Oh, My Gosh! Do I Even Recognize Social Media Marketing?

According to Watch for These 2026 Social Media Trends by Lacy Phillips at Jane Friedman big things happened in social media while I was working in the kitchen or meditating, doing a little yoga, or going for a walk. It's kind of unrecognizable.

I am of the writing group that needed to be careful about social media use. We're those people who aren't big enough to hire professionals to handle our social media for us, so we have to be careful about how much time we give to it because we're actually working at something else. 

Give this some thought: comic Leanne Morgan is supposed to have got her big break, because she hired some guys to do some social media marketing for her, not because she did it herself. She was writing material and performing.

For the average, more or less, writer, whatever we're doing for social media is never enough. Or, at least, it doesn't stay enough for long. We started with blogs in the '90s, then went on to Facebook, then went on to Twitter then side stepped to BlueSky. By that point, it was obvious that whatever you did wasn't going to be that useful for long, so you needed to think long and hard about what you did next because you knew you couldn't expect much.

I went on to Pinterest instead of Instagram, because I wanted something I could use for archived images and material from Original Content. Instagram appeared to be only for new material. That probably was a mistake. I don't think Pinterest has been that useful for me (though I did do it to collect images of clothes for characters I was writing about), but it's probably too late for Instagram. 

I was able to wrap my head around a few of the things Phillips wrote about in her Friedman article.

What I Might Be Able to Use from Phillips' Friedman Article:

• Write about yourself, not just your work, across platforms. I find this to be a crap shoot. Maybe you have to post about cooking without wheat a lot to get some attention? On the other hand, it's true that on Facebook my hundreds of friends are usually unmoved when I post about a new publication, but a core group comes out for travel and cooking pictures. Also, I posted an apron question on Facebook yesterday and got some good responses. Posted the same question on BlueSky where aprons evidently don't exist and no one understood what I was talking about. I'm not sure how much time I should be spending on writing about myself across platforms, even though I don't have that many platforms.
• Use keywords instead of hashtags. Aren't keywords hashtags without the hashtag?
• Pinterest is supposed to be coming back somehow. As I said earlier, I'm already on Pinterest, so I added an objective about working with that to my 2026 branding goal. I had been thinking for a while that I should do something there about my Medium publications, anyway. I should at least watch this movie on the subject. It lasts a whole hour!

"It's Not Over Til You're Dead"

What are writers, even traditionally published ones, to do when sales don't materialize for a new book? I've read more than once that we should suck it up and move on, 'cause it is over.

Maybe that advice is outdated.

In 2012, author Lloyd Devereaux Richards published Stone Maidens with Thomas & Mercer, one of Amazon's imprints. (I have no idea how Amazon imprints work. Something to research in the future.) Evidently that was it. There was not much action as far as sales go.

Then his daughter created a TicTok account for the book eight days ago, with a video. Her call to action, and we're told all our promotional efforts should have a call to action, was, "I'd love for him to get some sales."

The book leaped to No. 1 on Amazon's Serial Killer Thriller list. The number of Amazon reviews has shot up, too. And there is talk of movie inquiries.

This may just be a random, wonderful fluke rather than some kind of hopeful model for other writers. But it does suggest that Jennifer Coolidge is right, and "It's not over til you're dead."

Time Management Tuesday: Let Me Refresh You About Tweetdeck

This past Saturday afternoon I sat out on my deck with my laptop and watched Greg Pincus's Maximizing Your Social Media Presence and Effectiveness, which he conducted at the end of May for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. You have to be a member to watch the archived workshop, and it will only be available for a limited time. So I will tell you it was a very decent intro/overview to the major social media networks and how writers can use them. If you are a writer (or anyone else) new to social media and have a chance to hear him speak on the subject, it would definitely be worth your time to do so.

While discussing Twitter, Pincus mentioned Tweetdeck, which I am very fond of. I was reminded of my two-part Tweetdeck Time Management Tuesday arc from 2015 and decided I'd reconnect readers with it. Tweetdeck is a huge help with managing the time involved with using Twitter.

Managing The  Beast That Is Twitter With Tweetdeck, Part 1

I really get into detail here on how to use Tweetdeck, because I had to work out all these things when I was learning it. 

A couple of possibly random thoughts:

1. In his talk, Greg Pincus compared Tweetdeck to newspaper columns. In my post, I compared it to a filing system. Use whatever metaphor works for you.
2. In my post I describe how my nephew introduced me to Tweetdeck. He's still active on Twitter, but the last I heard, he wasn't using Tweetdeck anymore. Aunt Gail isn't giving it up until someone finds her something better.

