Platform is not a place. It’s not your turf. Platform is not a pipe-dream either, a fantasy of what author success is going to look after it is magically transformed by you writing a book.

When it comes right down to it, you can tell whether or not you have a platform by what is on your daily to-do list. And others can tell whether you have a platform or not by how much influence you bring to the table.

Your platform should never be the only thing you do. Because if you are a writer, you are supposed to be writing. But at certain times namely at start-up, consolidation/transition, and book-launch, platform will become a major focus of a writer’s energies.

I teach a class, Discover Your Specialty & Launch Your Platform that is designed to help make the start-up phase of platform development more manageable and less expensive. This class is really two classes compressed into six weeks and it is now available to writers of all genres. Because there is one irrefutable truth in publishing right now: whether you are self-published or traditionally published, you need to build and maintain a solid marketing platform to become visible and sell books. And even if you don’t plan to become an author at this time, writers of all stripes understand that the size of their platform is becoming increasingly crucial to their becoming and staying hirable.

All of this work takes energy and energy is a creative person’s most valuable commodity. In this class you will also learn how to manage your energy so that you can sustain enough of it to be able to write, sell, market your work and yourself, and continue learning in the long haul. Because writing is a marathon, not a sprint.

Which brings us to the best way to go about all of this and that is by writing your way to a clear plan. Once you have the plan, all you have to do is break it down into to-do steps. But many writers never create a plan. They start blogging or join a tribe of like-minded others in good faith that their platform will emerge out of this experience. And sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t.

Or they look at someone else’s plan and decide it’s not for them. That’s because someone else’s plan isn’t for you. You need your own plan, custom-fit to what you want and need and what your audience wants and needs from you.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Platform is what you DO with what you have to offer (see my full definition here). If you want to build trust, authority, and influence, you need to stand on your own two feet before you start partnering with others. And then partner wisely when you do partner. Because if you don’t partner wisely, you can undermine all the hard work you’ve already done.

Ever since my book, Get Known Before the Get Deal came out two years ago, I’ve been listening to fiction writers lamenting how none of my platform advice applies to them. But if you are a fiction writer ready to acknowledge that platform development and practice are just as important to your future success as the next writer, then I want to work with you. Because I’ve done my homework, and I can tell you that healthy platform habits are just as important for fiction writers as they are for every type of writer.

Don’t be confused. Platform is not going to take the place of any of the other important work you do: writing, selling your work, and continuing to invest and learn for the sake of your career. So if you are looking for magic formulas and short-cuts, stop, and get ready to dig deeper than that. Get ready to serve from a more authentic place.

I have been empowering writers who earn money writing, partner wisely with others, and build solid platforms for almost ten years now. I coach them but they do the work and the most successful folks do the work willingly and joyfully. So attitude really is everything.

If you are ready to take your writing career more seriously, I’d like to work with a few more writers who are ready to build their successful platforms beginning September 8th. This is going to be a really fun, challenging, and expansive six weeks. I hope you will join us. Please contact me if you have any questions. All of the class details are right here.

~ Photo by George E. Norkus

If you just crank out content, they might come for a while but they will eventually move on until they find a nice, cozy context. Or a context that produces the results and benefits they are looking for.

I’ve said it before (somewhere, I can’t find it at the moment), content might be king, but context is queen.

And, as is so often the case, the queen usually wins.

Dan Blank wrote an interesting post today about how newspapers used to be a service. I asked for his thoughts on newspapers as a context vs. content producers.

Because, for me, newspapers used to be a context delivered to your door. But now they have to compete with so many other contexts that can be delivered in so many ways through your phone or iPad or laptop or whatever, that newspapers, which have been slow or clunky in making the transition, are losing the edge they once had in luring us in and keeping us nice and happy on a Sunday morning.

And we have SO many types of context these days. It’s like a circus of choices.

Check out these writer-centric examples:

A Writer’s Conference is a context (Look at what Digital Book World is doing)

The Bookstore is a context (Look at Amazon or Powell’s)

Magazines are now a context (Like Writer’s Digest)

School was always a context but the extension of schools using distance learning give every school more reach (the Vermont College’s MFA program comes to mind)

Heck, even my bank is now a worldwide context (and every other bill I pay each month has their own context, as well)

But comes the context rub: with so many contexts competing for our energy and attention, some of them are going to fade away. The average human being simply cannot care for her children, maintain a career, enjoy personal intimate relationships, and indulge in a few real life simple pleasures if she spends every second of her time online jumping from context to context.

And that’s if she can remember all those passwords.

Now notice that this post is directed to publishers and new media. It’s not directed to writers because I don’t suggest individual writers attempt to create contexts of the size and scope that corporations and businesses create.

I got out of the context business last year and it’s been a huge relief. Guy Gonzalez got into the context business last year but he is a full-time employee and I presume he makes a decent salary for all of his tireless and amazing hard work.

Writers, you have to remember what business you are in. You simply can’t compete with huge corporations or even-medium sized businesses that create intricate, technologically sophisticated contexts.

For me, I’m in the writing business. I write. I teach writing and writing-related skills. I speak on writing and writing-related topics. I am actually something of a creative career expert since I’ve been doing this stuff for almost a decade.

Therefore, when I create contexts, they are necessarily temporary. They are temporary because I don’t have a staff. I can’t afford a staff. And it takes a staff to build and maintain a context (for example, here’s a roundup of the bloggers for Writer’s Digest).

I’ll say more about ways that writers can use context strategies for success soon. But in the comments this time, I’d love to you list all the online contexts you visit in the average week. And then tell us if your time investment is sustainable.

Wouldn’t it be fascinating if we all shared this? (Feel free to use general rather than specific terms, if you prefer.) Context-friendly strategies for writers, next time.

~ Photo by Dustin Diaz