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 21st 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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