January 2015-Strategic Planning: Refresh Your Profile

Take a few hours this week to find out how the world sees you as a writer. Visit your profile on your social platforms. I'm not just talking about your Linkedin.com site. Right now make a list of all the sites you maintain and don't maintain. Allow me to help you brain storm:
How many email sites do you own?

• How many Facebook sites.
• How many blogs?
• How many Twitter accounts?
• What about your Instagram? Goodreads? Pinterest? Stumbleupon? Reddit? Digg? Tumblr? Just to begin the litany of possibilities.

Step 1: Decommission any site you are not updating or hasn't proven to bring in a sufficient audience. If you have sites dedicated to books published several years ago, consider if they reflect who you are today. If you wish to maintain them, update them or link them to your current site. In other words, it is time to "declutter" you social footprint. You are not the same person, let alone the same writer you were five years ago.

Step 2: Update your profiles. Potential employers, literary agents, publishers, and above all readers, check profile sites. In this "info at our fingertips" world, you need to be consistent on all profiles and above all - current.

Step 3: Ah! the dreaded head shot, let's be frank, no one likes to take one, pick one, or post one. Your professional social platform needs to reflect you, the professional, successful, writer. Hey! I love my family and yours too, but the craft of writing is half of the story. The business part makes us all nervous and putting ourselves out there in a photo is business. Find a way to keep your profile photo fresh and professional.

Step 4: List your writing achievements and development (conferences, workshops, contributions, etc.).

Step 5: Keep list of social platform profiles. Set a reminder to help you refresh profiles every quarter, okay if you can't manage quarterly, try biannually, but get a social platform profile schedule reminder on all your calendars A.S.A.P.

 A profile is just that: a profile. It is an economy of words describing who you are today.

There are multiple sites and choices on writing an author's profile.
Here are a few links that may be helpful:

https://www.swoonreads.com/blog/faq-is-my-author-profile-important/ 

http://www.writing.ie/resources/how-to-write-an-author-profile/ 

https://www.textbroker.com/how-get-your-author-profile-100 

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