However accomplished you may be as a writer, these days, success as an author is as much about cultivating an audience, branding yourself, and building your platform as it is about writing a gripping story or telling a compelling tale. For first-time novelists, business writers and veterans, building a solid author platform is critical for introducing and selling their work. In this post, we’ll look at essential steps to creating a solid author platform, including a content-first approach that stands to help you launch your book onto the bestseller list.

Define Your Brand

This core of your author brand – the platform itself – is the uniting force for the rest of what you say or do to promote your work. An author brand is your unique voice, your values, and the themes that connect you throughout your writing. Figure out who you are as an author to improve your platform and sphere of influence. What are you passionate about? What do you want your writing to be about? What ripple is created when you write? Audience marketing is about delivering the message to the right people to hit the right feels at the right time.

Establish an Online Presence

It goes without saying that you need to be present online where people can discover you and learn about your work. Build a professional author website, serving as the epicentre of your platform, with an author biography, information on your books, and content to demonstrate your tone of voice, sense of humour, and personality – as well as what you have to say. Supplement that with social media, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, to personally engage with your readers, let people get to know you, and share news about your books and work.

Engage with Your Audience

An author platform involves getting out there and forging connections with readers, for example, through blog posts, articles, newsletters, and social media. It’s also helpful to speak at events about your book, sharing your knowledge, insight or story to engage potential fans. It is also about encouraging feedback, answering queries, and replying to comments. Develop the right connections, and you will eventually develop a loyal fanbase of the books you write or the issues you write about.

Create Compelling Content

Making your website a valuable resource for your audience is the next step. Create content that helps promote your books, sure. But do more than that, providing writing tips, behind-the-scenes exploits or provocative insights into your book’s themes. Share what you know. Place your finger on the pulse of your audience and tell them what they need to hear.

Network with Fellow Authors

And don’t overlook networking among the ‘writing community’. Connect with other writers by reading each other’s work in writing groups, workshops, and status updates on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Consider conferences, both local and international, as well as online and physical writing groups. While at it, why not ‘follow’ book bloggers, podcasters and influencers who read your genre to further expand your circle of potential readers?

Cultivate Your Email List

An email list is one of the most valuable resources any platform can possess. You want readers to sign up for your newsletter on your author website, so in exchange, you offer your subscribers an exclusive. Your email list will be your best outreach tool, spreading the word about new books, bargains, events and when you can meet your most ardent fans.

Measure Your Success

An author platform is typically built and tuned over time, so set goals to measure it: What proportion of your target audience will you persuade to follow you on social media sites? How many website visits and book sales do you aim to achieve? What measurement do you use to track your progress over time? What methods seem to work best to help you achieve your goals? Just do it.

So, with that in mind, you need to build an author platform because showing up in the marketplace empty-handed is no longer the smart way to present yourself. In short, before you can write that incredible success story about yourself and your books, ask yourself if you have built anything close to that platform, and you need to introduce yourself and sell your books. Your chief goal, I believe, should be to define your brand, develop your online presence, interact with your would-be fans, produce terrific content, network and connect with authors in your field, create your email list, and measure your progress to monitor your strategy. Building a platform is not easy, but in the process, you will make friends and connections that will be there for you not just for the duration of your platform-building activity but for the years and years of your writing career going forward.