Intro – Part 1

First Steps into the realms of Social Media as a creative

1. Living in the shadows and wilderness with ME & Fibromyalgia for many years, I was writing in what was mostly a solitary environment in south west Turkey.

   Email and Skype (electricity allowing) were my windows of communication to the outside world.
   
I look back to my days of how I would print off my writings and use ‘snail mail’ to relay my work and message to a small circle of would be could be fans or I would email them-

2. Feedback was slow or there was none, my stories, articles or blog posts lost in time and space-

   It was not the best way to use my precious energy to grow an audience of readership and loyal followers.
   

   I posted articles on health/wellbeing, stories sprinkled with Irish humour and blogs of my observations and experiences as a western woman living and adapting to an eastern culture.
   
Super Hero husband, Chris Pollard (@ChrisJ_Pollard / @ckcglobalmedia) encouraged me to get with the programme – what I now know as the social media train. He was already ahead of the game, using Face Book.
   Seven years ago I set about learning how to interact via this platform a wish to develop strong, positive, relationships.

As an author my job is to capture my potential readers attention, using descriptive language, painting a picture and my followers wish to engage in my world by interacting with me.

There were many ‘delays’ ‘stops’ even ‘cancellations’ on this journey.

Two days every week I consistently posted a Monday Blog and a Friday Photo with text. Slow but sure connections and relationships developed.
It gave me the confidence to keep on posting.
I realise these were the tentative first steps in the process of raising my profile, creating awareness of my name and work.

“Writing and speaking from the heart – touching people
in a way they resonate with” has helped grow my profile and now my brand.

From a shaky start and many humorous stories these last years, my experiences have shown me there is no rush, take a step at a time, a social media platform at a time, writing and posting only quality content.
Reach out to your audience by ensuring whatever you post is of real value and they want to make this journey with you.

Setting aside forty five minutes at the end of my working day solely to immerse myself in building my readership base, I have learnt that patience is key.

The time arrived to delve into the Twitter and LinkedIn universe and more recently Instagram.
With Twitter it was essential to learn the language of social media ‘speak’ with edited powerful and effective text that would lead me to start using the right ‘hashtags’ for me as a creative.
I was willing to embrace and test it.
In next week’s Blog post …Part 2
The Twitter platform and how it works effectively for me as a creative.