A Platform to Stand On III: The Recipe

The elements of an effective publishing platform for a writer, Part III

In this final post in my series on Danielle Girard’s Queens MFA Professional Development Weekend seminar on author platforms, we’ll cover what was perhaps the most useful piece of advice Danielle shared, which was the idea of a brand recipe one can build to help drive how we might construct and execute an author platform. The idea is to sit down and ask yourself who you are, and then create a bullet list of what makes you tick—that is, what are the most important and compelling aspects of your life? Danielle gave us her example, but I don’t remember it, so I’ll do one for myself in real time.

What makes me tick?

• Progressive politics
• Fiction writing
• Reading – fiction
• Reading – news and reportage
• Family
• Playing and watching basketball
• Cycling and watching professional cycling
• Silicon Valley and California at large
• The tech industry and social networking
• Journalism and news media

Now one might scan that list and say, “Great, there’s ten things there that pretty much add up to everything under the sun!” But that’s not true. There are some big items that would undoubtedly appear on many people’s lists that don’t appear on mine: music, movies, and faith, just to name a few. I like music and movies, and I’m interested in (and have written in this blog about) some aspects of religious faith, but none of these things are essential to who I am. They don’t drive my day-to-day activities like all these things do.

These are the ingredients in your brand recipe, and the next step is to portion them out. You do this by asking, what percentage of my web, social media, and newsletter content should pertain to each of these? So here’s how I’ll portion them out, off the top of my head:

• Progressive politics – 15%
• Fiction writing – 15%
• Reading – fiction – 15%
• Reading – news and reportage – 5%
• Family – 10%
• Playing and watching basketball – 5%
• Cycling and watching professional cycling – 5%
• Silicon Valley and California at large – 10%
• The tech industry and social networking – 10%
• Journalism and news media – 10%

As I unveil and then manage my platform from day to day, I can use this recipe to guide how I want to reveal myself to readers. Again, as mentioned above, none of this is directly aimed at selling. The idea is to connect through a consistent but not obnoxious amount of engagement, and to let readers know who you are so they can relate to you in ways beyond the effects of your published words.

Resources

Danielle was kind enough to share a number of resources that can help provide even more insight into the concept of a publishing platform:

• Publishing … and Other Forms of Insanity
• shewrites.com
• WeGrowMedia (Dan Blank)

So get out there and build (or continue to build) your brand—and have fun with it!