The road to becoming a successful author or writer is not paved with gold. Apart from becoming a master of vocabulary and having insightful ideas, a post by author Ajay Gupta on Medium notes that successful authors should produce original content that’s crafted by their own sentences and words. However, authors should recognize that writing is only 50 percent of the work involved in their career — the other 50 percent requires them to devote their time into marketing and promoting their work.
If you’re a writer who wants to find success down the line, we’ve listed some of the different ways you can promote your work and career.
Build a blog
Making yourself discoverable on the internet is one of the best ways to gain an audience and reach potential publishers. With a blog, you can showcase and highlight your writing skills while still being able to freely write whatever you want. This allows you to break away from your niche and expand your following. In addition, a blog also allows you to collect useful and insightful criticism, as well as create discourse about your work. If you want your blog to gain exposure, you should look into search engine optimization (SEO) to help you rank in search engines. By simply adding targeted keywords and modifying your content, you can make your blog rank higher on search engines and appeal to searcher intent.
Make a Convincing Bio
As an author, you have to know how to sell yourself by highlighting your achievements and career. In our post ‘Exciting Tips on How to Write an Author Bio with No Experience’, we discuss how a good bio can help you tell your audience who you are, as well as increase interest in your works. Moreover, a bio can also establish you as an authority in your niche or field. When writing your bio, always remember to write in the third person, mention your credentials and achievements, add your previous books, and keep it as short and concise as possible.
Be Active on Social Media
Social media has definitely made it easier for freelancers and independent writers to reach a wider audience. According to a write-up on LHH about building an online brand, the democratization of digital resources allows anyone to create an authentic and discoverable career story. Because of this, you should aim to make your presence known on social media.
While it might require you to invest a lot of your time and effort, your writing career will flourish once you build a loyal following and firmly establish your authority on the top social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. If you want to network with publishers, editors, and like-minded authors, you can log into LinkedIn, which is a social media platform that’s targeted at professionals. You can post a variety of content on social media to market yourself as an author, whether it’s long-form write-ups about societal issues or short tweets that allow you to publish your opinions, if done effectively, it will help grow your audience.
To become a successful author and writer, you should invest your time and energy into marketing your works and your career. Be sure to follow the tips we’ve listed above if you’re struggling to launch your writing career, as it could give you the nudge in the right direction you’ve been needing.