175: Social Media 101 - Strategy

 

Welcome to part one of our Social Media 101 series! This week's episode covers the strategy of social media. If you're new to creating content and feel overwhelmed, learn why content is an important part of your author brand, how to feel more confident posting, and what kinds of content to create. 

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Social Media 101 - Strategy

Hello, welcome back to your big creative life Podcast. I'm excited to dive into social media this week and next week. This is a two part series. I was thinking about how to organize these episodes because social media is obviously a massive topic, and not just social media, but like social media 101, and I decided to do one week focused on strategy and one week focused on mindset. Because, yes, there's definitely some overlap in those things, but they're just different topics. And I think people, actually, I think people, what prevents people from posting is more the mindset stuff, but strategy is still very important. So we're going to talk about in that in this episode.

 

Okay, before we get into it, though, I have one announcement, which is, I have one spot available in my six month coaching program. This is a program for new writers. Anyone writing a book, wants to write a book, who's just looking for some support and accountability and editing and coaching along the way. So it's a six month one on one program, and there are coaching calls. You get regular feedback on your pages along the way as you're writing your draft. So we have 25 page reviews. We're all look at 25 pages, what call will go through the notes and everything, and then I do a full manuscript evaluation on the book at the end. So you end the six months in a really good spot.

 

You also get access to an app that I use with my clients called Voxer, where you can check in with me. I check it Monday through Friday once a day, and you can ask questions. You can get accountability. If you want to brainstorm something, whatever you need, it's there. And then you go to also some other cool perks, like access to all of my online courses and trainings. This is a rolling kind of program. How it works is I'll have a spot open up when one of my clients finishes. So I have someone that finished, they wrote their book, which is very exciting. We just are going to have our call tomorrow to talk about their feedback, or, no, sorry, Friday, two days from now, to talk about the feedback, which is, which is exciting, and their editing plan and everything. But yeah, so I have an opening for that.

 

 You can find more information at the link in the show notes. And this is customized because it's it's one on one. So if you just have a book idea, but you have not even started writing yet, that's fine. Or if you've written a bit and you're part of the way through, but you want some support and editing and accountability, then that can work as well. If you go to that link in the show notes, it'll take you to a page with more information about what's included, the price, all that good stuff. And then it takes you to a form where you can fill out some information, and I'll get in touch with you. We'll schedule a little zoom chat, just to make sure that we're a good fit to work together, and gives you an opportunity to ask any questions that you want. And yeah, I think that's everything I want to only announcement I have, I'm editing availability. You can always go to my editing page, also in the show notes, and see what my availability. Availability is, what month I'm booking for.

 

Okay, let's get into social media. With social media, I want to include two important disclaimers. Number one, if you are listening to the podcast. So this podcast, there's a good chance that you know this, but if not, I just want to make it clear that I am not yet published author. Knock on wood. I will hopefully be in the next couple of months, getting ready to send my book out on submission. I have a literary agent, and I'm hoping for a book deal soon, but I do not yet have it. The path of traditional publishing has been very long, very long for me, and I'm hopeful about it, but, yeah, so, so when I'm talking about social media, I can't yet talk about it as an author who has a book to sell. So we're not going to talk about, like, very, very granular, specific content ideas in this episode, but just know that. Keep that in mind when I'm sharing advice and strategy I'm doing so from the perspective of someone who has created social media publicly, like on Instagram, Tiktok, the podcast, et cetera, YouTube for years, but not selling a product I sold other stuff, like my coaching services and my editing services, but not a book yet.

 

The other thing to keep in mind is that what I'm going to be focusing on in this episode is really tips and strategies for new content creators, meaning like you are not posting on social media yet, but you would like to or. If you are posting, it's like maybe personal content, where the people that follow you are friends and family and you have a private account, or maybe you're just in the very early stages of it, but it feels hard and overwhelming, and you just feel like you're banging your head against the wall, if you have been doing social media for years, and feel like you're a pro at it. This is not the episode for you. The tips and strategies that I would give to someone who's been doing it for a while and already has built up a foundation and some followers would it's going to be a little bit different. So now that those disclaimers are out of the way, let's get into it.

