Stepping into your spotlight

How do you promote yourself online? Or do you? For a long time, my online presence was purely the website for my murder mystery script writing business - no blog or Facebook page, just the website itself.

What this prevented me from sharing, however, was the people behind the business - the personality of myself and my co-writers. My existing clients knew who I was through our communications but anyone coming fresh to the website had no idea. There was no connection and hence no reason to choose our scripts over anybody else's.

That changed when  I set up a blog for Murdering the Text. Suddenly I could talk about why our plays and ways of operating would suit customers over other companies. I could chat to my customers, share our and their successes, and let them know of new scripts and so on. This created a whole fresh level of communication.

What I also took from the new blog was the realisation that I wanted to share more about my writing in general so I set up this blog, Fi's Magical Writing Haven .

Since that time, I have set up a Facebook page for Murdering The Text and for me as a writer. Each of those identities also has a  Twitter account and a Google+ account. I have a more personal Tumblr blog and an about.me page too. Then there's my Linked In account.

Now, that all sounds like a lot of places to maintain but using Facebook and Twitter linking apps mean that a lot of posts are automated. A level of commitment is required to maintain all of these but I don't let it over power me. I have a manageable amount of time set aside each week, no more than two hours in total, to upkeep my online presence. I find this works well.

Some authors stick to a website only while others embrace a whole range of online networking opportunities. It's a  very personal thing - choosing where you want to appear, how much time you want to spend on your online presence and what exactly you want to reveal about yourself. There is a whole host of information out there on how to market oneself online but it has to come down to this. What suits you? If you find that juggling a blog, Facebook page, Twitter etc are taking you away from your writing too much, then perhaps it's time to reconsider your approach.

What do you think? How do you cope with your online spotlight?