyway, there you have it. Those are the sites I look at daily, and I think you should, as well. Are there others that you’d like to add to the list??

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Since winning her first writing competition at a young age, Eden Tyler, has only fallen more in love with the written word. She uses her English, Psychology, and Sociology backgrounds to create depth to her own stories and novels while contributing to and running websites about writing. This is what fulfills her, along with working as Co-Editor for Fuel Your Writing, but she also enjoys the freelance work that puts food on the table (and that ever-essential roof overhead) for her family.

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Rachelle Gardner, a top literary agent (as I’m sure you know) stated on her blog recently, “I almost wanted to announce that I’d no longer accept queries from anyone who doesn’t already have a good solid head start on a platform. (I won’t draw such a clear line in the sand, but consider yourself informed.)”

This quote leads perfectly into the second part of my ‘platform’ series. To expand on a promise from last week, a great way to get exposure is to guest blog on your favorite sites. As I already mentioned, just send your stuff in. Simple enough. Don’t be afraid of rejection. In this business, those (dreaded) things should eventually just roll off our shoulders. Why not practice that move now? Not a big deal; there’s always another avenue, another opportunity.

Here’s one specific opportunity for you—write a blog (or blogs) in your genre or area of expertise, and find a way to slip your name into it. Go even further and put your name in the title and a link to your home page in the article somewhere. Then submit it to Ezine Articles.
Lisa Barone, from last week’s blog, states that Ezine is a “great place to establish authority and build your personal brand, as it’s arguably the most cited article directory on the Web.” There you go!

There are a couple of other things you can do to build your platform, but I’ll leave those for you to discover. I’m going to move on to the next crucial part of all this. Alysson Fergison from DirJournal Marketing Articles helped out here.

So, you have all these sites and networks set up. How do you know that all of the information on them, or information written about them (i.e. you) is correct? You don’t want to do all this work just to have your good name tarnished, right? Well, there’s a way to keep track of it all. Just consider me, Eden Tyler, your solution ‘girl.’ (See how I did that—link and all?! Of course you’ll do a better job. You won’t be quite so conspicuous.)

The first, and easiest, way to track involves Google, not surprisingly. They seem to do it all, don’t they? (Heck, I even use their phone!) Google Alerts take only seconds to set up—I know because I just did it—and it notifies you via email on any topic about which you’d like to monitor. You can control the width and frequency of the search quite easily. I just typed in Eden Tyler (that one was better—plus I got the chance to plug my second blog), and it will search for any updates throughout the day, including any potential negative content.
Yahoo! offers the same service — Yahoo! Alerts. Simple to use and simple to remember.
Here’s one last one I found. If you are a Twitter user, search your name regularly using Twitter Search.
Cake. The only drawback is that none of these systems are very in-depth as to the information they are able to give.

That leads us to another way to monitor your online reputation. RSS feeds. There are many options for this, such as Technorati, Google News, and Yahoo! News. Like Google and Yahoo! Search, these sites allow you to receive feeds about any topic you’d like. The shortcoming here is that you have to log in every day and check the results yourself.

There is a site that is simpler, though. BlogPulse offers something called “Search the Blogosphere,” which allows you to subscribe and receive daily updates via RSS. Much easier. And with all the information I’ve given you, simple seems to be the best choice. At least that’s what I’m choosing. Because, heck, if we spend all our time on our brand/platform, when are we supposed to find time to write? Right?

I hope you found this helpful rather than confusing. I’m a bit loopy from all the information, but the point was for me to be the only one to end up that way. You all should have it a lot easier.

I’m wishing you luck in this and all endeavors! Most likely, I’ll have a new project for you soon…. (Eh.. Let’s hope not—this was work! I’ll try for fun next week.)

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Since winning her first writing competition at a young age, Eden Tyler, has only fallen more in love with the written word. She uses her English, Psychology, and Sociology backgrounds to create depth to her own stories and novels while contributing to and running websites about writing. This is what fulfills her, along with working as Co-Editor for Fuel Your Writing, but she also enjoys the freelance work that puts food on the table (and that ever-essential roof overhead) for her family.

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I’ve been rather concerned about my platform as of late. To be quite honest, I wasn’t aware until a couple weeks ago that I even needed one. I’m thankful I was already well on my way to creating one, though, or else I would have been overwhelmed by the insane amounts of information out there about platforms and brands.

A few days ago, I came across www.dirjournal.com while searching for an image on Google. (I needed a Twitter logo to put on my personal blog to announce I had finally joined.) Well, this site I found is rather interesting and informative — it’s called DirJournal Marketing Articles and is all about “Design Trends, Internet Marketing, SEO, [and] Social Media Marketing.” Thankfully, three authors on the site, including Lisa Barone, were kind enough to break it down in about four articles. In turn, I’m going to attempt to make it simple for you all, as well, so you can go about creating your platform or making it even bigger and better than it already is. Here’s hoping I can make it a little less overwhelming for you. I will start this week with Lisa’s article, and then next week, I’ll delve deeper. Initially, I was going to put all the information into one blog, but as I began writing, I quickly realized that this is a serial article. So stay tuned.

