Part Deux: In Which We Discuss Becoming Socialized

Social media.  There I said it again.  If you’re over 40, you’re probably groaning at its mere mention.  If you’re under 40, you’re probably shrugging and saying, Yeah, so what?

OK, first off, if you’re under 40, go away for a minute.  Play some X-Box or whatever it is your mysterious, young generation does to fritter away the time.  Us old folks are going to jaw for a moment.

Are they gone?  Good!  It’s just me and everyone born before Tricky Dick resigned.  Now, all of us left are over 40, perhaps some of you substantially so.  I, myself, am on the cusp of 49, having been born right after the assassination of—and named for—John F. Kennedy.  Others of you may remember where you were on that horribly notable day.

Whatever.  The difference I want to get at here is the computer.  Some of us grew up with it; others of us had it thrust open them…and with that comes a certain amount of dubiousness and, let’s just say it…fear.  Fear of something we don’t quite understand.  Fear of having that thing make us look old and foolish and hopelessly out of touch…like the music of Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga, let’s say.

The way some of us choose to deal with this is to ignore it, which, in the case of both Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga is a perfectly acceptable reaction.  Not so with the computer and the things the computer brings to the table.

Now, I know many of you geezers are already shaking your heads.  I use a computer all the time, you’re saying.  I’m perfectly comfortable with it.  Sure.  You use a computer to write, perhaps, maybe to play Angry Birds or Farmville or send e-mails to the grandkids.  Sure, go ahead and consider yourself quite the technophile.

Are you on Facebook, though?  Twitter?  FourSquare?  Pinterest?  StumbleUpon?  Even—groan—MySpace?  Are you, in the end, on any social media?

If you are, congrats.  You are aging well.  If not, why not?  Do you prefer to communicate with friends and family via a Dixie cup and string?  Smoke signals?  Passenger pigeon?  Step into the 21^st century with the rest of us…it’s not so scary.

These sites are really just the electronic versions of talking to a friend or neighbor over the backyard fence…except the fence stretches around the world and you might be talking to 10,000 “friends.”  Same thing, just a new way to do it.

Why is it so important to get with it on social media instead of just aging like your grandparents did and shaking your fist at what the kids are doing these days?  Well, and I’m assuming we’re still talking to writers here…writers who want readers…if you want to reach readers with your scribblings, these places are where the readers of today hang out.  Reaching them means being where they are.

So, if you have a blog or a website of some kind (See Part One, below), great.  Now, let’s move some people to it by participating in today’s social media.  For a start, let’s consider Twitter.  I have to admit that I, like many old people, at first didn’t see the use of this.  Communicate in 140 characters or less?  Why?  What for?  What can possibly be said (of any value at least) in 140 characters?

Plenty.  But before you start bombarding people with your 140-character musings, you have to register for the service.  Then you have to build an audience.  That means searching through the audience to find like-minded people.  Write horror?  Then look at other horror writer’s followers and follow them.  Hopefully, they will follow back.  Spend some time doing this, use a service to unfollow those who don’t and soon you’ll have an impressive list of followers who will receive and hopefully read your tweets.  (For more on doing this successfully, I point you toward Books of the Dead’s publisher, James Roy Daley, and his instructional postings on our main site, www.booksofthedeadpress.com.  See them here.)

OK, now you’ve built an audience.  What do you say to them?  Well, it doesn’t have to be what you ate for breakfast or the fact that you’re currently singing hymns at Aunt Florence’s funeral.  Those are fine, if prosaic, uses of Twitter and plenty of folks tweet the minutae of their days with all the fervent energy and rampant self-absorption of teenager.

But consider, oh writer, the fact that you now have an audience of like-minded people who might be interested—nay, induced to purchase for real money—your work.  It might be a good idea, then, interspersed between your daily toilet schedule updates and callouts to other drunken friends, to let them know about your work and where to get it.  Twitter kindly lets you add specific links to where those works might be found—Amazon, let’s say—so that your audience can simply click away, if so disposed, and buy your works.

Using Twitter to point your audience to your website or blog, and connecting said website/blog to your Twitter feed is a self-sustaining promotion machine.  Just don’t be too spammy.  Retweet stuff from your followers.  Tweet news articles you see, pictures, whatever.  Be sparing in how you use it promotionally, but use it promotionally.

Same can be said for Facebook or Myspace of whatever.  Use these social media to get out there and talk to people.  To build an audience.  To talk to that audience.  To sell to that audience. 

Unless, of course, you’re more comfortable with the telegraph.  In which case, definitely get off my lawn.

Next up:  List Building. (And don't worry, we'll get to what readers can do soon!)

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