Oct 11, 2015

A line in the sand: controlling social media activity

I’ve just read an article about the short and long term marketing advantages/disadvantages of social media: Playing The Long Game In Self Publishing. Being very much a short term strategy, social media can take up a lot of good writing time. I knew that, but if you’re not active then you’re not seen. This is still true, but the level of activity is what needs to be assessed. Is it worth constant updates when those updates have a shelf life of only a few hours (or minutes in the Twitter-verse)? An online presence through articles and blog posts is a solid long term strategy that has the benefit of utilizing social media when links to your work are shared, of being searchable through keywords and phrases (hook-bait as it’s affectionately known), and of being around for years without you having to do anything else with it.

Being somewhat anal and perhaps with a touch of addictive behaviour, I will spend hours over the course of a week looking up articles that sound interesting in order to share them with followers on Twitter and build-up the content of my PaperLi Journal – Just Write. I’ll share announcements on Facebook, profound quotes on Twitter that I source from Pinterest, and take photos of hopefully interesting writerly activities to post to Instagram. Quite frankly, I’m exhausted and a little bit over all that effort for minimal gain; especially, as all that activity stops me writing. It’s so much easier to sit back and retweet or repost other people’s work than using my brain and creating my own content.

It’s time to draw a line in the virtual sand and cut back on social media for awhile in order to concentrate on blog posts and work out what the hell I’m doing with my new manuscript. Writing will beget more writing…. Right?

I hope so anyway.

I’m not going to promise a blog post a week. I’ve had ample time to prove that I can’t be that consistent, but I am going to start concentrating on producing content longer than 140 characters, update my website to celebrate the release of my next novel (late November), work on the marketing of said new novel, and whip my unruly manuscript into some semblance of order.

But first! I’m preparing for Book Expo Australia on 17th/18th October at Sydney Olympic Park. If you’re planning a visit, drop by the Odyssey Bookstand. I’ll be selling and signing copies of The Ouroboros Key, and generally, having a chat with whomever passes close enough. We could get a photo together for Instagram… and Twitter… and Facebook.