What the hell is a platform anyway?

With all the buzzwords related to internet marketing these days, it’s no wonder people get confused. Blogs, blog posts, podcasts, hashtags, status updates, WIP (work in progress, so you know) likes, unlikes, follows, unfollows, bitly your urls, hootesuite, subscribe, unsubscribe, friend, unfriend and tag (you’re it).

Wow! It’s enough to make any newbie want to angrily smash their computer to smithereens.

Get a platform, we keep hearing. Build a good marketing platform and the wave of gold will flow right into your living room and saturate your pockets. But, what the hell is a platform anyway, you ask? Can I stand on it? Will it hold me up? How do I build one?

Let me start by saying I’m no online marketing guru. I’ve been wading around in this tsunami wave of confusion since December, 2011, and I don’t have all the answers. But I have done a lot of reading on the subject, experimented with many social media marketing vehicles, and the misty waters have started to clear a little.

And I’ve learned one thing. If you don’t have an online platform, that is a combination of different but interconnected online marketing strategies designed to drive traffic to your website to close the deal, you stand a good chance of drifting far out to sea and getting obliterated by that mammoth tidal wave of internet information.

So, let’s get to the platform part, supposedly the reason for this blog post. Figure out the cornerstones of your platform and stick with them. Don’t get distracted by all the offers you’re bombarded with daily on how to get rich quick using the internet. Most of them are scams.

If you’re a writer like myself you’ll soon realize that being successful in this business requires a lot of hard work. You can’t just write that mangum opus, toss it out on Amazon and sit back while the dough rolls in. Oh no.

Let’s presume you have a good book and of course a good cover. How do you get the word out? There are tons of ways. Here are just a few websites devoted to creating an online presence.

Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Myspace, LibraryThing, Shelfari, RedRoom, Crimespace, Friendster, Digg, Triberr, The Novel Blog, The Kindle Book Review, Author Media, Night Owl Reviews, The Book Designer, Step by step self publishing, World Literary Cafe, Indie Reader, Kindle Nation, Pixel of Ink, Digital Book Today, Book Buzzer, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+ (rumored to be a Facebook killer), Indie Author Success, Amazon forums and on and on.

I’m only scratching the surface here. There are hundreds more I’m sure.

Out of all these online platform options, which ones do you pick? You ultimately have to decide but I can tell you what a few successful author friends of mine have done. I can tell you what I’ve learned from them and what I plan on regarding and disregarding.

One author friend of mine, a mystery writer, uses Facebook almost exclusively for marketing. That’s right, just Facebook. He’s joined a number of groups, has a couple thousand friends and spends probably four or five hours a day on the world’s biggest social media website. How much does he make? Well I can’t tell you exactly, but I have a pretty good idea by watching his rankings and listening to some of his boasting. An indie author like myself, he probably pulls in on average about $2,000 a month, spread across five titles.

Not a fortune by any stretch but a tidy little monthly income.

You’re probably thinking, yeah, but he’s probably been working as a writer for five or six years. If you did, you’d be wrong. He’s been an indie author for about two years. He doesn’t post blogs, doesn’t blog tour, doesn’t have a lot to do with Twitter and doesn’t spend a dime on marketing.

Would that single-post platform work for you? Who knows. Would it work for me? Who knows. You have to figure out what your platform is going to be and work it. It’s going to be unique for everyone depending on their likes and dislikes and their unique personality.

I’ll tell you what my platform, or virtual house, is. I am using five marketing tools: Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, blog posts and website ( another author friend who’s been writing for about three years earns about $2,000 a month using those five pillars).

I told you that to tell you this; figure out what works for you in terms of a platform and stick with it. In actuality the life of an Indie author is probably thirty per cent writing and seventy per cent marketing ( someone once said that but I just can’t remember who right now).

So if you don’t like marketing and you want to be successful, you better start liking it (and I’m not talking about a Facebook like either).

And another thing: Even if you do establish a good platform, built on a solid foundation, there’s no guarantee of success in the indie author world. Luck plays a huge part I’m afraid. There is a lot of trash out there that is selling very well, a lot of treasures that are largely undiscovered.

Art is subjective. What’s trash to one person is a treasure to someone else.

But if you do a dozen effective marketing things each day, you increase your chances of becoming one of the lucky ones.

And one last thing. There is no fool-proof patented marketing formula for indie author success. Trends change rapidly. What was effective last month might be garbage today.

So think outside the box.

Onward and upward!