Even
before the day of the course she was gracious enough to answer my questions
regarding facebook and to send me a link to www.canva.com so I could design
pictures with captions (see opposite). However I still managed to tweet my
picture without the caption, but I'm learning and thanks to Anita I'm getting
better.
After
introductions, welcome beverages and melt-in-mouth pastries, we began with
twitter and tweetdeck. The latter organises your twitter feed into different
columns, i.e. if you are a Poldark fan you could set up a column for #Poldark.
This would feed all the tweets with that hashtag to that column so you don't
have to do a specific search, after all us writers are busy people and we need
our distractions in plain sight.
You can
also set up your Twitter Lists as a column and have the twitter accounts who
tweet about history in one column, and those about writing in another.
Tweetdeck
also allows you to schedule tweets to be sent when you are
not online, so as to reach your overseas followers or at intervals throughout
the day.
Next we
looked at facebook and the different privacy and notification settings and how
they work. How to create Facebook paid ads which can incorporate a 'Buy Now
Button', useful for after publication.
We broke
for lunch to a great choice of cooked food and salad. Plus cakes, lots of cakes.
Our
afternoon started with blogging. How to add a Twitter Button or better yet a
Twitter Feed and Facebook widget.
Next was best practice for inviting Guests to post:- Give clear instructions on type of post, date, when to send by, what to include - profile, photo, bio, book cover blurb, where to buy and social media links. Give them a structure to follow so it is easier to transfer to your blog without needing extensive editing. Promote the post.
Finally we discussed author brand. For me, Regency, Romance, History, England,Writing. And how important it is to keep to the themes of your brand. So your visitors know what to expect from you and your posts.
But the most important thing we learned is to take lots of photos. I only took one but it's of cakes, lots of cakes. (See above - I had the cream slice.)
So is a
Social Media Course worth doing? Simple answer, yes. I learned things I didn't
even know I needed to learn. I have a better focus on what to post, gained the skills
to organise my different social media platforms and I got to meet lots of other
lovely writers.
Oh and did
I mention the cakes?
