Start Building Your Platform

If you’ve been to a writer’s conference, met with an editor or agent, or submitted a manuscript for publication, you’ve likely been told you need a platform if you want to be published.

The problem is it can become a chicken or the egg situation. How do you get published without a platform? How do you establish a platform without anything published?

The easiest solution is to start with a blog, but what do you blog about? The answer might surprise you.

Many newbie writers assume you need to blog about the book you want to write, but while that seems logical, you need to understand blogging is no longer about pouring out your thoughts into the webiverse. Instead, blogging is writing with the intention to draw an audience. You want to write blog posts that will attract the kinds of people who would be interested in the books you want to write. Fortunately, this isn’t etched in stone and can evolve as your writing evolves.

I started blogging in 2013.

At the time, my husband and I were indie filmmakers making low-budget faith-based films. Media outlets were interviewing and promoting the big time filmmakers and their movies, but no one was interested in the indie filmmakers. So I decided to create a blog which would draw attention to other filmmakers like us, and thus help promote our own movies. It worked.

I reached out to people I knew in the industry, starting with our own actors and crew members, and I did blog interviews with them. I also reviewed Christian movies and wrote about events of interest to those in the faith-based film world.

Within a year, I had publicists reaching out to me to interview their film clients and distributors asking me to review their movies. Not only did my Faith Flix blog help draw attention to our movies, it added a legitimacy to them because I became recognized as a film expert.

In 2018, we released our last movie, and once the run was completed, I was ready to move on. I wanted to write books, so I began interviewing authors and reviewing books.

Two years later, I was ready for something different.

I launched a podcast, “All God’s Women,” about women in the Bible. Since my episodes were scripted, I turned the scripts into blog posts and embedded the podcast episodes in with the blog posts. I got rid of the Faith Flix name and switched over to All God’s Women. I wasn’t sure how my readers would react, but they loved it. Even the men read my posts and listened to my podcast episodes on Bible women.

I expanded “All God’s Women” to become a weekly syndicated radio show. When Moody picked it up, I went daily.

By the time I submitted my Women of Prayer manuscript to Elk Lake Publishing, I had a platform of women (and men) who were interested in learning more about the prayers of women in the Bible.

So how can you build a platform that will attract potential buyers of your future books?

1. Blog. Determine a career theme for what you want to write and figure out what type of blog works best with that. If you’re writing nonfiction, naturally zoom in on the theme of your book(s). If you want to write Bible studies, start off with simple Bible study blog posts. If you want to write about prayer, blog about the different aspects of prayer. If you want to write children’s books, perhaps blog about parenting tips or homeschooling or write reviews of other children’s books. For fiction writers, do book reviews. Historical fiction authors can blog about interesting historical facts you learn while doing research. Whatever you do, make sure it’s of interest to others and not just yourself.

2. Facebook. Every author should have a Facebook author page. Even if you’ve never published anything, you can still have a Facebook author page. You can keep your followers updated on your writing journey. You can share posts from other authors. Or you can share interesting memes. Just ensure everything goes along with the author persona you’re trying to create. If you’re writing nonfiction, you can also create a Facebook group related to your book theme.

3. Pinterest. Pinterest is a search engine tool with a long-lasting reach. Pin life can be months or even years. It’s a most effective way to attract readers and draw them to your website. For each blog post, create 3–5 pins and pin them to appropriate boards. Then search Pinterest and repin pins related to your topics. Take advantage of your down times to mindlessly pin and see the impact it can have.

4. Instagram. If you enjoy Instagram, certainly use it to promote yourself and your books. Personally, I have yet to figure it out, but I know plenty of authors are doing great with it. Bookstagram is big if you’re doing book reviews.

5. Podcasts. Creating a podcast is a great way to promote yourself and your books, but even if you don’t want to do your own podcast, you can still be a guest on other podcasts. Once you start your blog and figure out your personal talking points, you can reach out to podcasters who are a good fit and ask if they might consider you as a guest. When you do podcast interviews, be sure to include the links on your website and promote the interviews on your social media.

Perhaps the biggest thing to keep in mind when building a platform is it works best in collaboration rather than competition.

By networking with others, you not only make valuable connections, but you also help build each other up. When you promote each other, you each benefit. Working together, we’re each playing a role in spreading the gospel to the world. By building our unique platforms, we’re helping to reach that many more people for the Lord.