Managing The Beast That Is Twitter With Tweetdeck, Part 2

In this post I described what I was actually using Tweetdeck for and how I was doing it. I'm still doing pretty much all those things. Additionally, I will set up temporary columns for topics that will be of interest to me for a short time. Black History Month and Women's History Month are examples. They both can generate a lot of Twitter information about books during the months when they occur. Whenever I take part in Pidmad, I set up a pitmad column so I can see what other writers are pitching and lend my support to those I find interesting by retweeting them. When these short-term events are over, I delete the column so I'm not overwhelmed with column after column after column.

Realizing you can add and delete special interest columns on Tweetdeck makes it incredibly flexible.

In rereading this I see that six years ago I was repeating tweets a few times a day to increase the chances of them being seen. I haven't done that recently, but now that I've been reminded that I used to do it, I'll start again with some of my tweets.

In conclusion, Tweetdeck is a huge help in managing Twitter both in terms of accessing the content there and posting your own. You can definitely do more with your time using it.

If Authors Aren't Going To Blog How Can They Share Their Work And Generate Interest In It

I have been involved in a Facebook discussion on authors and blogging recently. While I am an obsessive blogger, myself, I don't think it is a necessity for writers. There are far more writer and literary blogs than there are readers to read them, and few people can follow and read any one blog on a regular basis. I think writers are much better off using their time to create and maintain (that means periodically update, people) a traditional, static website where potential readers can quickly and easily find information about them, what kind of writing they do, and where they can find it. That kind of information is often lost in a blog, which should be generating new material regularly. The most recent blog posts may not contain the info seekers are looking for.

In our Facebook discussion, a question arose on how writers can share their work and generate interest in it without blogging. Well, you know me. I have some thoughts on that. I think, therefore I blog.

Be Careful What Work You Share

Writers need to be very careful about "sharing" new work at a website or blog, even their own, because many journals and potential markets consider what they've posted as "published." Those markets, and there are many of them like this, won't consider that work for publication. It's now "previously published," and many places don't accept that kind of work. It doesn't matter how low your readership is, the material is, or at one time was, available to the public.

I never publish my essays and short stories here or at my website, because I want the option of being able to submit them elsewhere. While I was taking part in FlashNaNo2020  last month, I wouldn't even post any of my work at the group's Facebook page, in case doing so meant I'd lost the option to submit it elsewhere. 

I write frequently here about a number of subjects--blogging and time management, for instance--that I might someday want to write something on and submit somewhere. However, I don't expect to be able to publish anything I've posted here as is. I would need to do updating, rewriting, and maybe some new research. I would need to come up with new "original content."

Then How Do You Generate Interest In Your Work?

Well, I haven't made a new book sale in over--well, in quite some time. Clearly, I'm not the one to be giving advice on how to generate interest in your writing work. Not to worry. That won't stop me.

Three things you can try:

• Submit your work to appropriate journals/markets. If you get something published, share that on any social media you're part of. 
• Make good use of social media. I have my Tweetdeck set up with  columns that show me tweets from editors and publications I follow. That's how I learned one of those publications is open to submissions of flash fiction this month, and I just happen to have something to send it. (Here is my second post on how to use Tweetdeck.) I'm a member of Facebook groups related to types of writing I do, such as essays and flash fiction. I could be more active in those, but membership in the essay group led me to submitting a flash memoir to Bending Genres, which eventually published it in its anthology. That got me into print again.
  
• Help other writers by sharing their news on social media. For years before the pandemic, I did the Connecticut Children's Literature Calendar here at this blog. After publishing the calendar, I'd share it over and over again on Twitter, each calendar event getting a tweet. I shared it on Facebook. I got some attention within the New England Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators for that work. Since the pandemic started and public appearances have ended, I've been doing monthly childlit book release posts and tweeting them. Those posts draw the most traffic to my blog these days, meaning they're promoting me, if not my actual work. 
• Helping other writers when you don't have a blog. On Twitter? Follow writers you know and writers who write your kind of work. Retweet their tweets on new publications, awards, etc. On Facebook? Do the same, but share their info instead of retweeting. You don't have to say anything. You don't have to gush about books you haven't read. You're helping these people to extend their reach. It helps you, too, because it gets your Twitter and Facebook info out into the social media streams.
  

