As a published author one of the questions that I get asked all the time when I attend writing events is how do you promote your writing online. The answer to the question is easy, use social media. Thanks to the invention of the internet it has become much easier to promote yourself and your writing, social media and writing sites have become incredibly popular today. Social media is allowing writers a platform that was not available before, it allows people who write poetry, fiction and non-fiction to network with other writers as well as being able to connect with readers and promote their work.

When it comes to social media promotion you have to manage your time wisely, the last thing you want to do is to spend all day trying to promote your work on sites that bring you no exposure when you could be spending that time on your writing.

Have a look at ways to use social media to promote your writing.

You can promote all of your writing through social media, this could be an e-book, stories, poems, articles or even a book that you have just self-published. By using social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Linkedln, you can promote your work through links, where you promote your work and provide a link for people to go and visit your writing. It is not just new writers who do this; published authors are using social media all the time to promote their books from Katie Price to well-known celebrities from Hollywood.

The best social media sites to promote your work is Facebook and Twitter in terms of volume, these social networking sites have the biggest population when it comes to social media sites, if you learn to use them effectively, by using hashtags and other tools, then you and your writing could get noticed.

There are other sites that you can use to gain exposure of your work, there are writing networking sites out there that can help you turn your pen name into a brand and get exposure for your writing work or a novel that you are trying to promote, sites such as http://www.urwrite.com allow you to engage with writers like you and people who are interested in the writing industry from readers, publishers to people who just love to network with writers.

Let's have a look at how to set up your account to help with your promotion

Setting Up Your Accounts

When setting up your social media account, use your pen name; remember you are promoting your writing so you should set up any social media accounts with your pen name to keep the name in people's minds.

Make sure you describe about what you do on your profile, mention the book you are writing if you are writing a book and mention a website where you work is displayed, for example if you are using the writing social networking site http://www.urwrite.com to display your work then mention this in your profile. Put in your profile that all your work can be found on that site. Remember you are promoting your work and your brand so you want a website where people can see your work.

Promoting without you and your work without spamming

One of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to promote their work is to spam people, this is the last thing you want to do. If you spam people then you are damaging your reputation. You need to engage with people, share your experience, talk to people about your work and learn about them, make it two way traffic; you do not want to go around everywhere spamming websites with links to your work without engaging with your audience.

Engaging Your Readers To Promote Your Work

Remember, the best way to get people to notice your work is to engage with them, make them excited about your work but at the same time, become their friend. Like their status, share their tweets and become active in their social network, by doing this you will become successful and get people to notice your work and promote your brand.