For the longest time, I have been working on marketing my book. I’ve been writing as well but I must say my focus has been building relationships online to increase the public’s awareness of me as a writer.One of the ways I have been attempting to increase my status is by creating viable content for social media. That is much more time-consuming than you would think.I must say my media presence is larger than it was in May, though I am nowhere near where I need to be. Here are five suggestions for increasing the amount of viable content you create.One: Memes. These little darlings everyone loves them. I think everyone loves them, I love them. They take the idea that a picture is worth a thousand words and we ad words. To me memes are one frame stories, they give you an image and a punchline. They are flashier than flash fiction. Try your hand at creating a meme or two it’s not as hard as you would think.Two: Blog. This is not as easy as it sounds. I find once a week challenging. Eventually, I may have to go every other week or even once a month. The sad thing is I know I could blog on current events in the current political climate in the world, but I can’t bring myself to adding that much negative energy into the already cesspool laden social media world. At one time, I taught government and economics. I would consider myself knowledgeable on both subjects. There was a time when you could say something and the worse you might get is some angry letters. In today’s climate, one wrong statement and you get death threats from one or both sides. I’m too old for that.Three: Author Interviews. I like this, I had been interviewed by a couple of different writers for their blogs and I found their questions probing but most of them; identical. I stole an idea from the actors’ studio, just to be clear they stole the idea before me, but I came up with ten questions that were different. Now writers who are interested can answer my ten questions and I will post them on Independent Voice, promoting them for at least a month. If I feel writers are cheating, I can always come up with ten more questions.Four: Live Video. This is not as easy as it sounds. Anyone who has worked on stage or TV knows how hard it is to go in front of a live audience. It’s even harder when you’re operating the camera, the sound, directing the shot, and trying to string intelligible sentences together. All this is made even harder if you’re in a country that you can’t live stream out of. I am not going to mention the country.Five: Recorded Video. This is much easier, especially in my current situation. Connie’s brother-in-law Ricky gave me the idea for travel log or a book about our journeys. I’m not sure a book about our misadventures would read well, but I thought videos would be great. That led to the creation of “#old people backpacking” a series of short videos shot by Connie and I as we explore the different countries we happen to be in any given day. I will say we need to get a go Pro and a selfie stick instead of trying to use my iPad all the time. I think it will be much easier to use.Helping you to break into social media… These are just five quick ideas I thought of over the past few months to create more meaningful content for social media. Of course, the goal of creating all this content is to increase the public’s awareness of my brand, eventually hoping to sell more books. When I say this aloud it sounds like a vicious circle. Unfortunately, for the time being, I think it’s a circle I need to be in. Now I’m going to go try to finish a chapter in my second book.