Authors Can Hoot About Managing Their Social Media

By Annette Cole Mastron, Communications Director of Southern Writers Magazine

We all know how much time just Facebook takes to get the word out about your books and author events. Some days it feels like Alice falling down the rabbit hole when you try to manage your social media. 

There are multiple social media management tools to help an author manage social media promotion. One of them is Hootsuite. Choose the free option to see how it works for your needs. You can manage many different social media venues. With Hootsuite you can manage post updates, connect with your fan base, and review responses on more than thirty-five popular social networks, such as:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn (including Pages, Profiles, and Groups)
• Foursquare
• Facebook (including Events, Groups, Profiles, and Fan Pages)
• Google+
• WordPress blogs

It also connects you to several other platforms using third party apps. These include:

• Vimeo
• Via.me
• Instagram
• Evernote
• MailChimp
• Storify
• Edocr
• Slideshare
• Flickr
• Tumblr
• StumbleUpon
• Reddit
• Get Satisfaction, among others

You can even add more than one of the same network. You can manage multiple Twitter channels, or Facebook pages, post to multiple venues at the same time or schedule for future dates. Be aware of the types of followers you have on each social media site. Facebook may be different than your YouTube followers. Instagram is photo driven, and Twitter is #hashtag driven and limits post to 140 characters. Facebook allows longer posts with photos and videos. A word of caution: if a post is too lengthy on Facebook people, may not wade through the post. 

Hootsuite can be valuable to promoting you as an author. Penguin Random House has an excellent article on how Hootsuite can be of benefit to cut your time to manage your social media. It includes a quick YouTube to walk you through HootSuite.  

Hoot out if you use Hootsuite or give it a try let us know what you think. 

Delighted by Deadlines

By Elizabeth S. Craig

  

I live by deadlines.  I’ve noticed that most writers have a love-hate relationship with deadlines. 

Actually, most everyone lives with deadlines, although they may not think of them that way.  Deadlines to buy a present for an anniversary?  Christmas?  Life itself comes with a deadline.

I started getting serious about personal deadlines about twelve years ago.   I had a scamp of a preschooler at the time--the kind of kid you affix deadbolts on your doors for and hide your keys from.  I had a baby who was just getting into the Cheerio stage.

I decided to set a deadline for myself.  I wanted to write a book by the end of the year. 

I was busy.  But when are we not busy?  It's just that the busyness changes from sleep loss and diaper changing to carpools and soccer games to college visits to work demands to travel-packed retirements. 

I decided there would never be that fictional cabin in the mountains with the scenic view and the complete and utter lack of a daily agenda. 

I've used deadlines three important ways in my life:

1) The first way I've used deadlines is to get work done.  Writers talk a lot about goals.  We have project goals and word count goals. Goals are these sorts of nebulous things.  They are vague and forgiving.  Goals are shockingly similar to wishes...I want to lose ten pounds or exercise three days a week.  I want to learn Spanish.  I want to win the lottery.  There's an air of unreality to them.  They're not solid.

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Deadlines break goals into manageable bits.  My goal was: I want to write a book.  My deadlines were:  Each day, I'll write a page. 

2) The second way I've used deadlines is to maintain focus.  At first, distractions were easy to avoid...the ringing phone didn't have to be answered...there was an answering machine for that. 

Then the distractions became sneakier...the internet. Email.  Twitter.  And the biggest, baddest time suck of them all….Facebook. 

With deadlines, however, I knew I had work to accomplish first.  This stubborn determination motivated me to get up earlier and earlier.  Until finally I settled on the hour between four and five a.m.  There aren’t many distractions then, I’ve found.  

3) The third way I've used deadlines is to brainstorm long-term planning.

Most of us have ideas for ways we'd like to enjoy our future: travel more, further our education, or develop a hobby or interest. I found the only way to make plans come to pass was by breaking them down into bits, and setting deadlines for each of them. 

  

Being a writer means that I'm easily distracted by bright shiny objects.  It means a daily fight to maintain focus and stay on task. Deadlines, and the three ways I've taken to using them, have proven my best tool for doing so.

  

Deadlines may have a bad rap, but they’re actually tools to help us succeed, focus, and grow. 

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Elizabeth writes the Southern Quilting mysteries; her books in this series are Quilt or Innocence, Knot What it Seams, Quilt Trip, Shear Trouble, Tying the Knot and Memphis Barbeque mysteries; her books in this series are Delicious and Suspicious, Finger Lickin’ Dead, Hickory Smoked Homicide and Rubbed Out for Penguin Random House and the Myrtle Clover series for Midnight Ink and independently; Her books include Pretty is as Pretty Dies, Progressive Dinner Deadly, Dyeing Shame, A Body in the Backyard, Death at a Drop-In, A Body at Book Club, Death Pays a Visit, and Body at Bunco. She blogs at ElizabethSpannCraig.com/blog , named as one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers.  She curates links on Twitter as @elizabethscraig that are later shared in the free search engine WritersKB.com. Elizabeth makes her home in Matthews, North Carolina, with her husband and two teenage children. 

Nancy Drew Made Me Do It!

By Laura Childs

I think it was all those nights as a kid, huddled beneath a blanket, reading Nancy Drew Mysteries that made me yearn to become a mystery writer. Those were pretty heady adventures for a 12 year-old, and the first time I’d ever encountered girls a little older than myself who drove spiffy cars and dashed about solving mysteries at the Inn of the Twisted Candles or Red Gate Farm.

But somewhere along the line, Nancy got kicked to the curb.  Because I ended up at an advertising agency as a broadcast writer/producer.  That taste of fun and fame ignited my burning desire to start my own agency and I jumped feet first into a great career that led to working with Fortune 500 companies and garnering national awards.  But I never forgot old Nancy Drew.  In fact, I started haunting used bookshops and collecting all the old volumes.

Finally, I got up the guts to follow my dream. Evenings and weekends, I pounded away at my manuscripts. When I finally sold my first book, I celebrated by selling my ad agency and never looking back. Now, a decade later, I write 4 different series – 3 cozy mystery series and a soon-to-be-released thriller series.

What’s sort of funny is that my current mysteries, which I call thrillzies (cozy mysteries written with a thriller’s pace), are not unlike Nancy Drew books. They all feature strong, female protagonists who either find themselves in a terrific amount of hot water or are compelled to solve a murder mystery in order to bring about justice. 

In fact, in MING TEA MURDER, my newest Tea Shop Mystery, tea maven Theodosia Browning vows to track down the killer of a wealthy socialite who’s murdered during a museum gala. And, as blame falls on Theo’s PR director boyfriend, she is forced to delve deep into old Charleston society to find her answers – investigating a scorned mistress, angry business partner, and shady antique dealer. It’s a story that’s gripping, realistic, and a lot of fun. I think Nancy would have loved to jump right in!

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Laura Childs is the author of the Scrapbook Mysteries set in New Orleans, LA, the Tea Shop Mysteries set in Charleston, SC, and the Cackleberry Club Mysteries.  Her books have been continually named to the New York Times Bestseller List and have been featured selections in the Literary Guild’s Mystery Book Club.  She is a former Cleo Award-winning advertising writer and CEO of Mission Critical Marketing. She is currently co-executive producer of two reality television shows. Her website is www.laurachilds.com Laura Childs’ newest Ming Tea Murder releases tomorrow by Penguin Random House.