You can't half-ass social media
Monday, July 13, 2009 at 03:10PM 
Just because you have a Twitter account or Facebook page, you still may not be using social media to its greatest effect. If you aren't reading, following, commenting, and writing your own content consistently, then unfortunately, you are merely a bystander.
Social media requires that you read and comment as much as you post (or don't post) your own content. It's a conversation, and your participation must add value. If it doesn't, you won't be taken seriously.
This is especially true for authors, whether they are being published by a big house or are taking on the task for themselves. Authors need to know what other books are competing with their own, and it would also benefit them to know what other published book and web sites might complement their own impending works.
The weight of the work you'll face promoting your title can be daunting, and it will require many hours of diligent follow-up. Here are a few you can do:
1. Start a blog, then faithfully post. Your posts should be the very best representation of yourself as an intelligent and connected person, of your writing ability, of your sense of humor, and of the authority you possess about your subject matter (and that goes for fiction and poetry too.) Photos always help. And then you must promote your blog by linking like-minded or like-topic blogs to your own. You have to enter the conversation from both sides.
Don't know where to start? Blogger.com and Wordpress.com are free.
Squarespace (hosting this site) costs about $8 a month but will allow you to build a full-fledged site with web pages and blogs, as well as photo galleries, which are customizable and flexible. You can find a low-cost solution that will have small learning curves. Now's the time to embrace new things, even if you’re uncomfortable with the online world. If you can't learn it on your own, recruit help.
2. Make a Facebook page and friend people who might have an interest in your book. Read all the how-tos and weed out the extraneous noise that Facebook brings. This will take some time and patience. Make a concerted effort to be present and optimistic about your work.
3. Get a Twitter account and use your own name. Twitter is a vehicle for informed and close listening to online buzz. Follow people in publishing, reviewing, and others who are active in your subject matter. You do not have to post about mundane events, and if you do, you will be tuned out. Instead, focus on your field of interest, lurk, then begin to respond thougtfully. This is another task that will take time and patience. And some of it will seem to be fluff, and you'll be right. But you will be building relationships.
Serious social media participants are very quick to identify half-hearted or self-aggrandizing online behavior. Tenacity, humility, humor, and quiet authority will take you a long way.
Reader Comments (1)
Useful - very - post. It's all too easy to sign up on a variety of social networking sites, but it takes a conscious effort to remember to consistently participate in those sites. And in a way that is social and "real," not "buy my book! buy my book!" (as tempting as it is to do that, because that is, after all, why you're there).
I'm guilty of neglecting my Red Room page and MySpace. And Facebook. (Sigh.)