 

Okay, the first thing that you're going to have to do with social media, if you are not posting yet, is to decide if you want to continue to post on the account that you currently have, if you have one, or if you want to make a separate account. There are a lot of people who start this writing journey, and they have an Instagram that they've had for 12 years, and the only people that follow them are family and friends and like people that they went to high school with, right? So, and they post like, once a month and share pictures of something. So sometimes people feel totally fine switching over to start incorporating more writing content and start talking about the book they're writing or books they're reading, or sharing some behind the scenes of their creative process. And sometimes people are like, Absolutely not. I need to just start fresh, because I don't want these friends and family and people from high school to see what I'm doing.

 

So either is fine, yeah, it's just, it's just something you'll have to decide. And what I would recommend my next next tip for from a strategy perspective, is to pick two platforms that you are going to be active on. It is very overwhelming to think about creating content everywhere, right out of the gate. Instead, pick two that you think your readers, your ideal readers. If you think about the kinds of people who are going to be reading your books, are they? What platforms are they on? But then also, what do you enjoy? Or or if you if you're not to the point of enjoying content, if you really don't like it, then what do you hate? Least, I am active on Instagram and Tiktok, and that's it, and I have the podcast, so you can definitely do some long form content if you want. So this could be a blog and Instagram. This could be Facebook and Tiktok. This could be x and Instagram and or like threads. There are different options for this, and eventually you can get to a place where you're repurposing maybe you can add in different content platforms later, but right now, really focus on two.

 

And if that feels overwhelming, just focus on one. You can always expand later. Maybe right now, you just really want to focus on Instagram, and that's awesome. I started off with Instagram and Tiktok in the podcast, and then, like, years, a couple years into me creating content around writing, I decided to add in YouTube. So that was not something I did from the beginning, and honestly, right now, it's not a big focus for me. Like, I repurpose content there. I don't create, like, original content, really, for YouTube. It's just not a priority for me. But because I've been doing this for a while, I felt like, okay to add it in, and it wasn't going to be extra work. So you can always do that down the road.

 

Next up, we're going to talk about content pillars. This is, this is tip number three. And before we really dive into content pillars and what this is, what this means, it's going to be so much easier to come up with ideas for content if you know who you're creating content for, because creating content, whether it's a video talking to the camera, whether it's sharing a picture and writing a caption, whether it's a text carousel, whatever it is. If it can be overwhelming and scary to think about just creating something and then like releasing it into the void, it feels vague, it feels murky. It feels like who's going to be interested in this? Like, I don't know. I always felt kind of it felt more like pointless to me before I really got clear on who I was creating content for. So what a lot of people in the marketing world talk about is creating something called an ideal client avatar, which is just a specific person who had like who represents your ideal client, and they have a set of traits, of characteristics, a personality.

 

It's like a weird kind of exercise, honestly, but you can transfer that over to thinking about an author brand and an author account and think about your ideal reader. Who do you feel like is the ideal target audience for the book that you are writing? Want to write? Have written whatever? Because when you are an author, you are not creating content for the internet as a whole. You are not creating content for all readers either, because not all readers are interested. In every type of book. Let's say that you are a romance author, and you write like dual point of view, spicy romance. Okay? So even within the romance genre, there are readers who are not going to want to pick up your book. They're not going to be interested in your book because it's dual point of view, because it's spicy. Not every reader likes spice. So you're not talking to everyone on the internet. You're not talking to every reader. You're also not talking to everyone who likes romance.

 

You're talking to a specific person who will come across your book and be like, yes, this sounds interesting. This is exactly what I want to read. Like, give it to me now. Yes, please. That's what you want to be creating content for. And this is something that I'm only like starting to dip my toe into as I'm thinking about, like, going on submission again with my book, and thinking about myself as an author, and how I will make that transition, which honestly feels a little murky. I I'm gonna be honest, I'm not really sure how to navigate that in the future of I have this business, but if I become I don't know, I guess it's something I'll have to figure out if, if and when the time comes. But my ideal reader is someone who reads thrillers, and someone who reads psychological thrillers, and someone who is interested in certain topics that I tend to talk about a lot, and almost anything that I write that's my ideal reader. It's not everyone. It's it's someone with that interest, and for me, it's women, because I know that women readers are overwhelmingly women psychological thrillers. A lot of women read psychological thrillers. And also, if I look at my analytics and social media, 80% of my followers are women. So once you have your ideal reader figured out, and you can get very specific with this if you want, but you don't have to even just thinking of a couple of characteristics of this person to represent your ideal reader is a good exercise, because then once you know that, you can create content pillars of things that you are going to talk about on social media. And that's basically what a content pillar is. It's a topic.

