Branding and Twitter

Raise your hand if you’re a writer on Twitter! Same. Twitter is a great place for building that writing community and growing your visibility. However, simply building your brand through a follow-for-follow plan can cheapen not just your brand, but your writing.

So how do you build your platform and build the credibility of your writing?

As I’ve mentioned before, personal brand is not just what you write. It’s who you are. Your public, personal brand is what you decide to portray of who you are to your audience. Who are you impacts what you do or don’t write, how you engage with others on social media, and what you do or don’t post.

If you scroll through writers on Twitter, you’ll quickly see users who are there to promote their work, gain followers, and call it a day. Other than linking their book or blog, they don’t appear to be there to bring you, their potential reader, quality content.

Then you’ll see the few diamonds in the rough. The users who post quality content over and over, engage with other users, and work at pouring into the writing community, not just build their platform.

The great thing is, when you post quality content and genuinely engage with other writers, they’re apt to follow you. Thus, you build your platform.

So how do you bring your brand to Twitter? Ask yourself some questions:

Are you on Twitter to share what you’re learning from a come-alongside perspective, or to give writing advice from the standpoint of an expert? If you choose the come-alongside approach, you can share anything writing-related that you’re learning. If you choose the expert approach, to maintain brand integrity, only share advice you are an expert in. Do you write YA fiction in a specific genre, and have you sold thousands of books? You’re probably on your way to becoming an expert. However, you probably want to steer clear of handing out nonfiction advice.

Next, there are countless ways to engage with the writing community on Twitter. Choose what group you want to invest in, and go all in. Retweet pinned tweets, offer retweets on pitch fest days, jump into the comments to offer your expert advice, or share your own tweets as you progress through the writing journey.

Twitter is a sea of advice, book and blog promotions, writers’ lifts, etc., so choose carefully where you want to invest.

If you choose the expert sharing advice approach, writers’ lifts probably aren’t the best place to jump in. Twitter users who almost only engage in writers’ lifts, follow-for-follow trains, and endless promotions of their work are going to be viewed differently than those who genuinely engage, share writing advice, and provide great content every day.

Yes, follow writers, tweet, retweet—do all the things! Just choose how you choose to engage. What does what you tweet, retweet, and promote say about your writing brand?

With that in mind, happy tweeting!

Sarah Rexford is a Marketing Content Creator and writer. She helps authors build their platform through branding and copywriting. With a BA in Strategic Communications, Sarah equips writers to learn how to communicate their message through personal branding. She writes fiction and nonfiction and offers writers behind-the-scenes tips on the publishing industry through her blog itssarahrexford.com. She is represented by the C.Y.L.E Young Agency.

Instagram: @sarahjrexford
Twitter: @sarahjrexford
Web: itssarahrexford.com