Marketing is the full-time job many novelists never expected to have! Marketing, in fact, can keep authors from moving forward as they fear they’ll have to spend precious time on their marketing content instead of their fiction or devotionals or other callings.

Rather than looking at marketing as a diversion, think of it as an extension of your writing by creating long-form content that promotes the ideas you’re most passionate about. By creating loyal readers before publishing, you’ll have an audience that you’ve genuinely connected to who are interested in your thoughts.

How do you do this?

By using long-form content (probably blogging, but may not!) to create connections on the web and on social media.

NOTE: None of this is unique to me. Gary Vaynerchuck, Amy Porterfield, and Jenna Kutcher are but a few marketers who recommend this particular approach. However, I did have authors ask me about “building a platform” at the Conference, so I decided to write a brief overview of what I know.

1. Decide on your platform

The “decide on your platform” confused me for some time. I thought platform meant social media platform, but here it means your set of ideas and beliefs. In this instance platform is closer to the political party meaning than the social media connotation.

You already know your platform. It’s the 3-5 main themes that keep popping up in your life or your writing or even your deeper posts online.

For some it’s the power of the gospel to heal the heart. For others, it’s the importance of speculative fiction to create wonder, or it could be your deep-seated love for gardening!

Your platform is unique to YOU. The ideas don’t have to be comparatively lofty. The ideas need to be genuine and flow from your soul, not from what others are saying (although you may have thoughts on what others are saying).

Action Step:

Look back over your journals, blog posts, post-its, and conversations with close friends to see what themes recur. List them and note overlaps. Decide on the 3-5 you’d like to sit with and write about for 6 months to a year.

2. Plan your long-form content around the platform.

Now that you have your ideas, it’s time to plan your approach.

First, you need to know what you hope to accomplish with your content for the next 90 days.
Are you driving people to an email list? Are you preparing them to buy a book or a devotional? Are you purely trying to impact lives and help others at the moment? Is it a combination?

Once you know your overall goal, you can decide on your content creation expectations.

• Would you like to stick with one theme for a month with a series approach?
• Would you prefer to focus on a new theme each week and rotate?
• Are you launching a book soon that is centered on one idea, so you’d prefer to write about variations on a theme for a couple of months? All of these are options!

After you’ve decided on themes and approach, you can brainstorm titles and post concepts. When you do this, you can start to see a bigger picture develop that might even change your approach! You’ll see how your themes tie into each other and come up with ideas for series, contests, etc.

Warning: Don’t let your ideas get in the way of action! Lord willing, you’ll be writing for years. You can refine and re-create content to your heart’s desire.

Action Steps:

1. Decide on a 60-90 day overall goal for your content.

2. Choose an approach

3. Brainstorm 4-8 potential titles or ideas for individual blog posts/podcasts/etc.

3. Create your long-form content

Many content creators recommend batching content–setting aside a day to create 2-4 pieces of long-form content at one time. I’ve never been able to do that, but it sounds like a solid piece of advice!

This approach helps you avoid gaps in your publication when you’re swarmed with illness, family, vacation, or other disruptions to writing. Batching also allows you to set a time for marketing only which gives you richer, less-worrisome writing times to work on your other writing goals.

Long-form content can be anything from an email to a blogpost to a podcast/vlog. You get to decide what’s best for you and for your audience and your long-term goals (for example, blog post series could be easily turned into small e-books or even a devotional or memoir depending on your style!).

As you write, keep in mind a transformation you would like your reader to experience for each post. This will help you keep your focus on the audience for when you’re tempted to write a day-in-the-life-of because you don’t have any ideas at the moment (No shame in day-in-the-life posts! Just know why and how the post is helpful to the reader).

Consistent, ongoing long-form content is a great way to build your writing style and play with ideas and words in a less-stressful situation than trying to publish a book.

Note: The long in long-form is up to you. If two paragraphs is your idea of long, then that’s what is published! Entrepreneur Neil Patel is notorious for short blog posts that are actionable and targeted.

Action Step:

Schedule a few hours at your peak writing time to write three blog posts for the upcoming month.

4. Repurpose your long-form content.

Repurposing your long-form content means reconfiguring your content to fit various social media sites and web services.

• Your blog post could be turned into your weekly email with some tweaks.
• You can create social media posts using Canva with the best quotes from your blog.
• You can repost related content and share how the original post fits in with your ideas.
• You can turn your main points into an Instagram Reel or TikTok.

  All of this can be done without having to spend tons of time figuring out what to post–your big ideas and long-form content are your guides and muses!

  Eventually, you’ll start writing your content with repurposing in mind and be more prepared for the social media side of things.

  Action Step:

  Spend an hour creating graphics and posts/Reels based on one blog post. Schedule those out to correspond with the week you’ll publish your long-form content (either in an online scheduler or on a calendar to do manually).

Enjoy the ride!

We would be the envy of Charles Dickens or Shakespeare or other prolific authors of the past! I encourage you to fully enjoy the spectrum of possibilities in this world to make an impact for the world to come.