 

So you have different content topics that you are going to talk about that will help you come up with ideas of what to post on social media. As an example, let's say you want to come up with three. You want to come up with three content pillars, three content kind of groups or buckets or of topics that you're going to talk about. So one is specifically about your work in progress. So that means sharing teasers, sharing character art, sharing snippets and like quotes as you write, maybe little footage of you actually typing on your computer, right? So like the work in progress. That's one of your content pillars. One of your other content pillars can be you as a reader.

 

So what are you reading? What things would you recommend? You go into the library, a vlog of you getting a new like doing a book haul. And then one of your content pillars can be something personal, like your dog. If you have a dog you absolutely adore, and you take for walks every single day, and your dog is always curled up next to you, and you write that can be a content pillar. They don't have to be deep, they don't have to be complicated, they don't have to be super personal. But the idea is you're just creating content around those topics. And in this example, I know that the author reader line can be a tough one, because you have to be careful once you become an author of posting reviews of books, but maybe you can find a way to just share. Like, if you really enjoy something and you want to give it a shout out and give it a plug, like, share that with your, with your on your page. I know that gets, that gets tricky, but in the way I've settled on it is, I don't really talk much about what I'm reading, but I will share.

 

If I'm enjoying something a lot, I will share it. And that's like a something I've settled on that feels good for me as a not yet an author, but someone who wants to be and hopefully will be soon. So yeah, those are those can be your content pillars. And one thing I have a note here on my little sheet, that's Oh, documenting versus creating. And this is a really good tip that I heard. I don't remember where, but the idea for this is, if we think about creating content that can sometimes imply a level of effort and work, and that can feel like a lot if you're balancing content creation on top of a million other things that you have going on in your life, instead of documenting something that you're already doing. So if we think about our example, content pillars, right? What's a way that you could just document what you're already doing and then post it on social media you can do.

 

If you wrote a really good quote for your work in progress, you can do a little esthetic picture and type the quote over the picture and put, you know, some cool font, and then, like, share that on Instagram. You can record a video of you walking your dog and share about, like, a brainstorming exercise that you did recently. So you're documenting that as you're doing it, you can document you reading in a coffee shop. You know, the idea is just to kind of take people along and document what you're doing, as opposed to thinking, Okay, this week, I have to come up with 22 content ideas which can sometimes be fun but can sometimes feel overwhelming. Okay. Next up is consistency. This is huge for a couple of different reasons. And when I say consistency, by the way, I do not mean you have to post every day or every other day, even if this consistency for you, if you are not posting at all, consistency can mean twice a week.

 

Okay, this does not have to be super complicated or or that you're churning out content at a rapid pace. It really can be twice a week to start. That's totally fine, but the point is that you're consistent with that two times a week, because it does a couple of things. Number one, it keeps you accountable. If you decide, if you set this intention for yourself, this goal, that you're going to post on Instagram two times every single week. Then you have a goal. You know, if you met that metric or not, it the other thing it does is it, it helps you practice. It helps you get more comfortable with content, because you're doing it regularly, as opposed to if you create content and post twice in like, twice in two days, and then you take a month off. You know, it's probably gonna be harder to get back into it. But then the other thing that it does is, once you start to gain some followers, it helps you stay top of mind in those people's heads. So myself, let's just take me as an example.

 

If I posted a podcast episode once every two months, and I posted like one Tiktok video every two weeks and maybe post it on Instagram like every couple weeks as well. People would probably stop paying attention at a certain point, or they would just like, stop seeking out a podcast. If they're like, Well, I don't really know when Katie's gonna post a podcast episode. Let me go search Spotify to see if there's one out. Oh no, there's not one out. And they might do that a couple times. And couple times, and then just be like, I forget about it. I don't know when she's gonna post a new episode. And in a way, I can see how you can hear me say that and be like, God, that sucks. That means I have to be on social media for life and like post all the time. But it is just about getting in the habit of it. That's what so much of what I'm talking about in this week's episode and strategy episode is just stuff to get you consistent with it. Because when you're consistent, it's just you're it's easier to do it. It fits into your life. It's just like how I talk about writing. I don't think you need to put your entire life on hold to write a book.

