1020 Words About How Writers Can Use YouTube

If you’re a writer, how should you use YouTube?

Well, I believe YouTube is best thought of as social video, a conversation between you, the writer, and those who want to hear what you have to say.

Sound familiar? It’s probably the same advice you’ve heard about how to engage your fans via various other social media platforms. So while YouTube looks like TV on a smaller screen, it is not. YouTube is another social media environment, arguably the most personal and effective one for growing your audience through authentic discussion.

Publishers are encouraging authors to create book trailers, essentially video advertisements, for their books, and many of these are great (my favorite is the one for John Hodgman’s book “That is All“). But it’s more effective to engage your audience in a conversation over time, rather than trying to rally a community at the last minute when your book is published.

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