Authors and Social Media: Friends or Foe? Authors get a lot of mixed advice when it comes to social media. Let’s talk about different author approaches and tips and tricks to make social media work for you. In this post, I’m combining notes from two panels. From the titular panel, Francesca T. Barbini, Gareth Powell, and Georgina Kamsika discussed if social media was our friend… or our foe. And in Social Media: Tips and Tricks, Brenda Noiseux, Stevie Finegan, Lydia Gittens, and Pablo Defendini shared their experience with us. Top 3 Things To Know About Social Media Commit to the platform you’re most comfortable with If you try to do them all — have a team Pay attention to what you’re looking for: connection or sales Be yourself. Be authentic. Should You Have Separate Private and Public Accounts? As I’ve mentioned before, and with all things writer-related: it depends. If you have a business or family that you want to keep out of the public eye, it’s a good strategy. Otherwise, it’s up to personal preference. Some people don’t, some people can’t — their public life IS their private life, and some people… are glad to know where the split is. You should look at your profile and see if what appeals to your current friends/followers is what appeals to the audience you want to build for your work. If they’re in alignment, you’re good. If not? You might want to consider a split. Best Methods To Engage Others Honesty Offering help online Feeding positivity Twitter polls Acting like it’s your own personal pub — and just chat with people Quote and tag people who are talking about you! Note: Things like #authorLifts (twitter hashtags, where you tag people and have a big follow loop thing) are going to find you writers — not readers. It’s a way to game your account. Most of the people on that hashtag are looking for followers, not friends. But! Many writers are also readers. Look to find your community and friends. How Many Hashtags Should I Use? On Instagram? Around 30 On Twitter? Around 3 On Tumblr? Only the 1st 5 show. 5 Tips To Make Twitter More Useful A tweet stays in a feed for 17 minutes on average. Tweeting every 2 hours (assuming you have something to share) is recommended. More before a big event to up your traction. People see more tweets from those they’ve interacted with recently. Pin a tweet with your intro/link to your latest book When you have more than 1000 followers, you’ll need to start making twitter lists to keep track of groups. Suggested lists: Close friends, worklist, local emergency feeds, mentors (people you look up to), BookTwitter, Etc Curate your list. You don’t have to follow people who don’t interest you, who you don’t think will be interested in your product, your book, your blog. Don’t hesitate to block someone who is trolling you or thinks twitter is a dating site. NOTE: people don’t know if you’ve muted them. So, if you don’t want to hear them, but don’t want to offend them, this might be the way to go. 3 Facebook Tips Facebook Ads are more effective than boosts — but pick your target demographic carefully. Personal pages currently have better reach than author pages, even if you reach the friend limit, people can still follow you. Facebook is actively throttling crossposts – especially to Patreon or WordPress – it might be best to put the link in the first comment. 7 Newsletter Tips [If you’ve been following, you might know I both hate email AND have an email newsletter. Some of you are reading this FROM your email!] A mailing list is something that you own. If Facebook shuts down tomorrow, you could still get your content and news to these followers. ListServes, Myspace, even G+ are gone. Internet communities are never guaranteed. Email can be time-consuming but can be very rewarding Try not to send news more than once a month or quarter Email viewers skew to an older demographic Mailchimp is highly recommended [Note: that’s what I use!] Make sure you don’t use words like “freebies” in the title or the email system might dub you ‘spam’ If you send too many emails yourself, the email system might dub you ‘spam’ If you send them out yourself, DO use “BCC” (blind carbon copy), so none of the readers can see the other email addresses — or “Reply All” to them. 3 Snapchat Tips It’s a way to connect, but not necessarily sell to your target audience. In case you are unfamiliar, it’s a chat program that’s mostly used to share pictures with filters and maybe added text. You can chat back and forth with individuals, spend a single snap to a group of people, or share it publicly as a ‘story’. A story will disappear after it’s been watched. Younger demographic Can’t schedule Stories can reach all of your followers Stats To Watch When you start doing social media, there are dozens of numbers for every site you’re working on. Analytics Pages – both for Facebook and Twitter, Youtube has one as well. Demographics – Currently, facebook is the older audience, instagram/snapchat are younger. Likes/Click Rates – see which types of posts do better and if there is a timing component. Try different things and see what resonates best with your audience. Social Media Tools There are tons of tools for social media. Everyone, from solo artists to corporations are using them. A few hints on using tools. If you’re going to schedule your social media, you should still comment and interact outside of the scheduled posts. Remember to consider time zones and viewing habits for different platforms. Try to sound just as personal and authentic in the scheduled tweets as you would if you where live posting. Tools to try TweetDeck – It’s a browser tool, not an app, but you can watch multiple feeds at a time, or a feed based on a single hashtag that’s trending. You can also use it to schedule tweets (like during twitter pitch contests) [I use on occasion.] Unfollow tools are handy Many people follow you, then unfollow as soon as you follow back to boost their own “follower-to-unfollowers” ratio. Making themselves look more popular. They’re users who forget you within a week. Feel free to unfriend them. Hootsuite – great for cross-platform scheduling Picmonkey – photo editing Trello – project management tool [I’ve been trying this intermittently. Mostly when I’m juggling several projects.] Slack – Chat website/app that can share files. Good if you’re coordinating a team Falcon.io – Costs money but is very handy for a campaign Canva – lots of free stock pics (and premium paid ones) [I use for my preview pics] Facebook Groups have scheduling, as do Pages — but pages just made it an annoying option to access that’s easier done on the PC than the phone. Old school – a folder with a bunch of pics, or a list of tweets to share later 4 Ways Social Media is Bad For Authors Now, before we decide if social media is the answer, let’s acknowledge the downsides. It’s a huge time sink It’s so active, your feed is rarely still When you’re not feeling social — it’s draining. For extroverts, you might find yourself not wanting to go out You’ll find yourself comparing your progress to other writers’ successes. And that can be very discouraging Should Authors Do Social Media? If you don’t want to, don’t. The resentment of being forced to do it will bleed through and you won’t come across as genuine. It can be a useful way to get to know editors and agents in the field. But remember this is a small field, everyone knows everyone, so be careful who you offend. If you do, “Look after your name, and your name will become your currency.” Your brand IS your name when you’re a writer. Everything you do will reflect on you. Tweets from 10 years ago regularly come up in the news. Debate if you want to politicize your career. Many people do. Many people avoid it like the plague. Decide if making a political stand is the right choice for you — and the choice you can live with. If someone upsets you, and you have thousands of followers, be careful what you say. You don’t want to abuse your power and have all of your followers descend upon some small-time person with maybe 20 followers. You won’t come out clean — you’ll look like a bully. Are you the type of poster/tweeter who shares rants? Or well-researched articles? Or both? Only you can decide where you spend your time and energy. And what sort of image you choose to share. Let me know what your favorite social media platform is and what tools you like! Let me know if there’s anything I missed! Even with two panels, there was only so much we could cover!