[Before we start patting each other’s back, have you followed 10 new people yet?]

Today’s author platform task is multi-tiered. First, you need to post the results of your poll. It can probably be automated with Buffer or whatever tool you use, but consider going back one by one to personalize each post. This engagement is the interactive part I tend to forget or gloss over. It’s an ideal time to start or continue a conversation! Take advantage of it. Ask people what they think of results, if they are surprised, if there was an option you should have included but didn’t, etc. Keep this engagement ball a-rolling.

I realize this will take some time, so when you’re done, today’s official task will be an easy one.

Day 21 is celebrating or sharing a friend’s success WHILE being a resource for your followers. Double duty!

Let’s get friendly. Time to celebrate others while also helping others. You can:

• Share a friend’s website or book launch information with details on why your readers need to know about it
• Recommend a fave website or resource you use regularly with why it’s great/useful
• Offer a link with details explaining why something is helpful to you as a writer/parent/whatever fits in your brand
• Offer detail on a helpful site or resource they might not have heard of yet, or a part of a familiar site they might not know exists

This is different than the #writerslift we did last week; although it might lift up a fellow author, it’s more a sharing of information vs a shout-out. It’s timely (compared to saying “thanks” which can happen any time), and newsworthy (it’s something you are reporting about).

Feel free to send several tweets that celebrate a bunch of people’s work – but keep it to one person per tweet unless it’s something they did together. No sense clogging up feeds with group tags.

For example: recently I found a free template for a book proposal, created and offered by a lit agency. Sure, it was a template for them so their submissions were less sucky, but hey, free resource. I made a post and included the link along with a shout-out of appreciation to the agent and the house (tagging them both), and that tweet got a pretty high number of likes and RTs—including the agent herself as well as the agency.

Will that agent want to take me on? No, she doesn’t even rep kidlit, it’s not why I did it. The point was to help others. It’s good karma to boot. I got a bunch of honest interactions and appreciations from it. Goodness comes from well-intended posts.

What I didn’t do at the time was share the post across all my social media. Lesson learned (and one reason I created this challenge!). I hope to cross-promote every tweet, or most, from now on. That’s another plug for automation service!

Anyway, I love seeing posts from authors supporting authors, don’t you? Some authors are really good at this! It projects such a positive image.

Recap: Today, uplift someone by sharing a resource and thanking the person that offers it. Or highlight a friend’s small business, service, etc. Consider creating the post on a Canva-like site to make it pretty. Post it on all your media.

Ensure the timing is good. Don’t post it right after or right before another big post like I did at the time, or it’ll get lost. Had I waited on that book proposal post, until after the dust settled on the other popular tweet, it probably would have doubled the amount of likes.