Platform 102 - Tools of the Trade by Nathan Lowell

Continuing the discussion on platform, it seems like there are a lot of people working hard and spinning wheels. The goal of platform building is creating a relationship with your audience -- one based on credibility and trust. They have to believe that you know what you're talking about, and they have to trust you not to waste their time. Content is good, but if you lack credibility or if your audience doesn't trust you, it's pointless. In this piece, I want to share the lessons I've learned about some of the tools of the trade.

In the social media toolbox, there are some tools that can help you be more effective, some that can help you be more efficient, and some that can hurt you if you use them. Let's take them in order.

Effectiveness

Effectiveness is a measure of how well you do. As writers we know how subtle things like word choice can make a huge difference in a piece. In building your platform, you need to be effective at getting your message out, at collecting the responses back, and responding in a timely manner. To put it in merchant terms, you need an attractive store front, appealing goods, and a winning manner. Most of this is up to you, but there are some tools that you can use to help.

Blogging is one of the most effective -- and probably most mis-understood -- tools going. I've been honing my blogging skills for a decade now and I have some odd ideas about blogging as a result of doing it for so long.

First, write when you have something to say. I know the gurus want you to "write regularly" but that's so disrespectful of your readers. You write regularly to suck more of them in and you want to entice them to keep coming back, even when they don't need to. It's bait. It might be pretty bait, even useful bait, but it's still bait. My experience is that it probably won't hurt you, but it's a practice based on old school marketing, not new media platform building.

Second, use a good platform with your own address. I highly recommend that a writer rent hosting space on bluehost.com, register their own domain, and start with a professional grade web presence from the beginning. Most people are on a shoestring -- if not dental floss -- budget, but spending $175 for two years' worth of domain hosting may be the most effective money you can spend. In physical terms, it's the difference between "Rodeo Drive" and "Unit C, Spring Hill Mall." There's nothing wrong with Spring Hill Mall, but when you're trying to differentiate yourself from the herd, the same rules of merchandising apply on the web -- location, location, location. You can get by with less by registering a domain and using that to point to a wordpress.com or blogspot.com space, but you sacrifice control of the space. When starting out, control doesn't seem important, but when things start heating up, it becomes vital. When you've got the customers flocking to your store, that's not the time to be moving to a new location. Color that piece of advice with the voice of bitter experience.

After blogs, the next most effective tool is Twitter. There is nothing that builds a relationship faster than a conversation with somebody. The main Twitter interface is not very efficient, and I have a suggestion down the page a bit, but Twitter is my main squeeze when it comes to finding fans. It's where my fans hang out. It's where they talk with each other. More, there's an important aspect of communication called "social presence." That's actually a technical term coined by some British Telecom researchers in the 70s, but the way it applies on the web is important. Social presence is how people perceive whether or not you're "there." It applies in all aspects of human interaction. Wall flowers at the dance have low social presence. The drunk with the lampshade on his head has high social presence. There are lessons to be learned from each. The key lesson for now is that immediacy builds social presence. If you talk and I answer right away, that's immediacy. It also refers to the language I use and some other stuff, but the application to Twitter has to do with speed. Speed enhances immediacy, immediacy enhances social presence, social presence fosters relationships. You can't have a relationship with somebody who isn't there.

And platform -- all social media really -- is about relationships.

Efficiency

For me, developing the platform is part and parcel of writing. It's as important and integral to the process as spell checking. I want to give my readers as rich an experience as I can. I want to tell them the whole story, not just the little bits that fill in the paragraphs that go on a page, but there are only so many hours in the day. Managing my social platform needs to be as easy as running a spell check so I have time to actually write the little bits that fill in the paragraphs.

Again, blogs and comments are quite efficient. A blog is a handy place to collect and collate. The software is flexible and is very efficient at knitting the web together with pings and trackbacks which put your post on another blog's radar. It works wonderfully, but it's not enough.

One thing you want to do is keep track of conversations about you. While you can do a periodic vanity search on Google by hand, use Google alerts to find where people are talking about you on the web. Make a separate one for your name, your title, and your name and your title. (That reminds me, I need to add a couple for my latest title.) When Google finds a mention, they'll email you. Frequently the mention will be a blog or other social platform. Follow the link and thank the writer. Look around. If it's an interesting place, add it to your feed reader.

