7 Tips for Writers to Build a Personal Brand on Social Media

As a writer, you need to know how to act and what to do in order to get more people to hear about your work, read your books, and start following your career. It’s not enough for you to have brilliant books if no one knows about them. That means that you need to build a personal brand and become more active in showing it, especially online. And, the best place to do it is on social media.

Social media is the most powerful tool you can use to build a personal brand as a writer. If you’re not sure how to do it, but want to learn, just keep reading. Below, you’ll find a list of 7 best tips for writers to build a personal brand on social media.

Let’s get started.

1. Build Strong Profiles

Let’s start with the essentials. To build a strong personal brand on social media, you need to make sure your social media profiles are fully updated.

Here’s what that implies:

• profile and cover images
• personal information
• business information
• short bio
• fun facts
• contact information

You want to make sure that your social media profiles are professional, informative, and complete. Also, make sure to delete any profiles you might not be using anymore to avoid having them ruin your online presence.

2. Get Personal

People love to see the non-business side of their favorite writers, so you’ll need to get personal. This doesn’t mean you’ll need to reveal your private life completely. It just means you’ll be giving them a sneak peek into who you are when you’re not an author.

That means you’ll share:

• pictures of you with your dog
• your family holiday photos
• your thoughts on global or local events
• your favorite musician
• etc.

You need to let the people get to know you and start feeling like they’re your friends. The closer they feel to you, the more they’ll be interested in your work as a writer. Share the content that shows who you are as a person and allows them to learn about you every day.

3. Communicate

People following you on social media will love communicating with you and getting feedback on their comments, messages, or remarks. This is why to build a personal brand, you need to be active in responding to your followers.

That includes:

• replying to the comments that ask a question or deserve your attention
• thanking people for their nice words or support
• answering DMs
• reposting stories of people reading your book or mentioning you

Apart from giving feedback in this form, you should also try and inspire people to talk to you. You can ask questions, ask them to leave a comment, and share their thoughts. This way, you’ll be able to see how they feel and what their thoughts are on your new book or anything else you’d like to discuss.

4. Be Active

To build a personal brand, you need to present in people’s lives. And, every now and then when they’re scrolling their social media feed, they need to see or hear from you.

This will create a habit of checking your content and staying interested in what you’ll post next. To make this happen, you’ll need to:

• post regularly (at least 3-4 time a week)
• create engaging content that your audience will like reading or seeing
• be innovative and post something fresh and different

Since you’re a writer, it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with interesting new ideas for your social media posts. Try making them fun, unique, and creative.

5. Show Consistency

Consistency is another super-important ingredient in your mixture for a winning personal brand on social media. Why? Because it makes you relatable and authentic.

Consistency means following a set of rules you created that define you as a brand. Those include:

• your personality
• your style of writing
• your tone and voice
• the colors you’re using
• the type of visuals you’re posting

You should try and come up with a unique style, and use it in all your posts on all your social media. This comes through trial and error or, if you don’t like to risk, an editing company can do the work for you. This way you will help people recognize your posts before they even read it’s you.

This way, your brand is becoming truly powerful.

6. Understand Who’s Reading

As a writer, you can have a colorful audience of different people following you for different reasons. Understanding and knowing your audience is the key to successful brand building. Your audience can consist of:

• young writers looking up to you
• people who have been following your work from day one
• new followers who only read one of your books

Learn who they are and create content for each of these target groups. Make sure there’s something for everyone.

7. Talk Work

Just because you’re trying to build a personal brand doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to talk about your work as a writer. On the contrary, your social media is supposed to help you build awareness about your latest work and overall career.

This means that you should include updates from your professional life on your social media. You should post about:

• your work in progress such as a new book or switching to a new genre
• the release date of your new book
• promotions and events
• behind the scenes of a writing session
• announcements and big revelations

Your social media profiles are there to support your professional career and make a connection between you as a writer and you as an everyday person.

So, don’t be afraid to talk work, but make it fun, genuine, and authentic.

Final Thoughts

Building a personal brand on social media is a great way for writers to gain more attention and expand their readership. When you’re present online the right way, people have a chance to get to know you, like you, and develop an interest in your work.

Hopefully, the 7 tips we’ve shared above will help you build a strong personal brand on social media so use them to reach new career heights.

Jessica Fender is a professional writer and educational blogger at Bestwritingadvisor, an aggregator for useful college resources and websites. Jessica enjoys sharing her ideas to make writing and learning fun.