Last Saturday, I attended a social media conference hosted by the Woodlands chapter of the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW). The guest speaker was none other than bestselling novelist DiAnn Mills. In only hours, my mind was completely blown. Below are highlights from this truly enlightening conference.

• Spend thirty minutes a day on your social media. We are writers, and writing is what we should be spending the majority of our time doing.
• It’s all about your brand. Find what that is, who you are, and massage that into every facet of your social media.
• We are to not be straight-up solicitors (and this is so true for anyone with any kind of business on social media). One in five posts should be about your product/book, yourself–that’s only 20%. This leaves a whopping 80% of posts that are encouraging conversation and enlightening with new information. We need to embrace the social aspect of social media and stop with the one-sided yelling.
• Organize. Organize. Organize. DiAnn Mills is crazy about spreadsheets, and in a wonderful way. She was even so gracious as to send me hers after I requested via email. She knows what she has shared/is sharing/will share and FAR in advance. She knows sharing stats–what works, what not so much. She has a designated thirty minutes every day when she checks off the social media to-do list. DiAnn did mention that when you are first setting up accounts like Pinterest and websites like WordPress, this initial set-up will take longer, but once that is done, the maintenance should be thirty minutes to allow you to really work on the craft that you’re so passionate about.

Her excitement for social media was so encouraging. She is this sweet, dainty, social media butterfly. Sometimes we get so bogged down by what we have to get done, that we lose the joy in what we’re doing.

I’m going for joy today.

Happy reading!!

~Amberly

@AmberlyClowe