Setting Up a Cross Platform in Social Media

Social media isn’t just about Facebook. In fact, there are many social media networks, each catering to a specific group of people by age or special interest.  To be successful in social media as a writer, you have to post on several different platforms and then link them together in your own social media network. Doing so brings followers from one platform, like Facebook, to another.

The main social media platforms are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, YouTube. The last one is mostly for posting videos, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t use your smartphone to post a video of you in action once in a while.

So what exactly is a cross platform? To be successful in social media, you have to spread the word about yourself and your work to other networks. But it shouldn’t end there. Once you’ve begun regularly posting on the other networks, it’s time to link them together by sharing posts. Each time you share a post, another group of people see it. And so do their friends. If each person shares your post with just one other person and that person shares your post with one other person, your message will reach lots of people.

Facebook
So where do you begin? Once you’ve established yourself on Facebook—use it as your base of social media operations—you can venture forth to other social media networks. You might choose Twitter next. People on Twitter read their feeds almost as much as those on Facebook. Here, your posts will be shorter—even though Twitter recently increased the number of characters for each post from 140 to 280. Just because the network allows you to write longer posts doesn’t mean you should. Twitter readers are in the habit of reading short blasts, and they probably won’t change their habit for a while.

Twitter
Write a post on Twitter that’s related to the one you posted on Facebook. But don’t stop there. Be sure to add an image to your post. This can be hard if you’re posting about writing, but if you post about the subject you write about, it should be easier. You can also set it up so that you can automatically share your Facebook posts on Twitter. However, you cannot do the reverse.

Instagram
Now that you’re posting on the two primary networks, it’s time to check out some of the secondary ones. While users of Instagram will probably disagree, this network is a hard one to break into for writers because it definitely relies on image posts. In fact, you begin with an image and then add a caption to it. Also, you must have a smartphone to post on Instagram. While you can access Instagram on your computer, you cannot post from it.

Google+
Another secondary network is Google+. Its posts work much like Facebook, but its user base isn’t as large. In Google+ you can either post only text or text with an image. You used to be able to directly share your Google+ posts with Facebook, but now you have to physically post on Facebook, linking to your Google+ account. It’s a little more time consuming, but it works.  If you have images to share, you may want to set up a Google+ Collection. This is an image-based division of Google+ in which all your posts focus on one subject. Within it, you’ll find lots of photographers, antiques collectors, and such who post images related to their subject. Like Instagram, the image is the main thing, accompanied by perhaps a paragraph of text. You used to be able to share your Google+ posts directly to Facebook, but now you have to physically copy it and create a separate post on Facebook using the same text. Of course, you can still directly link to your Google+ account in your Facebook post.

Creating a Cross Platform
You should begin cross linking your posts as soon as you have one other social media network besides Facebook to which you’re posting. Try linking your Facebook posts to Twitter. Then slowly add another network, again linking the posts on it to Facebook and vice versa. As you add more networks, you can continue doing the same thing.

Let’s look at an example of how this works.  Let’s say you specialize in writing about antiques. You can do posts about the history of objects, their uses, historical anecdotes about them, their status with collectors, even the status of the current market. The list goes on and on. So you might begin by introducing the object on Facebook and mention how well it’s doing in the current market. Then you could do a post on Twitter that links back to your post on Facebook. If you’re on Instagram, you can post an image of the antique object and note a quirky anecdote about it in the caption. Finally, you could post an image of the object on Google+ and write a short paragraph about its history or how it originated. Naturally, you’ll want to repost a sentence on Twitter that includes a link to your Google+ post. You can then link your Twitter post to Facebook, putting you right back to your network base, but now with a different angle than your first post.

By building a cross platform, you’ll soon increase the number of your viewers across the board. But you must be patient. Social media doesn’t work overnight. It can take several months for your posts to get noticed. In the meantime, read, share, and comment on  other people’s posts in your social media accounts.

Learn more about me on my Web site, Writing at Its Best, and on my Facebook Page.

Developing a Voice of Authority

Why is some writing believable and other writing isn’t? What makes the reader believe in some pieces and know that the material is made up in others? The answer to both questions is voice of authority, that sense the reader gets when reading that the writer really knows what he or she is talking about.

Most writers don’t even think of this when writing. A voice of authority enables the writer to create a depth to a piece of writing in non-fiction and to characters in fiction. This comes from research. To write with depth takes lots of research. The more research you do, the better you’ll be able to draw your reader into your article or story.

The effect of a good voice of authority makes the writer seem like an expert in the subject. What captures readers is a sense that the voice of the writer has authority.

So how do you become an authority on a subject without years of study? There are several ways you can become an authority on the subject. Obviously, you can prove you’re an authority if you’ve already amassed this knowledge through earning an undergraduate or graduate degree, or if you’re a professional writing about a subject in your field. But you can also rely on experts through interviews and research. Lastly, your own personal experiences might give you all the authority you need about a particular subject. After all, the cardinal rule in writing is to write what you know.

But knowing your subject well isn’t the only secret. To truly draw your reader in, you need to write using active voice. That means you’ll have to forget what you learned in school because there you learned to write in the academic style where writers hide in the shadows and have to credit their sources.

Writing in the active voice is in-your-face writing. In it the subject of your sentences controls the action through active verbs that offer precise images to the reader. Combine that with knowledge and you’ve got a winner. Using adjectives that describe scenes and people precisely also helps to improve the authority of your voice. Authority not only involves what you know but your values and your vision. In some cases, this may involve your personal beliefs.

What person you choose to use to write your story also affects your voice of authority. If you write in the third person, the reader views it as a report on what’s happening. If you write in the second person, the reader becomes personally involved—like in this blog. And if you write in the first person, whether your story is true or not, the reader believes every word because it’s coming straight from the horse’s (your) mouth.

But even if you choose to write in the third person, you can still demonstrate your authority on the subject by the details you choose to include. Using lots of details make it seem to the reader that you really know your subject, even if it’s the one and only piece you’ve written on it.

In creating convincing fictional characters, many writers research the lives of real people to gain insight into how they think and communicate about their chosen lifestyle and locality. This isn’t any different than method film actors who take the time to follow along with a real person who’s in the same occupation and lives in the same region as the character they’ll be playing on the screen. That’s what makes their performance so believable. That’s what draws viewers into a film and makes them empathize with the character.

Narrative authority signifies believability. It’s a series of deliberate yet subtle cues that you’ll use to convince the reader that what he or she sees on the page amounts to a genuine human experience. In order for this to work, the reader must accept that the you, as the article writer or storyteller, are the best person to deliver the information. Ultimately, authority convinces readers to take a leap of faith. It instills trust and makes the reader believe that the illusion of the story in fiction is as real as anything else. In non-fiction, especially historical writing, it propels the reader back to another time and place.

However, you must not use tricks and gimmicks to work authority into your writing. You’ve got to be honest with your reader and show that you truly know your subject. That’s the only way it will work.