Blogging Posts

While thinking about the Facebook discussion I was part of, I searched Original Content to see what I'd covered on this subject in the past. Here are links to more of Gail's thoughts on blogging than you will want to be privy to. Some of these posts go back a while, so some links may not be working. My own words, of course, are timeless.

• 6/5/16  The Weekend Writer: Blogging For Writers
• 3/12/16 Time Management Tuesday: More On Content Marketing For Writers 
• 3/8/15 NESCBWI: Marketing Your Brand
• 10/3/14 Promo Friday: To Blog Or Not To Blog 
• 3/21/14 Are Bloggers Blogging All Wrong? 
• 1/6/14 The Function Of Blogging 
• 11/13/13 Writers, Check Out Kidlitcon Recaps

 

Time Management Tuesday: Staying On Task When You're So Busy Social Distancing

I'm hearing two responses from my writer friends to the social distancing we're going to be doing over the next few weeks. One is that they're going to look at this time at home as an opportunity to get some writing done. Maybe a lot. The other is that recent events have left them unable to concentrate enough to take advantage of this, shall we say, found time.

Here are three things we can do to help us soldier on.

Go Retro And Check In With The News Just Once Or Twice A Day. A Few Times, Tops

We'll begin with a little history lesson: When we had only newspapers, TV, radio, and magazines for the distribution of news, people took this information in at specific times. They might read the paper in the morning or the evening. TV news came in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. Radio news came at the top of the hour. News magazines came out weekly. It wasn't possible to spend hour after hour reading and watching news. News sites weren't struggling to fill 24 hours of air time with content back then and thus searching for opinions and analysis from every person who ever worked in any field even remotely connected with, say, infectious disease, or who had been somewhere near a grocery store in the last twenty-four hours. They weren't printing tweets...any tweets, from anybody.

Yes, arguably we knew less, but, arguably, how much do we need to know? In the case of the present pandemic, we've been hearing about it for weeks, if not a couple of months. We've had a lot of time to prepare. Some of us have been social isolating since last week. We've been advised to continue doing so for another fifteen days. Can we expect something to change so dramatically so fast that we need to be checking in with the news all day long?

Choose some times during the day that will be your news times. Check in then. Use the rest of your time for something else.

Get Some Distance From Social Media And Its Misinformation

People are scared now and often angry. They can't get together with their friends to discuss what's happening...except they can. On Facebook. They can get together with their followers on Twitter and I'm sure on other platforms, as well. They can get emotional support for problems in their lives caused by the coronavirus. They can feel better when people they know share their experiences. Cousins can share a laugh over how hard an eighty-something aunt is taking having to stay home. (Yeah, that was Annette, Mary, and me.)

But for many writers, the bulk of our Facebook friends are just that...Facebook friends. They are people we have connected with in order to create a professional network. They are not people we have ever met in person or are geographically near so we ever will. Spending hour after hour picking up and absorbing their fear may not be the healthiest thing we can be doing now, and it certainly isn't the most time and energy efficient.

On top of that, according to Peter Adams of the News Literacy Project
in an interview on NPR last Saturday, some of those stories our Facebook friends and Twitter followers are sharing are what he calls "misinformation." He even talks about a "misinformation ecosystem." "This pandemic has brought out a really clear picture of the kinds of things that tend to circulate in the misinformation ecosystem, generally...," he says. He goes on to add:

"A lot of what we're seeing is actually, you know, what you would call a kind of cheap fake or a low-tech fake, just copied and pasted claims online going viral across platforms...we're seeing just a lot of text-based claims with - this person is in a position of authority, you know? My sister-in-law works with a man who's married to someone at the CDC who says, right? So this sort of second and thirdhand totally anonymous information just gets copied and pasted over and over and over again across these platforms."  

Yes. I have definitely been seeing a lot of that, and it's often alarmist. I wonder if some of this stuff isn't entering the area of urban legend.

So when you're choosing a time to catch up on the news, choose a time to catch up on social media, too. And start skimming your Facebook wall and Twitter stream instead of reading every word, assuming you ever did. Avoid any messages that say things like "You have to read this!" with a link to a story on the coronavirus or the economy or the new world order or anything else that will start you down some kind of reading binge that will suck up your whole morning. Maybe your whole day. Your week. The next month.

Use Done Lists To Get Back On Task Or Help You Stay There

A lot of writers aren't working full-tilt right now, and that's okay. But if you want to ease into work, a done list may be more helpful than a to do list. To do lists often just don't get done at all, but a done list is, well, done. It's a big support psychologically and can be a motivator because it can direct you with what you might want to do next.

