I try to keep up with all the latest media trends. Well, to a degree. I
learn a good teaspoonful of knowledge about every social media form. Too bad you need
a strong pint to make it all productive—and I’m talking knowledge here, ladies, not a
pint of booze. My problem is I don't utilize things to their full potential. You see, beyond blogging, I dabble. Take Facebook for example. I dabble at posting when I think of it, not on a regular basis like so many. I try to adhere to posting in thirds. One third of the time I promote other writers or their books. Another third is about me as a person, a grandma, a woman less than over-joyed about turning sixty-five in May. The last third is self-promotion. Sounds easy enough. Right? If only I could schedule it better, rather than doing it in fits and starts. I have a page for my debut book with a handlflul of followers. I forget to post on it. I also have an author's page and, yeah, I forget about it, too. I invested in sticky "to do list" pads to slap onto my monitor. And I've forgotten where I put them. So all my posts seem to land on my personal Facebook account. Not the best, huh?
Twitter is like a racing, roaring beast to me. It goes too darn fast. Reminds me of a recurring dream where I'm on rollerblades going downhill the wrong way in one-way traffic. I can't seem to slow things down. I've been blessed by many invitations to join tribes on Triberr, so I'm 80% faithful in retweeting to promote other peoples' blogs, but I rarely take the time to go to Twitter to tweat in a personal manner. The whole twitter thing makes my facial tic do bizarre things to my vision. I can't quite grasp Twitter. I mean, who reads tweets? I can't. They fly into the stream too fast. Do I know the nearly thousand people on my stream? No. So why would anything they have to say interst me? I can't see how it all helps. I know. I know. I'm showing my age here. I'll have to learn this beast.
So, these three forms of social media--blogging, Facebook and Twitter--are on my "learn to live-by routine" for 2013. I'm going to continue to enjoy my blogging. I'm also going to try to post to my Facebook pages at least twice a day. And, by golly, I'm going to tackle that Twitter Beast. No matter how it makes that tic in my face twitch until my eye waters.
What about you? What promotional tools are you planning on using in 2013?
Vonnie Davis blogs at http://www.vintagevonnie.blogspot.com. Her website is http://www.vonniedavis.com. Follow her on Facebook at Vonnie Davis, Author or tweet her @VonnieWrites. Maybe the Indianapolis Speedway Twitterverse will allow her addled mind to see it.
24 comments:
Oh, Vonnie, you know me so well. Your thoughts are my thoughts with all of this social media stuff. In fact, I bought how to book to study, except so far I haven't gotten past the introduction. Great insight!
Thanks for sharing, Margo. I just don't see the value of Twitter. Maybe if I took the time to read others' tweets, I'd see it. But when I scroll through the stream to find a name I know, more tweets flood in and push the known name further down before I can click on "reply" or "retweet." I'm too slow, I guess. I see that many writers have thousands of followers. E-gads, their stream must be like a raging river. How would they find a tweet from someone they know? Who reads these things? I simply don't get it. Yet many, many do. So the problem must lie with me...sigh...
I soooo agree with you. I belong to a group, and our main function is to tweet for each other in an organized way. I post my tweets faithfully. I NEVER actually look at the twitter stream. I ask myself, who does? Someone must, because I continue to get new followers daily through no effort on my behalf except following back. Someone out there must be reading my promo tweets for others. Let's hope they buy their books, too!
It's almost laughable, isn't it Jannine? WHO is reading those tweets? Boggles my mind.
Like Jannine I pick up and paste my tweets for others into Twitter, and like you - Vonnie - I miss more than I can read on Twitter. I generally scroll way down, and if I recognise anyone (like Roses) I retweet, but that's about it. I, too need to learn more. I've already 'broken' my goals which are spend time on at least one day a week in learning how to use all the places I've joined. I've written a blog on this, as a visitor -when it comes up soon you might recognise it!
I'm glad to hear I'm not alone in this media madness, Nancy. I'll be on the lookout for your guest post. Thanks for commenting.
I don't think it has to with age. I think it has to do with the amount of time you have to blow online. I'm under 40 and know people my age who are "connected" online through so many networks and they are constantly updating, commenting, retweeting, etc. I should be doing the same I guess, but I'm also trying to, you know, LIVE my life. Not just virtually online, but in the real, 3D world. I don't want to reach the end and say, "Jeez, if only I hadn't spent so much time sitting at my laptop, interacting with online friends I've never met in person..."
No, I want to say, "Damn, I had an excellent ride actually hanging out and doing things with true friends." And reading really good books, of course.
Great post, Vonnie. I couldn't agree more. In answer to your question -- who has time to set goals? Lol!
