I understand why people don’t get enthusiastic about platform building. Writers want to—shocker--write, and then (maybe) spend time talking about their writing journey. But building a blog? Tweeting? Volunteering to be a guest contributor to local radio stations all in the hopes of impressing literary agents?

“If I did that, I wouldn’t have time to write!” is something I hear writers often say. BUT…
Building your writer platform means increasing your visibility, reach and network in the marketplace. It means creating channels through which you have the ability to sell books. The planks of platform include a successful blog, social media, article writing, public speaking, and more. In today’s publishing environment, nonfiction authors need platform to get the attention of publishers, whereas fiction authors simply want platform, as it will increase their value.

While creating a platform is not something writers generally get excited about in the morning (“Today, I’m gonna build my platform! I’M SO HAPPY!!!!”), I often tell people that there are definite upsides to the endeavor.
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Here are 5 off the top of my head:

Whether you're published traditionally, seeking representation, self-published, or just thinking about writing a book, you should have a website. It doesn't have to be fancy or complicated. All you need is a place that is uniquely yours outside of a third-party social media site. 

One of the biggest reasons to have a website is to make it easy for potential readers, agents, and publishers to find you. It's your chance to show exactly who you are as a writing professional and share your thoughts.

Regardless of whether you build your website yourself or hire someone else to build and maintain it, there is certain content you'll want to have. 

Let’s say you have a book out and want to promote it. So you contact a website and offer to write a free guest post (or several) for them. (The example below follows blogging, but you can also use these patterns for video, podcast, etc.)

In exchange for providing the free content, you have some requests:

• You want your column(s) to be accompanied by your book cover
• You want your column(s) to be accompanied by your headshot
• You want your column(s) to be accompanied by your bio, with a link in the bio that will redirect readers to a buy page for the book — Amazon or IndieBound or whatever you ask