My done list for yesterday included yesterday's blog post, some work on the first paragraph of a humor piece, collecting humor pieces from humor blog sites, and reading half of them. Since we had had some sickness in our extended family before everything went south last week with the coronavirus, I felt pretty good about work yesterday. And my direction today, and the next few days, is to stick with small tasks until one becomes interesting enough to keep me working on it.

More interesting than those stories about the nurse from Seattle who said XYZ or another Costco with empty shelves.

A Break From Regularly Scheduled Time Management Tuesdays

I am going to take a break from doing weekly Time Management Tuesdays for a while, because many writers don't need it at the moment. As I said above, they're not working at capacity, anyway, so how they manage their writing time isn't an issue. If there's one thing I don't believe in with time management, it's harassing ourselves and others about it. Making ourselves or others feel bad is guaranteed to cause failures of impulse control.

Additionally, many people are offering all kinds of advice on how to get along during the pandemic. The world doesn't need any more advice. I am striking a blow for no advice.

I have many little irons in the fire I can write about that might actually be entertaining or useful. I'll focus on those for a while.

I'll probably be back with time management at some point, because you all know how obsessive I am. "She's never going to let that go," you're thinking, and I'm sure you're right.

What Did You Do This Week, Gail? Jan. 19th Edition.

This week I worked on:

Goal 2. Begin YA Thriller. I continued to work on character development and creating voices for my three main characters as well as some character work on an important character from the past.

Goal 3. The first draft of Good Women. Brought myself back up to speed by rereading the first six chapters and worked on blueprinting the next chapter per Wendy Mass's book development plan.

Goal 4. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding.  Got started making...and using...a social media marketing calendar again.

• Halo Effect blog post--Promoted to Facebook, Google+, Google+ community, Twitter

• TMT blog post--Promoted to Twitter, Google+, and Twitter. Note I didn't promote it to Facebook this week. I'd just promoted the Halo Effect post there. You don't want to give people too much of a good thing.

• Women and Nature Writing post--Promoted to Google+ and Twitter.  

• Hornbook Reading List post--Promoted to Google+, Google+ community, Facebook community, Goodreads blog, Twitter 

I also started working on next month's Connecticut Children's Literature Calendar.

 

Where Has Gail Been All These Years?

Last year, someone suggested I do something with images from my work appearances. As it turns out, I do have some. But, unfortunately, not for everything.

So what did I do with the images I did have? I made a Pinterest board, of course.

Time Management Tuesday: Did I Waste Weeks Of Summer Evenings On Pinterest?

I've written here before about the time issues involved with social media. Yes, social media is important for marketing writers' work and for marketing themselves. It can keep your name alive between publications. But it's important to remember that you don't want to be spending more time marketing your work then you do on creating it. That's particularly important to keep in mind as new social media platforms are created. We should have a logical reason for jumping to something new, a logical justification for the time we're spending learning how to use the new platform and then maintaining it.

How I Got Excited For Instagram

 

An entire year ago, the artist who did the cover illustration and design for the Saving the Planet & Stuff  eBook told me I should be in Instagram. He suggested I build a presence around my author appearances. In addition to being an artist, he was then working at an advertising agency in New York. He was a mad man, as a family member said. We're not talking one of the neighbors raving about Instagram. I began to feel enticed.

It took  nine or ten months to get fully there, though. What little I knew about Instagram suggested that it is all about images, making it different from the other social media platforms I use that are primarily about text. Even Twitter is built around text--very little text, but text nonetheless. Images are important for blogging, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter because the images attract people to your text. But IF I understood Instagram, image came first there.

That would make Instagram different from other social media I use.

But would Instagram be a way for an author to reach a new group of people, people who are interested in image first? I liked the idea of using pictures from author appearances in some way, and I also had an idea for using photographs from the author homes I like to visit and have written about here. And could I link blog posts to Instagram, drawing new people to the blog? To me?

Well, So Much For Instagram

I was pretty psyched for this Instagram thing until I actually looked at it. It just appears to be a mass of pictures. I may be wrong about that, of course, but there was a bigger issue. My reading and questioning indicated that you post to Instagram from smartphones. That would have been fine for the future, but I wanted to use pictures stored on my hard drive. There was probably a way to manage the job, but there was a limit to how much time I wanted to commit to this job.

Time. If this couldn't be easy and fast, I didn't think I should be doing it.

But by that point, I was really pumped for doing something with my literary tourism pictures. I can't remember what made me think of Pinterest, which I believed to be image heavy.

