How to stay active online while having time for your books.

Staying active between writing and your social media can be extremely stressful, especially if you are a mother like me or working full time and writing, and this is just the thing you do in your spare time for extra money or time to yourself. 

It has been extremely difficult for me to be able to keep up with social media and my books. But I’m going to let you in on my secret on how I manage to update my Twitter six times a day, upload three blog posts a month, make numerous Instagram posts and stories a day, and my weekly YouTube videos while still having enough time for my daughter, housework and writing/ editing my books. 

The first thing to remember is we all have the same 24 hours in a day, and I just make sure that I use mine wisely with the limited time in that 24 hours I get.

Every month I make a note on my phone which outlines everything I have to do in the month. Appointments, what post is going up when on my different Instagrams, every YouTube video I have to film, edit and upload, and every single Twitter post. 

To do this, I put it into sections. The first section is YouTube with the date that it has to be uploaded by and the video title. 

The next section is Twitter. I put every single date of the month in and then under it I write my Twitter posts out for the month. I then write what I’m going to post on my writer's Instagram and on which days and then my main Instagram and the posts I post on my Facebook pages which there are four a month. 

Once everything is planned out, I go on to Twitter online, not the app. the one downfall with Twitter is you cannot schedule tweets on the app. You can only do it on the website. 

I then copy and paste every single post I’m going to make for the month onto Twitter and schedule it for the day I have planned, and just select a random time for each one. 

 I will occasionally have something like a retweet planned or something like an update about my day for them what I do as I go into my phone calendar and put it in for what time I want to do it and then every night before going to bed, I check my calendar and if I have a retweet or an update about my day I then put it in the back my mind to remember to do it the next day which takes a lot of work out if I only have to do it say five times a month.  Every night I also reply to the tweets that I get through the day. I also like every single comment, even if it’s very time-consuming, but that’s okay because my daughter takes an hour to get to sleep on me, so that’s my time to reply to comments and all that kind of stuff across my social media. 

Throughout the month, once I have the plan, I take all the photos from my Instagram, and then I use the Facebook suite app because my Instagrams are linked to Facebook pages.  I schedule all my posts that way, including what I’m going to be posting on the Facebook pages themselves.  You can schedule stories, but I don’t. I just do three stories a day on my main Instagram. I like to get them out in the mornings so that I don’t have to worry about them for the rest of the day. They are just part of my life; if I go for a walk, I take a photo, dishes, I take a picture, I just take whatever I’m doing, and I don’t really care too much, but I have noticed that stories have improved my engagement. 

Now that’s all done and scheduled, I don’t have to worry about posting anything other than whatever I need to on the day for stories, TikTok's, which are pre-filmed, and then the occasional Twitter post. So for the rest of the month, I just write and edit my book each day.  I don’t put pressure on myself if I can’t get it done. I don’t push myself, but I make sure to write my blog posts first because it is the most important part, and then I can focus on the rest. 

I do a week of writing and a week of editing to keep it separate, and each week is working on a different book until it’s finished, so at the moment, I am editing my endometriosis story and writing one of my love stories. 

It can be hard work, but most months have 30 or 31 days except for February.  But having only 30 to 31 days to get everything done is really easy, and I can get everything done in 15 days. I only spend maybe 10 minutes on it each day, so the rest of the time, I have plenty of time for writing or whatever I need to do when my child is allowing me to while still enjoying time with my child and getting all the housework that needs to be done and me most crucial time you can’t neglect yourself in this if you are then you need to take a stand back from social media because it can ruin your life if you let it. 

I hope you enjoy this blog post. Let me know how you keep up with all your responsibilities and comments, so other people for who my method might not work have different ideas. In the writing community, we value our work, but it can be time-consuming. 

I hope you have a wonderful day, and I’ll see you next month for a fantastic blog post. 

Building an author platform

Having a platform as a writer makes writing not only easier to keep in touch with your readers but promoting any work you are doing as well; getting the word out there about your book no matter if you are an self published author or been published by a big name company.
 
You see authors like Stephen king, J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer still using twitter to promote and keep up to date on there readers and with the writing world always changing it can be hard to stay up to date on it and not fall behind.
 
Some of my biggest tips are as followed to help you build your author platform to the best of your ability and remember to always use resources available to you. 
 

1. )  Know your target audience.

 
This goes without saying but if you don’t know who your readers are you cant efficiently interact with them. If your target audience is teens then you will need to use social media platforms to reach them like Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube but if your target audience is say middle aged men and woman then you should look into twitter and Facebook etc.
 

2. ) Connect offline {if you can}

 
With the pandemic this one can be harder to accomplish but I do know some conventions are still on so its just a matter of research on your part to see what you can get involved with.  In person writing groups can be an amazing way to meet other writers in your area and make life long friendships and contacts that can help spread the word about you. Conventions are also another way to stay active in the community.
 

3. ) Consistency

 
It is very easy to get lost now on social media if you are not consistent. What ever platform you decide to work with as an author platform you need to really stick to a schedule so your readers know when to check for your posts as well as not missing a day if you can. If you choose a platform like twitter you should be writing tweets daily and not just one but many. I personally try for at least five posts spread out through my day to reach people in different time zones.
 

4. ) Get out there

 
If you run a blog as a way to reach your audience think about writing guest posts on other writing related blogs. Reach out to fellow writers and both of you can write a blog post and upload it to your blogs so that you are using your readers to spread the word and love to other writers.
 
Doing interviews or going on someones podcast is also a good way to get out there and bring in new readers.
 

5. ) Contacts

 
Everyone you know is a contact. By talking to friends and family sometimes even neighbors or people you meet you can boost word of mouth and not only get them to read your work but they are more likely to spread the word to there friends and people they know which immediately boosts how many people know about you.
 
I had a three hour layover back in 2019 and got to talking to a mother and daughter and found out that the genre I actually write in is the genre the daughter likes to read and it all started because I was working on my book while waiting and my mum got talking and told this ladies mother about my work which just goes to show how far words can go.
 

6. ) Twitter

 
While Twitter can be hard to stay connected to the younger audience it is a valuable resource for writers to meet other writers. There are so many hashtags on Twitter that writers are active in daily and following that it is quite handy to use to make more contacts and friends as well as get help when you are stuck with writing itself.