Leveraging AI Tools and LinkedIn to Boost Your Author Platform
A 7:30 am Zoom call with a member of my authors group last week proved quite valuable. The reason for the early time was it was mid day where he lives in Ireland but I’m in Chicago 6 hrs behind. After our last call podcast host, strategic coach and expert authority accelerator Alastair McDermott took stock of my obvious shortcomings and kindly offered to help me use Linkedin (and the like) more effectively- in turn giving me sage advice for what up until this moment I’ve not known, or done wrong.
Once apprised of the situation it took him under a minute to feed the necessary descriptive info into AI ChatGPT and spit out a book cover better than any of the ones I’ve been laboring over with a book designer. A series of emails and mockups hadn’t yielded a graphic that elicited a “wow” and now in 30 seconds we attained near “wow” and for free.
It needs to be refined but a new path has been set.
Dinosaur that I am I tend to resist new technology. I’ve never played a video game (considering them an affront to my beloved pinballs) and was the last kid on the block to get a cellphone and laptop. I see a parallel here to when I worked in LA in the 80’s as a session musician. At the time electronic drums and sampling were in their infancy. A producer I was working with suggested I learn to program drum machines which I was combative towards until he made the point that some weren’t resisting and I’d be left behind unless I knew how, so embraced it pouting all the way.
I never liked it much and felt it was cheating but he was right, I’d have worked less without those skills. AI feels the same. I hate the idea of artists losing work to a soulless machine and know in my heart that it’s not how things should be done. It plays havoc between my principles and sentiments but there’s no arguing the results. I’m in awe of what was created in under a minute. Better in every way than what we’ve been laboring over for a month on the clock.
Does AI’s enormous capacity for dangerous misuse balance the unarguable results? IMO the quality of music declined when the machines took over and knowing your instrument and song craft became less important than knowing how to copy and paste or use autotune. Will the same happen in book marketing? It’s happening now in real time so we’ll see soon enough.
Technology has been disrupting markets forever but this is just scary.
Adding to my new dilemma were additional pearls of wisdom Alastair
shared on how to post on Linkedin with the best algorithmic results. Here’s five more suggestions from him:
- Post within the platform, especially with shorter posts like 500 Words. I was linking to my website but leaving Linkedin is frowned upon by the Linkedin overlords. Avoid.
- Don’t tag people that aren’t going to respond. It lowers your bot rating when they don’t and therefore better to leave blank.
- Provide more context and show why it’s important.
- Keep posts educational and entertaining.
- Have a call to action at the end of each post.
Alan Lake
Chef/percussionist/writer/
All good points but I feel technology has ruined me. I can’t spell like I used to and I don’t use my brain enough because all the info is right there. However, we need to embrace it or get left behind.
snooze you lose
Alan, glad to be of some small help. Your writing is fantastic and I wanted to help you get it in front of more people.
Unfortunately, we have to “play the game” the way the social media algorithm wants it played.
A.I. is like a microwave. You shouldn’t cook everything with it, but it’s a very useful tool to have available.
I look forward to seeing your new cover!
Alastair.
always ready to put a new crayon in the box