But I Did Think Of Pinterest

Okay, so I looked into Pinterest. The two issues I considered:

• Can writers use it for marketing?
• Is it easy to use? 

Well, I haven't been able to find much about writers using it for marketing, and I wasn't able find many writers there. But I was able to figure out how to use it. And, it turns out, there is a curation aspect to Pinterest that attracts me.

So for many, many evenings this summer I played with Pinterest. I spent a lot of time on this shiny, new thing.

What I'm Doing On Pinterest

So what I'm doing on Pinterest, besides looking up recipes and weird historical boards, is pulling content out of my 14 years of blog posts and repurposing it on Pinterest boards. The Gene Stratton-Porter's Cabin board you see here is an example. These literary tourism boards are made up of photographs, but there's also one pin from my blog. Thus the littourism boards do have the potential to draw, or drive, people here to Original Content and, thus, to me.(Yeah. I am the blog.)

Here is a key thing with Pinterest and me--pinning my blog posts is easy. Look down to the end of this post. You'll see a row of icons representing various social media platforms. My posts can be shared with any of them. And, yes, they can be pinned to a Pinterest board.

Once I realized how easy it is to do that, I began thinking of all kinds of Pinterest boards to make with my blog content.

• Favorite Environmental Book Club selections
• Connecticut Childlit Author Appearances
• Podcasts in the Kitchen

All I need is blog posts with images and an organizing theme.  I can go on and on with this!

But So What?

Well, there's the time management question. Am I going to get any bang for my time spent? For Pinterest to work for me, it will have to promote me, just as this blog promotes me. However, because there are now so many, many blogs, I have to promote it to attract attention. I expect to have to do the same for Pinterest.

Let me repeat that in bold:

• These days, I have to promote the blog, which only exists to promote me.
• I expect to have to promote my Pinterest boards, which only exist to promote me. 

If there are people on Planet Pinterest because they prefer images to text, I may be able to reach them there. I may be able to make myself known to them. But maybe I won't.

I'm gambling here, people. While I'm gambling with my time, you'll be seeing Pinterest boards here from time to time. Hey, they'll be images for the blog, right?

This is why I don't care for casinos. I do enough gambling with my life, thank you very much.

Time Management Tuesday: Content Marketing Calendars For Social Media

The Time Issue Involved With Social Media Marketing

Content marketing involves getting whatever content you create out before the public. Obviously if you're a writer, content involves your books, short stories, essays, poetry, etc. All marketing takes time.

But content can also be your blog posts. Blogs are valuable not just for marketing yourself in the traditional sense ("I have a new book out!" "I'll be speaking at the White House!") but for keeping an Internet presence, a public face, when you're between publications and appearances. These days blog content needs to be marketed, too. No one has time to read all the blog posts being created, so writer bloggers need to get their content out in front of the many, many people who aren't reading them already.

Since many of us blog regularly, that means marketing of this content regularly. Like, say, all the time. Lots of time. Blogs are a form of social media, anyway, and our best option for marketing individual posts is through social media. Paper publications don't do articles on blogs all that often, and we can't sit and wait for some day in the far off future when they'll choose to feature ours. So social media it is. Social media, which has that reputation for becoming way too big a part of our lives.

Spend Less Time Marketing With A Calendar

Last year, I heard Frances Caballo being interviewed on this subject on a podcast that I am embarrassed to say I lost. However, you can check out her guest post Social Media in 15 Minutes a Day for details on her plan for limiting your social media time. What I've been doing since hearing the Caballo interview: planning a weekly calendar (of sorts) each week.

Since January, I've been formally writing it out. You've been seeing it each Friday in my Friday reports on what I've done. You may remember last week's. It was under my Community Building/General Marketing/Branding goal. 

• Blackbird Fly post. Promote to Google+, community, Twitter, and Goodreads
• Book Scavenger post. Promote to Google+, community, Twitter, and Goodreads
• Blackthorn Key post. Promote to Google+, community, Twitter, and Goodreads
• Footer Davis post. Promote to Google+, community, Twitter, and Goodreads
• Listen, Slowly post. Promote to Google+, community, Twitter, and Goodreads
• Goodreads blog post 
• Began collecting CCLC material for March. 
• Worked on Publishers Marketplace post. 
• Worked on Horn Book post.

I planned on Monday that I'd do these things over the course of the week. It takes only a few minutes to target posts to specific sites. Last week I had a lot of reader response posts because I was covering all the finalists for the middle grade fiction Cybals award. Goodreads was a target for those. However, this week the Connecticut Children's Lit Calendar is on my marketing "calendar." The content marketing calendar plan for that is "CCLC promote to FB, communities, CT Bloggers, Twitter. Find some new librarians to mail to  Distribute newsletter on weekend."

