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When one of indie kid lit author Cat Michaels’ books wins an award, she doesn’t just pose for a grip and grin at the awards banquet. Michaels, who has won four book awards in the past two years, makes sure her audience hears the good news, too.

For example, when her Sweet T and the Turtle Team was named the best environment category book for children by the Literary Classics Book Awards, Michaels documented her week at the organization’s conference and awards festivities through photos. The marketing-savvy writer turned the images into social media shares, a blog post, and even a video.

Winning is good, but it’s not enough

By Naomi Nakashima

Installing a well-planned and thought out chatbot can invite your audience to engage with your page in a whole new way. Naomi Nakashima goes into detail about the changes to Facebook marketing, including how building a chatbot into your Facebook strategy can help you connect with your audience.

Below is an excerpt from Naomi’s post.

Using Facebook to market your writing is not only relatively easy, but it’s inexpensive and (better yet) it’s effective.

PLUS, THERE ARE SOME BENEFITS TO MARKETING YOUR WRITING BUSINESS ON FACEBOOK THAT OTHER PLATFORMS CAN’T OFFER:

A writer in the modern era will likely have some relationship with photography, and may decide to get involved in photo creation and marketing as another aspect of creation and monetizing.

We started this discussion in my post, Can You Make (And Even Sell) Your Own Photos?

Followers of Joel’s modern-publishing ecosystem are generally authors and writers developing and selling their books and articles. But what about selling photos? How does that happen if you decide to create and sell your photos?

The short answer is: Your photos get found and licensed because of words correctly embedded in them.

However, what is the process? Moreover, where does the photo need to be on the Internet to get “discovered” by a willing buyer?

Several of you wrote me, “Tell us how this all works.”

Here is a practical example that illustrates the reality.

Do you pride yourself in multitasking? Many do … are you one of them? For decades, multitasking was the mantra for those who wanted to get a lot done. It was believed to be the high achiever’s secret sauce. Something that had to be integrated into your DNA—no matter what.

The question is … should it?

As someone who is a “reformed” multitasker, my reveal is: yup, I got a lot done. But here’s the “but”—sometimes things weren’t as they should have been if I had taken a bit more time AND I was pooped.

Now, those who know me well, know that I sleep less than most—six hours is max for me. I can operate quite well on four and five-hour sleep days. And usually do. And, I’m an early morning person—four and five in the AM is quite common for me to start my day.

This past weekend, my husband said to me as I was working on a couple of chapters for a client on our deck,

“I see how you do this all—you completely tune things out. You are myopic. You get that something is out in the peripheral, trying to get your attention, but until you are done with the task you are working, you ignore it.”

Yup, he was right. That’s me. He was the peripheral that AM and was chewing over a column in the New York Times that he wanted to read to me. Right then.

I ignored him until I finished the chapter I was working on. Then, I gave him my attention, “Tell me what you wanted to say.”

It bugged him that I didn’t drop what I was doing—or at least acknowledge him, give him some kind of OK to continue to talk to me. I didn’t … I needed to complete my other task.

A few years ago, Psychology Today showed that “Multi-tasking is a myth. You are really task-switching, and it’s costing you time.” It added, “If you do a lot of switching in a day, it can add up to a loss of 40% of your productivity.” Holy Moly, that was in 2012. And it’s today as well.

The belief is: When you handle more than one task at a time you save time and you are more productive.

The truth is: Multitaskers can’t and don’t say NO … they are the old reliable of a team, even when the team only consists on one.

As indie authors, so much of our work and efforts go into online marketing, and content on the web. With that in mind, here are some tools (both free and paid) that can help you build your platform and promote your books.

If you’ve hung around the indie sphere long enough, then the audio boom isn’t news. The question is, are you capitalising on it? Starting an author podcast is work, but it’s good work that will reap benefits for the long term. Author member Holly Lyne is here to teach us how to start an author podcast.