You do have a feed reader, right? That's the one place where you go to find *all* your web sources. I use Google reader and have folders for the various kinds of sources. Since I'm also a teacher, I have folders for that, but I subscribe to writers, publishers, pundits, agencies, and critics. Most writers have limited utility because, for me, they lack credibility and trust. Over time, if all they post is more bait, I drop them from the list. (See my earlier post - I am not your platform.) I don't always read everything, but my reader lets me scan titles quickly, sample where I find things of interest, and delve deeper where I find something important -- and do it efficiently. I'm subscribed to about 400 feeds at the moment and sort through a thousand posts a day in a kind of info-flood triage that takes about five minutes to cull out the most interesting ten. That's a very efficient tool for a critical and often time consuming task.

In addition to keeping track of the conversations on the web, Twitter can be a massive, time-sucking hole. Many people address that by following the marketing pundits' advice for building traffic instead of actually using Twitter to build a fan base. In part that's because it's much easier to broadcast than have a conversation and it's faster to count things than evaluate relationships. Tweetdeck lets you manage the process more efficiently. With columns for friends, mentions, direct messages, and as many searches and hashtags as you want, this is a very effective way to keep track of the often confusing flows of conversation and keeps you out of more dangerous practices.

Here Thar Be Dragons

What's the old axiom? With great power comes great responsibility? The tools are powerful. It's important to use them responsibly -- or at least to understand what you're doing when you use them. Social media is about relationships and raw counts don't tell you about the quality of those relationships. You can have great social presence by dancing with the lampshade on your head, but that might not be the exact relationship you want to put out there as you're courting your fans. So, the problem tools ...

HootSuite is one of the tools favored by social media marketers. It's actually not a bad tool. I've used it myself on occasion. The key selling point is that you can schedule tweets for maximum coverage. Robo-tweeting is not a good way to build a relationship. Remember that the purpose of platform is to create a network of fans, people who love your work and are willing to help you promote it. They want to participate with you in your success. If you're not there because you're robo-tweeting? You're sending a message that your relationship with these people -- the ones who buy your books and spread your fame -- is not important. Do this at your peril.

It seems like a good idea. I know well-meaning people who believe what the marketing people are telling them. Tweet a little, not too much. Tweet regularly. Provide links to quality content. Throw enough against the wall and something might stick. For marketing, these are ok ideas. They're rooted in old models of broadcast promotion. They do not work very well in social media. Oh, sure, you may be able to build up thousands of followers, but your goal is to build a platform -- that is, have a relationship with people who will influence other people -- not to put notches in your belt.

Blogs are not only the most useful tool in your tool box, they're also the most dangerous. They're easy to use. You can post regularly. You can even write stuff in advance and make sure you post every day -- even when you're on vacation. From a social media standpoint, I believe the key is to stop thinking about them as broadcast media and consider them conversations in slow motion. I use a blog as archive for extra content, as connection point to my other works, and as a concentrator for my messages. I also use it to talk to my fans. I've got a recent post that has over 100 comments collected over a few days. I get about 1000 visitors a day to a blog that I update irregularly and infrequently. As a writer, I believe it's important to talk with my readers, not just to them, and that means writing when I have something to say -- not on a regular schedule of renewing the bait.

Summary

Platform is about relationships. Writers are often given advice based on old-school advertising ideas and get caught up in counting coup instead of building trust. The goal is not 10,000 people who know of you, but ten who will sing your praises to the world. I've shared what I believe works using the easiest tools, and offered my experience with using them. This stuff worked for me. The nature of creative endeavor is that we each need to find our own path. My hope is that by offering this insight, we can get on with the process of developing our relationships.

Or at least get out from under the lampshade.

Obligatory disclaimer: I have no financial relationship with bluehost.com. Many people find dreamhost.com to be very good as well. I use bluehost and can endorse them without reservation, so I recommend them to others. I don't use dreamhost, so I can't. Check 'em both out if you want.