Excellent thoughts, Christine. One of my doctors told me he won't allow his kids to watch more than an hour of TV a day. "I want them engaged with life, living it, enjoying it NOT sitting in front of a TV watching others live theirs."
Dixie, I tend to put things in two categories: Family and Writing. Setting goals are nice, but it's the follow-through I have problems with.
Do you use tweetdeck, Vonnie? I only use about a quarter of its functions but it still makes twitter massively easier to manage. One of my goals is to get the hang of it properly. Another is to blog more regularly- I agree with whoever it was who wrote that blogs will be one of the longest surviving social media, particularly for authors and readers, because they're the closest to books.
what a laugh! I still am diddling around with Facebook, Goodreads, Shelfari. Wish I had time to learn everything.
I agree with you on Twitter--haven't yet figured out the process. Your blog is more established and you're in more places, which I think is very smar. My primary goal for 2013 is to increase my blog's visibility. With the tightening in rules on what can't be on Facebook pages, I'm not so sure that avenue is worth the energy--but I still have an author page (but with only a few likes.)
One new thing I'm doing is setting a schedule for posting excerpts on various yahoo groups--with new releases and then a couple times a month with older titles.
Good luck to us all.
At this point, I'm just going to try to "do better" - no specific promotional goals. Another thing I should do better at. I have a Twitter account since the TWRP promo department asked for one. I even have some followers - why, I have no idea. I hardly ever check Twitter and rarely post. It makes me crazy, although I know writers who profess to love it. That may just have to remain one of life's mysteries.
Stephanie, I signed up for twitterdeck and never wanted to take the time from writing to study how it worked. Dumb, huh?
Goodreads scares me, Barb. Some people post some nasty, cold reviews, and I'm always afraid I'll offend someone and be targeted. I've already had one reviewer claim I write on the 3rd grade level. Ouch!!!
It's hard to know what to do, isn't it, Linda? But I love blogging and hosting other writers on my personal blog.
It's hard to know what to do, isn't it, Linda? But I love blogging and hosting other writers on my personal blog.
Alison, I'm so glad Twittter is a foriegn language to you, too.
Well Vonnie, now that I've read your post and all the comments I won't feel so guilty saying that I DO - NOT - TWEET and I'm not going to start. I took a class a month ago and got so bored with the class I quit that too. They say, "Oh, you can tweet for ten minutes a day and that's enough"! Who are "they" kidding? How could you spend ten minutes on Twitter, following that jet stream of feeds, and be able to get anything out of it. I blog once a week, belong to two other blogs with authors (Women Unplugged and Tempting Romance) and I use FB for personal stuff. How in goodness' name are we supposed to have a life and write if we're tweeting and FB'ing and Goodreading and Triberring! AACK. Not possible. I have a life and do what I can to promote my book and make friends online but I can't do everything.
All we can do is what we can without ignoring our family and friends and denying our souls with the joys of our hearts. I'll tweet once or twice a day, but I don't expect I'll become a pro like those in the younger generation.
Hehehe - fun post as always, Vonnie :) I finally gave in and joined Twitter about three months ago. Its fun in short, bursts. But it also feels a little like butting in on an established conversation at times! I'm an occasional twitterer at best :)
For me, now I've been told the secret to posting photos problem-free on my blogger blog again (using Google Chrome- no more convoluted 'short-cuts') posting more regularly on my blog is my priority.
Go Vonnie!!!
Dump the book page on FB. I have my regular page and my author page. I have all my blog posts set to auto post to the author page and the regular one and once in a while I think to physically go into them and post. The ones who are experts on FB as an author tool say NOT to make a book page because it's not just one book you want to promote, but you as the crafter of said novels. Besides, as you've pointed out--it takes a lot of memory cells (I for one do NOT have to spare) to keep up with all those pages. Also why have them if you don't even go to them? Strengthen your author page and add more than one book there instead! Combine all that effort into one successful page.
That's my .02 cents. LOL
Twitter? That is my goal this year. I always forget it's there. Triberr? Ugh--I might remember to update once or twice a month.
Good luck with all your goals, my dear.
Okay, so I'm late to this one. lol But I am SO with you on Twitter. So, if you're old honey, so am I. lol It goes way too fast and I'm completely lost when I go to my page. So, for Twitter, I'm afraid I'm essentially a spammer--I go there only to tweet my own stuff. I really appreciate all the people who retweet me, but how they manage to find me and my posts out of the hundreds on their page is beyond me. I can't find anyone unless I search them out, and with hundreds of friends, who has time for that?
So, it's not just you, Vonnie! lol
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