So different posts need different target promotion. It would be difficult to do that without a calendar plan. The promotion to various sites really does take only minutes, once I know what I'm going to do. Having blog post topics on a calendar is helpful in reminding me to get them started. That is far more time consuming than the promotion, and getting them started means I can try to work on them in smaller chunks of time instead of committing a lot of time all at once to each one.

The other thing the calendar plan does is help me make sure I've hit all my spots. When it gets toward the end of the week, if I see I have a number of items on the calendar I haven't done, I start to hurry.

Well, I've Had A Good Experience With Google+

Last night I read an article on Slate suggesting that Google+'s days may be numbered. Wouldn't you know it, I'd prepared a blog post last week all about how satisfied I've been with that platform. I'm not wasting it.

Last month I discussed (at length) Google+ with a friend on Facebook, convincing her to give it a try. I thought some of that material could be repurposed as a blog post, and that's what you're seeing here, repurposed Facebook material.

Google+ Basics

Google+ is simple to use once you've figured it out, which is true, of course, of most things in life. You collect people into circles there. Circles are like classifications. You can have a librarian circle, a writer circle, a self-pubbed writer circle. You can access your circles easily in the event that you want to see just what your librarian people have to say.  You have a profile page that is all your posts and a homepage that is similar to a Facebook wall in that you can see posts from the people in your circles there. 

Google+ Communities

The big thing you can do at Google+ is join communities. I'm a member of a couple of writer/blogger communities, an eco-fiction community, and a community interested in children's books. It could be argued that those are similar to private Facebook pages. (I'm a member of a few of those, too.) However, when I post links to my blog in one of those communities, I see a boost in my blog statistics. I don't when I post in private Facebook pages. 

I post all my blog posts at my general spot at Google+. I post specific blog posts to specific communities there. The Environmental Book Club posts go to the eco-fiction community and the childen's lit community. Marketing and writing posts go to a couple of the writers' communities.

Engagement On Google+

Also, if someone Googles you, your recent posts at Google+ turn up. It gives you more of a presence on the Internet. The other good thing about Google+--If people like your content, they can + it, meaning share it with their circles. Presumably sharing can happen on Facebook, but I rarely see it. Almost every week a couple of my things get shared on Google+, especially if I've posted to a couple of the communities.

In short, I see engagement at Google+. Engagement is important with social media. 

Google+'s Big Drawback

I think the worst thing about Google+ is its reputation. People think no one uses it. As Slate's article stated, "...it has in fact caught on with swaths of professionals and hobbyists who enjoy talking shop on a social network that isn’t full of friends and cats and wedding announcements." But maybe not enough people want that. 

I have things set up with Google+ right now so that this post will automatically go up there when I publish it. This particular post I will also post at writer communities. I'm off to do that while Google+ is still around so I can. 

I'm On Twitter. Now What?

Last Friday I had an opportunity to get some Twitter advice from a family friend and made the jump. User name gail_gauthier  I have a list of links to Twitter articles in my journal to read. I've only managed to get to What's the Best Way for Authors to Use Twitter?  Among the suggestions there? "Post an inspirational quote or message." I'm afraid the Twitterverse will wait a long time to hear something inspirational from me.

Should A Writer Do The Same Thing On All Platforms?

Oddly enough, earlier in the week I was involved in a brief discussion at the Writer Unboxed Facebook page about writers sending blog posts out over multiple platforms. A few of us were not at all crazy about that idea, because many receivers end up getting that post several times. Most writers keep joining more and more social media sites believing that each new one is going to be the one that brings them to a large audience. In reality, though, we're finding the same people at each site. Therefore, if we post the same message everywhere, the same people get it. How does this duplication happen?

Let's use Gail as a case study, shall we?

