Platform Building: How to Fail

Image via CrunchBase

You got that coveted three-book deal with Penguin. You know that to ensure success, you have to build a platform, that is find potential customers. So you fire up your twitter feed, add people onto google+ and have exceeded one thousand friends on facebook. You set up HooteSuite, and you think you're in business.

English: Google+ wordmark (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But you fail. Why? Maybe it's because you:

1. post the same feed to all your social networks, so those who are linked to you see the same message over and over and over again.
2. highjack the feed with post after picture after re-post. Have you ever had a friend who constantly calls, texts, drops by? Can get tiring
3. never respond to anyone else's posts
4. never show the personal side of your life--just your livelihood

Image via CrunchBase

Platform building isn't about spamming the world. Until you're Jerry Jenkins, Justin Beiber or Julia Roberts, no one will care that your latest YA romance about poltergeists has just been released, unless the reader is a fourteen-year-old girl who followed the Twilight saga. Maybe.

Case in point. I run this fabulous blog. When I check the traffic sources viewing it, I discover only people from facebook or from search engines read it. Never from other social media sites. With my twitter and google+ accounts, I do what I said not to do. I only post that I have a new blog up, and the end result is no traffic.

However, on facebook, I interact with my "friends." I read the posts, laugh at the jokes and respond. Many of these people have become, if not real friends, more than just names. Those people visit the blog from time to time. And when I'm really lucky, share it.


Think smart about networking. Simply seeing your name scroll by will do nothing to build your platform.

What other things do we do that fail to build up our network?