First thing’s first. What is a platform? And why do we, as writers, need a platform, or brand?
Well, put simply, it’s how you are represented on the internet, and you need one so that people know who you are. Most likely, no one is going to read books written by an author who hasn’t made what s/he is all about readily available. You want people to know you and your work. And you want to show yourself in the best light possible. It’s also important that the information you put out there is garnering a lot of attention.

So, if you don’t already have a blog or a home page, get one. That should be #1 on your list. I have a WordPress blog and I recently purchased the domain name edentylerwriter.com for only $14.97/yr. Rather affordable, I believe. And well worth the money because when others do a Google search for your name, it will be easier for them to find you this way. Be vain. It’s worth it.
Next step is to set up a Google profile. Every time I do a search for “Eden Tyler,” my Google Profile shows up at the bottom of the first page, without fail. On this profile, you are able to tell potential readers anything and everything you’d like them to know about yourself, and you can also set up links to all of the websites you are involved with, or own. Most of us most likely have one of these already, as even this site has a ‘following’ which you can join through the use of your own Google profile.
After you’ve accomplished the two most important things, you now should join as many social networking sites as you can. These include LinkedIn, Naymz, and Facebook, among others. Make sure you seem as professional as possible when using these sites and join up with others in your chosen career path. Network and learn. Of course you can have fun, too. Twitter is a little less formal and doesn’t have to be used just for writing contacts. Nor does Facebook. But sites such as LinkedIn are a lot more professional. In fact, Lisa set aside an entire section of her article just for LinkedIn. She feels it’s that important to have a profile on the site because it ranks rather highly during Google searches. I have not set up a profile on the site yet, but it’s my next order of business. I believe it’s one of the first two or three results that pop up when searching my name. Unfortunately, there is already a semi-famous Eden Tyler (a male, NYC-based director), so his information shows up rather than mine. This needs to be fixed. Pronto!

One last step, which I will explain in further detail next Friday, is to guest blog as often as the opportunity is made available to you. Don’t be afraid to ask site owners if they need any help. Send in examples of your work and see what the responses are. The worst that can happen is people say, “No.” But it could also be a nice and easy way to get your name out there. Acquire some followers. Usually, these aren’t paying gigs, but we’re not quite to that point yet. Baby steps.

Hope this helps you all arrive a little closer to your writing goals. See you next week for another installment.

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Since winning her first writing competition at a young age, Eden Tyler, has only fallen more in love with the written word. She uses her English, Psychology, and Sociology backgrounds to create depth to her own stories and novels while contributing to and running websites about writing. This is what fulfills her, along with working as Co-Editor for Fuel Your Writing, but she also enjoys the freelance work that puts food on the table (and that ever-essential roof overhead) for her family.

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So, last week we all set up our twitter accounts. I saw a few of you tweeting! Way to go guys! That makes me very happy!

Now, the question posed to me is, how do we make twitter work for us as writers?

Well, the thing is this… with social networking sites like twitter, facebook, etc. you only get out of them as much as you put in. If you aren’t actively following people, participating in twitter convos and checking your tweets daily, then you aren’t using twitter to its fullest potential.

The first thing you need to do is stop using the twitter webpage to manage your tweets. Instead, download a program to tweet with. I like twitterfox, but a lot of people swear by tweetdeck. I won’t go into the specifics of how to use these programs here, because there are loads and loads of websites out there dedicated to just that, so instead I will get to the point! (Wow, it’s just like my first draft, I spent half the article setting you up for the juicy part!)

You need people to follow, and there are some great people to follow out there. I started with this list: 25 Good People to Follow.

You now have a way to tweet, and fun people to follow. The only thing left is what you should be tweeting. Start out simple, ask questions to people about the writing process, ask them about query letters, agents will answer your tweets all the time, and they love to answer them via twitter because it gives them a chance to answer mundane things that people ask all the time, but to a large audience.

The other day I told an agent I felt a little guilty asking them up on twitter, their answer:

Now, this isn’t your free license to just annoy every agent/writer/publiser on twitter. Look at their tweets, find a common interest, and try to make a friend. It will be obvious if you are fake. But, if you are genuine, and you are really looking for people that share your love for writing, then twitter will work for you.

Take some time this week tweeting up people, and look through their twitter pages… see who THEY are talking to, and follow those people that are talking back and forth with them about writing. Ask the questions you were scared to ask, and listen listen listen. You will learn so much from these people 140 characters at a time!

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