1. First social media site. I decided a couple of years ago that I wanted a Facebook page. I just wanted a professional-type page to do short bursts of professional-type writing, similar to this blog but much, much shorter. After looking into the situation, I decided I wanted what some people call a fan page these days, because those pages turn up if someone does a Google search of "Gail Gauthier." The personal pages, according to the information I could find, could only be accessed by people who were members of Facebook. That is a finite group, whereas the whole world can use Google. I couldn't see spending any time at all on a Facebook page that could only reach a finite number of people.
2. Second social media site. However, at the time I was doing this, my understanding was that I couldn't get the "professional" fan page without first having a personal page. I've been told by others since then that this is not the case. Still, this is how I immediately ended up with two social media sites. With the personal page, I could start Friending people. With the professional/fan page, I had to wait for people to Like me. I told the Friends at the personal page about the professional/fan page.
3. As a result, almost half the followers of my professional/fan page are friends at my personal page. If I routinely post the same information at each page, those people have to endure getting the same message.
4. Third social media site. I joined Goodreads. Guess what? There's a connection between Facebook and Goodreads. When you join Goodreads, a bunch of your friends from Facebook automatically become your friends at Goodreads. If you send your blog posts to both your Facebook pages and to Goodreads, those poor friends are now getting the same message three times.
5. Fourth social media site. A couple of friends invited me to become active on Google+. A lot of people I know are also on Google+, so if I've been sending my blog posts to my other three social media sites and start sending them to Google+, too, we now have people being hit with them four times.
6. Fifth social media site. When you join Twitter, who do you suppose you're going to find there? That's right. Your friends from all your other social media sites. Send your blog posts there, or any message that is the same, and you now have the potential for hammering the same people five times.

Now, media people will tell you that individuals need to hear a message a certain number of times before they remember it. But they don't necessarily mean the same exact message from the same person. This is why people do blog tours and hope to get reviewed at journals. They want readers to hear about their books multiple times, but the multiple times are coming from different sources. That's buzz. When it just comes from you, that's painful. Tedious. Hard sell.

A Social Media Protocol

I've developed a sort of protocol for my social media efforts.

1. Original Content--Short-form nonfiction on writing and literature and promotional material related to my work.
2. Professional/Fan Facebook Page--Professionally-related material. The blog is not linked to it. I include blog posts occasionally if there is information I want to get out--a new publication, for instance. I post links to my professional reading. Rarely do I post the same material that I post at my personal page.
3. Personal Facebook Page--These posts project me personally, but only in relation to personal creative activities and some travel/fitness. I include blog posts occasionally if there is information I want to get out--a new publication, for instance. Rarely do I post the same material that I post at my professional/fan page. I Friend other writers, litbloggers, family members, and nonwriting friends.
4. Goodreads--This is specifically about reading. I do have a blog there, Gail Gauthier Reads, but it is primarily about reading, including my nonchildren's book reading. If I want to include some promotional material there from the blog, it is a total rewrite. I rate books I've discussed here at Original Content, using quotes from here and a link back to that post. I also friend new litbloggers I've found, not the children's litbloggers I've known for years, in order to create a new base of people.
5. Google+--Original Content does get published directly to the Google+. What I'm trying to do there is reach new people, building circles of still more new bloggers and developing a self-publishing circle. Google+ is about new people.
6. Twitter--What? I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do here. The blog is not going to be automatically linked there, I'll post my own links occasionally. I also plan, at this point, to keep Twitter extremely professional. No pictures of cakes I've made or trails I've biked. I'm going to share reading I've liked, such as the Salon article I wrote about here last week. Twitter would be a place to share the article, Original Content would be a place to discuss it. Since I don't have a giant audience at my Professional Facebook page, I feel pretty comfortable using reading links from there on Twitter, especially since at the Facebook page, I can make a brief commentary about them, making what goes there a little different from what goes on Twitter.

Yes, I have given this an enormous amount of thought. And, once again, there are no metrics for determining the value of social media, so this may be time and effort for which I will get very little in return. However, it just seems so incredibly wasteful to have all these platforms, to refuse to use them mindfully, and to send out the one message everywhere, risking turning receivers off, because they keep hearing it over and over again.

Okay, I'm off to Twitter!

Time Management Tuesday: Summer Reading--Time For Social Media

Manage Your Day-to-Day includes a number of essays on dealing with social media. Writers frequently fret about this subject. Is there any way of telling if social media does us any good? Is it addictive? How do I "turn it off?" Do I want to turn it off?

If Writers Are Going To Use Social Media, They Should Use Social Media

First off, a thought about how writers use social media. I'm not going to suggest that we should be doing more of it. Heaven knows, I've complained enough over the years about the time I spend marketing with social media. I do think, though, that many writers could use social media better. For instance, setting up a blog or a Facebook page that you only visit every month or so probably doesn't even count as social media. That little involvement with others can hardly be described as social. Using a blog or Facebook page just for the occasional announcement isn't social, either. As far as blogging is concerned, it probably isn't even technically a blog.