 

There's no reason for you to have to carve out three hours of your day every single day to write, unless you really, really want to. And the same thing is true with content creation. It can be a small sliver of your life, something that you do consistently, but doesn't take over, and it can be very manageable, and it really does help with accountability. I mean, yes, that people are expecting a podcast episode for me every single Tuesday. That's why I do it. But also it helps me be consistent. I have a goal, like, I know that I have to put out a content or a podcast episode every every single Tuesday. So I just do it, even if I don't necessarily feel like it. I'm like, Well, I'm like, right now I'm I think I'm two or three weeks behind, not behind, ahead, so I have one episode that's scheduled, and then that's it. So I know I've got to record a couple episodes to catch up.

 

Next up is, oh, my next tip. Okay, this is something I've hinted at, but I just want to explicitly state this, because it's it's so true. You get better at content and more comfortable with content, the more that you post content. Okay, this is not one of those things where you can sit and think your way into creating content and creating good content that people you know want to watch, where they stop scrolling. I look back at my first video that I posted on Tiktok, which I did recently, for some reason, I can't remember why it was a few months ago, but there was a reason I had to scroll back years on Tiktok to look at this video. And it was a video I did about querying and how if you want to get published, traditionally, you're gonna need a literary agent. And I could easily view that as cringy and be like, Oh my God, that's so embarrassing. That's so awkward. I have the pause at the end, at the beginning, like the millennial pause. I look uncomfortable. It's just, it's not great. The video is not great.

 

But it doesn't matter. I was never gonna just sit and think my way into getting more comfortable on camera. I had to post video. In order to practice and to get more confident and comfortable with it. And it's the same thing with content. You've got to get the reps in. You've got to get can get some form of consistency and have accountability so that you'll do it and it gets better, it gets easier. You get more confident, and it doesn't take you as long either. Like recording a video used to take me forever because I would often just re record it. I would do multiple versions because I wasn't happy with it, and so I just got to a point where I was like, I can't do this. And driving myself crazy. It's taking me forever to record a piece of content. And I would also script out videos sometimes. And early on, I just was like, I can't Is this too time consuming to do it this way? So I had to just release it, even though I thought, even though it was like, Oh, this thing, this video that I'm creating, or this post on Instagram isn't perfect, but I'm going to just release it anyway. Okay.

 

Next up, keep it simple to start, the reason, if creating content feels easy and there's not as much resistance or friction between you and creating content, you're going to be so much more likely to do it, whereas if you feel like you need to have your makeup done, your hair done, to take a selfie or record a talking video, and you need to have the perfect setup behind you. It's very esthetically pleasing, and you've got to have fancy camera equipment and fancy lighting, and you have to pay someone to edit for you, and you have to have a specific mic to talk into, and you have to edit it really fancy and make all these quick cuts and everything. If that you think that's what you have to do when you start, it's going to be so much more work to create a video. You do not need that stuff when you are starting out. If down the road, you decide you want to add some of it awesome. But really, what you need is just to post the content. You just got to post the things. And don't be a perfectionist about the things that you're creating.

 

And if it's video content, or if you are in the picture, really try to release that instinct that so many of us have to make it look look perfect. Yes, Tiktok and Instagram and some of these social media platforms are visual mediums, but I would much rather, again, what I'm focusing on in this episode is just getting you posting regularly so that you're comfortable with it. And if that means you just take a selfie and it's, you've got a window and it's, it's like, so there's some decent lighting, and you've cleaned your camera lens so there aren't smudges on it, then that's all you have to do. Let me look at my list. Keep it simple. Oh, I want to talk about faceless content for a second too. This is kind of related to my Keep It Simple thing. So a lot of us, when we first start posting content, are very scared to show our faces. And we're going to talk a little bit more about some of this, this fear, the fears that can crop up related to that next week in the mindset episode.

 

 But I want to say that if it feels easier for you starting out to create faceless content, that's totally fine, and that can look like you turning the camera away from you and taking a picture of your desk, setup of something from your manuscript, your coffee, the sky, or just doing a text post where it's you just create like a carousel, and you create in Canva, and it's just tax. You can absolutely do that to start. I do think it's a good idea to incorporate your face, at least occasionally, on your account.

