Consistency: The key to social media dominance

Brandi Bradley
Apr 3, 2019
6 min read

Conferences are rolling along. Make sure you take the feedback from our meeting and apply those changes to your narrative and post your revised draft to your Wix page and upload the draft to Canvas before 11:59 pm on FRIDAY 4/5.

Also, remember that your P3 Short Assignment 3: Promo Plan is due before 11:59 pm MONDAY 4/8

Now you are ready to embark on tackling the task of using social media to drive readers to your narrative. The key to making sure that others are reading your work is consistency.

Love her or hate her, Kim is consistent about her social media presence.

Composers who use social media to promote their creations are constantly talking about what they are doing, projects they are working on, and reminding their followers of their many, many compositions. They don't tweet 10 times a week, they tweet 100 times a week. These social media icons are consistently present for fan interaction.

That being said, they don't just talk about their compositions.

Chrissy Teigen wrote a cookbook in 2016 called Cravings, she also just released a new cookbook called Hungry for More. A recipe book is a curation of recipe compositions because she loves to cook. However, if you visit her Twitter account, she is not only talking about her cookbook. She talks about her husband, her child, what she is cooking, where she is hanging, what she's thinking. When someone sends her a tweet showing how they read her book and tried one of her recipes, Teigan immediately retweets it. She is letting her fans promote her work for her, and a retweet from Teigan makes her fans feel like they are part of that celebrity's world. The retweet is like a thank you, but also a promotional tool.

She manages multiple accounts on different platforms, but that doesn't means she is creating three different messages. Often she repeats the same messages on Twitter as she does on Instagram.

Because of the need to manage multiple platforms, services like Hootsuite are available for free which will allow you to post on up to two different social media accounts at the same time. I've been using Hootsuite for the past several months and I am pleased with how it lets me schedule posts in advance. The problem is it won't automatically post to Instagram. If you don't want to download another app to your phone, use your Twitter drafts to write posts in advance, and then copy and paste those posts into your other social media platforms.

The best way to know how to promote a narrative is to study who is using social media to promote their brand, and take what you can use for your own narrative.

Once you have your Wix account built and ready for public consumption, go to your social media accounts and create a base of posts.

Use the same (or very similar) profile photo for each social media account: Readers will follow you on all of their social media if they know you are the right person.
Post your Narrative's Wix link in your profile info: Make it as easy as possible for readers to access your narrative.
Build a base of 25 posts first: People on social media are reluctant to follow accounts which are too new. You need to show you have quality content before you start building your followers. Also, don't just post facts and statistics or just retweet a bunch of random things. Be a human, not a robot. Talk about yourself, your brand as a student, inspirations for the story, and more.
Repost and retweet but only as needed: Accounts which are only full of retweets make readers suspicious and reluctant to click on your links because many "robot" accounts are only retweets. Also, they are not interesting to follow because they are not thoughtful.
Your followers might not read your narrative right away: People need to see something at least three times before they act on it. So be sure to remind your followers that your narrative is available to read. That being said, do not bombard them with only tweets or posts about your narrative.
Don't use art or images from existing properties: some companies (like Disney) do not like it when other people use their properties to promote their own compositions. If you recall the lecture from Media Industries, Disney owns nearly every franchise, and they have no problem asking for accounts to be taken down to protect their property. This has been an issue in the past when a student tried to sample a Kanye West song for a podcast. It resulted in him being banned from SoundCloud.

After you have a solid base of posts, you are responsible for finding followers. Who is the audience for your narrative and how do you encourage them to follow your accounts? Often social media works on a follow for a follow philosophy. However, social media users will get followed by business thirsty for that follow back and they ignore it.

When someone you do not know follows you, what makes you want to follow them back?

Is the page fun?
Do their posts relate to a topic which interests you?
Does having this person's words and images in your feed make your day better?

Usually people avoid accounts which are blatantly trying to sell them something, push them into acting on something, or generally trying to bring them down.

Students who have been most successful on this aspect of the project turn this part into a game. Some of them have been kicked off of Twitter under suspicion of being a robot because they followed so many people. Other students have found success by tapping into their niche audience.

For your Social Media accounts, here are the REQUIRED MINIMUMS for a successful account. I want screen-shot evidence of these posts on your P3 Wix page with your narrative and your final report.

Twitter: A minimum of 100 Tweets . Just 6 Tweets a Day! Tweets should be interesting and give the reader a reason to continue following your account. This is in addition to your class tweets.

Instagram Account: minimum of 50 photos between 11/16-12/3. This is a visual mode, so each image should be visually stimulating or interesting.

Pinterest account: Minimum of 10 boards with 40 pins per board which are relevant and relate to your campaign.

Snapchat: Because Snapchat stories disappear, you must download these everyday in order to show that you promoted there. 10 photos per day between 11/16-12/3.

Facebook: minimum of 50 photos between 11/16-12/3. Posts should be a mix of visually stimulating and text-based posts. (I'll be honest, no students in the past have reported a good following from Facebook. Not one.)

How to turn your narrative viral?

Make it an event: Writers and creators are known for hosting live samples of their work. These do not need to be big stadium sized events, but a gathering of friends and you presenting your work can also be a social media tool. Promote the event to local followers (host it on Landis or something free and open to the public), ask someone to video your reading (a friend who has the best social media skills), post the video on your social media as a sample of your work and access to the link to absorb the whole story.
Make it personal: film one-on-one videos of you explaining your creation process and why the story was important to write and post it on your social media accounts, linking your viewers to the story (link's in the bio, folks)
Ask friends for blurbs, retweets, and testimonials. Ask one of your friends to be a hype-person for your story.
Live tweet, Snapchat or Instastory your inspiration: If your original fiction inspiration was a television series which airs live weekly or is accessible on Netflix, plan a viewing party and live tweet the episode. Invite friends over and tweet together or go solo. If you are watching something which is airing live (such as Grey's Anatomy) be sure to check out who is also tweeting during the commercial breaks and retweet, comment back, and discuss theories. These could become new followers.

Don't Forget: