The Writer’s Platform-Building Campaign Begins!

For the first time ever, I’m joining an online challenge/group/activity. Thing. The Third Writer’s Platform-Building Campaign:

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The Most Influential Tweeters

If you Tweet, you might be interested in recent research from the laboratory of Alok Choudhary at Northwestern University, where grad student Ramanathan Narayanan and colleagues created a website that "uses a specialized algorithm to rank the most influential people tweeting on trending topics".

The result? While celebrities like Britney Spears and Lady Gaga gather huge numbers of Twitter followers, people are paying more attention to tweets from those with greater knowledge.

The website, http://pulseofthetweeters.com/, is an interesting resource for those of us trying to figure out what’s going on in the Twitterverse. Although I haven’t quite figured out how to apply it to what I tweet…which has nothing to do with Britney Spears, Desperate Housewives, or #welcometoChicago :P.

:) Cheryl

* Photo courtesy of Giles Gunthier, Flickr Commons

Building a Platform a la Christina Katz

I finally got around to reading Christina Katz’s latest offering, Get Known Before the Book Deal: Use Your Personal Strengths To Grow An Author Platform…and yep, it’s just as good as her last book, which I discuss here.

It answers some of my long-standing questions about platform, such as:

1. What the heck is platform, exactly? In practical terms.
2. What does platform mean for a fiction writer—and is it still important?
3. If I write for kids, does it make sense to build a platform that’s read primarily by other adults? And not just adults—adult writers.

For the answers, you have to read the book for yourself.

Although much of this book is targeted for writers of nonfiction, this book is also a great resource for the fiction writer. It discusses how to identify your niche as a writer; how to identify your audience; and, most important, how to get yourself in gear and start building a platform that works for you.

This is the kind of book to buy and put on your shelf for reference. Full of practical advice and questions (yes, you have to do some work to get the most out of this book), Get Known takes you from platform novice to platform savvy in a fun, fast-paced read.

:) Cheryl