Elizabeth Riley Adams (filling in for Kim Malo)
I spend a lot of time online.
Most of this online time is spent doing promo work. But sometimes it can be hard to tell exactly where the promo is happening because I’m not doing any direct marketing. I’ll have Twitter set up to automatically tweet once an hour each day and I’ll blog daily (actually, I’m on several group blogs, so I end up with an average of more than one blog post a day), and I’ll update my three Facebook pages with status updates every couple of days.
Through all this?
I never once say, “Hey!
I’ve got a book for sale! Go buy it.”
So the question I get asked a lot is, “What’s the point?”
And the answer is different, depending on which form of social media we’re talking about:
Personal blog: The point of having a personal blog is that it functions as a home base for writers online. Because it’s updated more than a website (usually), it’ll rank higher on Google results than a static webpage. Personal blogs are a great way to connect with other writers and your readers. Now nearly every blog hosting service offers the ability to put different pages on your blog. So you could treat the blog like a web page—have an “about you” page, a press kit page, and a page filled with links of places where your book is available. In your blog’s sidebar, you can also put a buy link as an easy way for someone visiting your blog to purchase your book.
Twitter: Ultimately its point is to funnel eyes to your blog and give guests an opportunity to learn more about you, increase awareness about your book or release, and purchase your book. The best tweet to direct someone to your blog is one with a catchy headline that links to a well-written blog post.
Facebook: Its point is to provide interaction and networking in a more relaxed format. This is where you really get to know people—whether the people are journalists who write reviews, book bloggers, other writers, or readers.
Sometimes I see writers doing things on social media that just don’t make sense to me. They’ll set Twitter to auto-tweet what’s basically a commercial for their book four or five times a day. They’ll exclusively talk about their book on every blog post—how they wrote the book, the inspiration for the book, etc. They’ll Facebook a countdown for their book’s release and not interact on Facebook at any other time or write on anyone else’s wall. The number one point of being a part of social media? It’s to provide meaningful content…which, ultimately, means bringing more awareness of your books. And subtlety is huge! Because we all know how to unfollow and unfriend and unsubscribe to blogs or people that are non-stop commercials.
Social media can be a huge time suck, so we have to monitor the amount of time we spend doing it. How long it takes depends on how much online presence you’re looking for. I’ve used Twitter for as little as 10 minutes a day (scheduling a few helpful writing-related links to post), and I’ve used it as much as an hour a day (the current amount of time it takes to find the links that I post and schedule them to run.) The same goes with the other forms of social media—it needs to be worked in around the other things that you’ve already got on your schedule.
Organizing social media time:
Timers are really helpful to help you know when your allotted time is up. I also like to try to set a routine for social media. Facebook is great to update in the mornings. Twitter peaks in the early morning and late afternoon (US time zones). Blogging is really best earlier in the day (Eastern time) because a lot of people will check or comment on blogs before they head off to work.
If you end up subscribing to a lot of blogs (usually the blogs of people who comment and interact with you on your blog), then you can save some time by organizing the blogs in your Google Reader. You’ll add each blog’s RSS feed to Google Reader, then divide the blogs into folders—you could have a M/W/F folder, or a T/Th folder, or one that you check every day. This helps you keep track of which blogs you’ve visited over the course of a week and help you maintain your connections to your different online friends.
And, of course, if it’s a choice between writing time and social media time, writing comes first. Otherwise? There’s nothing to promote.
What’s your favorite social medium and how do you keep track of the time you spend updating it?
And…thanks so much for letting me guest blog today at Hey, There’s a Dead Guy in the Living Room!
Elizabeth Spann Craig (Riley Adams)
http://mysterywritingismurder.blogspot.com
http://mysteryloverskitchen.com
Twitter: @elizabethscraig