 

This leads me into my next and final tip, which is to remember your end goal of why you're doing this in the first place. So you're not posting on social media because you want to be an influencer, and you're not posting on social media because you want to, I don't know if you're posting on social media because it's a tool. It's a tool to help you be an author in this day and age, in 2025 social media is just part of the game. If you are an author who's been writing since 1991 and you have dozens of New York Times best selling books and like you don't need to be on social media, then sure, that's a different story. But, but all of us writing now in the present, who are new writers like we've got to be on social media. That's just part of it. Whether you are wanting to indie publish or try to query to get an agent, you've got to be on social media.

 

Now there are people who have faceless accounts and are successful in varying, varying capacities, and you can create content on social media that doesn't show your face and hook people in, for sure, like if you're teasing something from your book, if you create one of those. So Canva is a great resource, and Canva allows you to it's like graphic design, but for people who don't know Graphic. Design. So you can create social media content in Canva, and you can create reels, and they've got templates and stuff and TikToks. So you could do, like, pages flipping, and then put some text over it. And you could that could do really, perform really well, and you attract people who are like, ooh. This snippet, the sample from the book, looks really good. I'm gonna go read it. That can absolutely happen, but I do think, if I think about the authors that I really connect with, I know them, not actually in real life, but I feel like I know them because I have a sense of something else about them, apart from just the words that they've written on a page and what their book title is.

 

Going back to the content pillars, when I talked about including something personal, this is where that can come in people who if people feel like they know you, then it's going to be easier to form that emotional connection and maybe easier to fill, to build a community of readers and people who love following you and love seeing a bit about your life. Again, it doesn't have to be super personal, but just a bit about you and who you are and what's important to you and how you spend your time and all that. Yeah. So then there is that emotional connection, and when you are sharing about an upcoming release, if people feel like they know you, they're gonna cheer you on and be excited for you on a whole new level. So I just, I do think that if you're, if we think about establishing an author brand, showing your face, is gonna be a component of that for 99% of us, unless you are that 1% who can do the faceless thing, and that can you can definitely do that, but, yeah, I I just think that that's important.

 

But if that feels overwhelming, and you don't want to take selfies, you don't want to post pictures of yourself, you don't want to talk to the camera, definitely do the faceless content first, and get comfortable, get into a rhythm with that, and then you can incorporate some of that face content later. What I want to say to wrap up is just with with content that you're posting, if you're coming up with content ideas, you're thinking about your ideal reader, thinking about your content pillars, and you sit down and you're like, Okay, what am I going to post today? Part, Part of me like bristles when I when I hear people say this, but it's kind of true, and that every post needs to have value, and I bristle because it's like, oh, I don't know that's such a I just don't, I just don't like the way that sounds or the way that feels, but how I interpret that is, there are millions of pieces of social media content being pushed out every single day, right?

 

And in order to get someone to stop, if you come up on their for you page, a video of yours comes up on the for you page or on the discover page or whatever, or it's suggested somewhere, whether it's video or just text, like, if you're on x and something gets I don't even know how the how x works. I was on Twitter for a little bit, but I really hated it, so I didn't post on there for long, and I have not even logged into x. I don't, I don't know what it looks like, but I'm assuming there's some kind of, like, home feed. So in the event that someone comes across a piece of content from you and they don't follow you, why would they stop to watch it? Value can just mean you're sharing a really juicy quote from a book that you are writing. Value can mean sharing a really cool latte that you got at a new coffee shop that just opened up in your hometown, where you're going to write for a morning. Value doesn't have to be like, here are three tips for this thing, blah, blah, blah.

 

Maybe it's something funny, and people are going to stop because it's hilarious and relatable. And they're like, Oh yeah, I've done that thing. So just be thinking about that, why someone would stop to consume your piece of content, whatever it is, especially at the beginning, you have to give people a reason to care about you, which kind of sucks to say it that way, but it's true just with how good how the algorithm works. So, yeah, keep that in mind when you're posting too. Okay, so next week we're going to talk about the mindset, piece of it, which is going to be really good, because, again, I think that's what stops a lot of people from posting. So if you still feel overwhelmed, if you feel cringy, if you're worried about people perceiving you as you're figuring social media out, definitely check out that episode. Okay, thanks for listening.

Katie Wolf