Using social media well is the best chance we have for using it in as time efficient a manner as possible.

Mindfulness And Social Media

 In Lori Deschene's Manage Your Day-to-Day essay, Using Social Media Mindfully, she writes about having clear intentions for social media use. "When we're mindful, we're aware of why we're logging on, and we're able to fully disconnect when we've followed through with our intention."  For those of us who use social media as part of our work, she says our "involvement might hinge around various objectives." Yes. Social media is part of our marketing plan, so it should be one of our objectives (steps) toward the goal of marketing ourselves.

What is our intention for each type of social media we use? I have a very specific intention for this blog, for instance. I have a specific intention for my professional Facebook page, which is different from my personal Facebook page. My intention at Goodreads is different, still. There I am trying to build a reading community to be part of. At Google+ my intention is to seek out different people,  adult fiction litbloggers and self-publishing people. There is definitely overlap among these groups, and there is some overlap on what I post. This blog goes to Google+ every day,  and quotes from blog reader responses go to my Goodreads reviews. But because I have an intention, I'm often able to go to a site, do what I intend to do and leave, to disconnect as Deschene said.

What Do We Want To Do With Social Media?

People who write about social media often compare it to being with groups of people in the real world. In the real world, most of us want to experience positive interactions and that desire controls our behavior and how we present ourselves. Controlling our behavior and being mindful of the impression we're making on-line can help control the amount of time we spend on social media.

• For instance, do you really want to be known and remembered as the guy who is always pushing his self-published books at the Google+ community he was invited to join? Limiting hardcore self-promotion is a time saver.

• How do Facebook political rants fit in with a writer's intentions for social media, which, remember, is an objective in an overall marketing plan? Do you want to be known for your politics or for your professional work? If you do want to be known for your politics, okay. Go for it. If you don't, limiting those kinds of posts is another time saver. Be mindful. Know what you're doing.

•  Deschene suggests social media users ask themselves "Is it necessary to share this? Will it add value to my life and for other people?" By adding value to your life we might mean value to your professional life. By adding value for other people we might mean value to a professional/creative community. If a post doesn't do either of those things, maybe you can save some time and stay away from some of your social media outlets.

Deschene's suggestion that we treat social media involvement mindfully merely means that we not spend time on random, thoughtless activity. That time saved can then be used for something else.

Okay, I've got to go link this post to Facebook and Google+.

Weekend Links

I've just stumbled upon Interviews: How to Become a Writer at Kelcey Parker's blog, ph.d in creative writing. I haven't read any of the interviews yet, and, I must admit, I haven't heard of any of the writers in this series. That doesn't say anything about them, or me. Writers are very specialized and function in different worlds. What I'm liking is Parker's "basic premise is that becoming a writer is not rocket science, but it’s not magic either. Being a writer is a lifestyle choice...It requires writing about writing, reading, writing about reading, attending readings, meeting writers, writing to writers, writing about writers, maybe even teaching or class-taking. (Notice that I haven’t even mentioned publishing. That will come.)" Oh, my gosh, yes. You have to like and want the lifestyle because that is what sustains you when nothing else does. (Excuse me for sounding all deep. Not to worry. It will pass. Yup. There it goes.) Scroll down to her four reasons for doing the How to Become a Writer series. "Most advice out there is about short cuts: how to write better novels or how to get published or how to outline a killer plot..." Once again, Oh, my gosh, yes.

Hmm. Ms. Yingling says that the number one concern of middle school students is losing long time friends. That seems like a little tidbit I should file away for later use. Then check out her experience with boy readers and eBooks, as well as those of her commenters.

Top 10 Things One Writer Learned About Social Media Marketing at Mystery Writing Is Murder (By way of Cynsations). Note in particular Items 2 and 5. I've seen this kind of advice a lot. Yet I also see writers on Facebook who only show up to make an announcement, then disappear, and writers who use their blogs as an announcement page, posting maybe a dozen times a year. I'm never going to win any awards for my social skills, but I understand what the word "social" means. Yeah, that's why later this evening I hope to post a picture of the pizza I made for dinner tonight at my personal Facebook page.

This is not very much, I know, but I've been shoveling a lot of snow this weekend. I'm hoping in the future to include more podcasts, and you'll be hearing why in a week or two. If you are in New England and you don't have power, stay warm.

Social Media Marketing: Rah! Rah! Rah!

I've been to a couple of marketing workshops this past year. People who do marketing for a living get very excited about social media marketing.

For writers who are actually doing social media marketing, the level of excitement is not quite so high.