Adventures in Writing: Social Interaction
Today, let’s talk about social media and interacting with others.
First off, pick your platform. If you love Facebook, then focus on that one. If you love Twitter, then make that your main squeeze. I tend to be a Twitter focus-type. While I do post to Facebook, it’s most often an auto-post via my WordPress. So, when this post is published, it’ll send the headline and so forth over to Facebook. That’s about as much love FB gets from me these days – however, I am going to work to change that in the future.
The goal is interaction – with other authors, bloggers, and your readers. You don’t want to just post a bunch of ‘Buy My Book!’ links. You also don’t want your entire profile to be a bunch of links to Facebook or Instagram. Yes, it’s cool to link everything together and have one thing go out to several other platforms – however, things tend to get a little sketchy from there.
If your entire Twitter timeline is full of fb.me links – which lately do not include any preview text or image – you’re probably not going to get any responses. People want to know what they are clicking on in today’s world of hackers.
On that note about hackers – don’t ignore a profile so long that it gets hacked. It’s not pretty and can endanger the legitimate people who follow that profile.
Post about something. It doesn’t even have to be related to writing or your book. It could be “Aw, crap. Grabbed the wrong container for lunch today. Oops.” People will respond. They’ll share their screw-ups to commiserate with you. Sharing good things that happen are ideal, too. “Woohoo, got a great review on this {book/article/product}. Yes!” which then you’d share the link to said item. Boom. People will respond. Basically – have a conversation.
Reply to what others are posting about as well. Be kind, even if you disagree. Constructive is always better than destructive when you’re looking to make connections. Another way to interact is to ask questions. Not sure where to start researching for something specific? Type it up, hashtag it, put it out there. Someone will be interested enough to respond.
It takes time to build and forge connections. I’ve been told repeatedly that Twitter is a horrible platform for authors, yet I’ve built my Twitter Tribe and we all support each other. However, I’ve seen many authors succeed there. And, I’ve seen a few vanish altogether. If you feel you don’t have time to socialize, then focus on putting your buy links into a scheduling platform. Check your feed now and then and like, share, and try to respond. Even if it’s something simple like “You got this!” it shows that you are interested in what others have going on.
