The return on your investment of time and energy spent on building an audience platform depends largely on an author’s strategy. I’ve observed too many authors spinning their wheels with the challenges of the technology, losing sight of the objectives, and missing opportunities to learn more how to market their own books.

Here are some tactics that lead to epic failures in social media strategies for authors.

Only go on social media to push your message.

Focus on upping the number of followers, friends, tweeps, and connections.

Do not engage in social discussions.

Post your blog on your website. Then tweet it, buffer it, pin it, and post it on Google +, Facebook and LinkedIn. Then just walk away.

Don’t read any one else’s blog.

Don’t like or reply to anyone else except through tagging or personal messages.

Don’t bother to subscribe to other professional writers’ blogs.

Don’t leave comments or engage in a critical discussion with a larger community of thinkers and writers.

Here’s the rub. Such a strategy becomes self-defeating in today’s transmedia environment. If you operate under this communication model of pushing your voice out to the multitudes, the broadcasting of messages gets old fast and soon will be perceived to be spam. The push model of one-to-many messages doesn’t work very long before it gets drowned out in a multi-to-multi-point communication network system. The give and take, push and pull, and dynamic engagement of readers and writers is the secret to a successful social media strategy.

So how can an author succeed in the implementation of a social media strategy?

In the world of transmedia today, an author builds an audience platform through authentic engagement with book-buying readers.  The author who can’t be bothered to subscribe to others’ blogs is deluded to think others will subscribe to theirs without real engagement. If the author’s electronic persona is one delivering monologues to minions, who can’t participate in dialogue, it won’t take six months before the writer is iced out by those who love what they do and work as professionals in the business of books.

Take the “me” out of your social media strategy. For every blog post or status update about you and your writing, make the next four about something, anything, other than you and promoting your book. Put the “social” back into your strategy to build an audience platform. It isn’t about the quantity, but the quality, of your connections.