Charlotte Rains Dixon 15 years ago11/03/2015

Guest Post: Authors Blaze Social Media Path

This is a guest post from my new Nashvillian friend Leisa Hammett, an amazing author, speaker, and disability advocate. She dragged treated me to a five-mile hike on Sunday at Shelby Bottoms on a glorious Nashville day and we discussed blogging, writing and life. More on that in a future post. For now, enjoy her take on Social Media. And visit her blog!

Social Media.
Why bother? If you are a writer in this millennium and even more
importantly, a book author, to not be doing social media is to be a
dinosaur. Jus' sayin'. And even if you are not a writer but
own a business or offer a service, social media is fundamental to your
marketing program as well. (If I could grab some of my beloved
nonprofits by the collar and shake this important message into them, I
would.) Social media is not just time-twiddling Facebook
fluff. It truly works in communicating your message and grooming
loyalty and drawing in patrons and earning consumers. If you
doubt–trust me. (And Facebook is not all fluff, either.)

So, my eyes are perpetually fixed on successful authors who are using social media to promote their work. Susan Gregg Gilmore—Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen and the forthcoming The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove–is a superior example of working it to spread her message.

Last September I reviewed here Building a Home with My Husband by Rachel Simon, another writer to watch. In an e-blast from Simon, I received the following delightful and most clever video of her book.

Bravo! And, yes, an excerpt from yours truly's review is embedded. Rachel also has a new novel expected out spring or summer 2011. Like her books Building a Home with My Husband and Riding the Bus with My Sister,
Rachel's latest book either weaves into or directly focuses upon issues
affecting those with disAbility. The author's sister has an
Intellectual Disability and is the subject of Riding the Bus with My Sister , which was also made into a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie starring Rosie O' Donnell and Andie McDowell.

Hats off to Simon and especially newcomer (albeit not-so-new now) and trailblazer Susan Gregg Gilmore for clearing a path in this new terrain of must-do social media for writers and authors and others.

Charlotte

Charlotte Rains Dixon mentors creative writers from passionate to published. Charlotte is a free-lance journalist, ghostwriter, and author. She is Director Emeritus and a current mentor at the Writer's Loft, a certificate-writing program at Middle Tennessee State University. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Spalding University and is the author of a dozen books, including The Complete Guide to Writing Successful Fundraising Letters, and Beautiful America’s Oregon Coast. Her fiction has appeared in The Trunk, Santa Fe Writer’s Project, Nameless Grace, and Somerset Studios and her articles have been published in Vogue Knitting, the Oregonian, and Pology, to name a few. Her novel, Emma Jean’s Bad Behavior, was published in 2013, and she is represented by Erin Niumata at Folio Literary. Learn about her annual writing workshops in Europe at letsgowrite.com, and visit her blog at www.charlotterainsdixon.com, where you can find all kinds of tips and techniques on writing and creativity.