What does Social Media mean to you?
We’re looking for women writers to share their social media experiences with us.
Do you consider Social Media a mere procrastination tool or has it helped you?
Leave your comments below. We might feature you in our next post!
Category: Contemporary Women Writers
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I was introduced to social media in 2011, which was through Facebook. My objective was to stay connected with a creative writing club I had joined when I was in college. Also, I’d connected with friends and family. As I was getting to know the whole process, I was starting to think of it as a distraction. It often grew boring. That’s when I realized, later on, that I needed to stick with my original objective–to connect with the writing community. I must admit that I’ve found many, great reading and writing communities and companies that I wouldn’t have found had it not been for social media. I’ve connected with the same communities through Twitter. Twitter happens to be one of my favorites. Also, it was social media that convinced me to become a blogger, since my goal is to put myself out there as a writer. Many opportunities have come along, all thanks to the world of Facebook, Twitter, including Instagram. I’ve often said that social media is great if you’re connecting with the right people.
When I was first published by a very small, new publisher in 2011 I hadn’t a clue about social media. Consequently the first year was a steep learning curve and as my publisher wasn’t very involved online it was completely down to me alone to build a presence. I now have a brilliant publisher who is extremely online media savvy and can’t believe how much of a difference this has made. However, those first few years alone served me very well and taught me so much about the importance of social media. I reached out to bloggers and fellow authors who helped me to realise the power of social media. As authors today we are so lucky – we can communicate with our readers and they can speak directly to us through social media. We can discover what our readers like/don’t like about our writing and we can learn about their lives too. Readers will often suggest ideas, relevant themes they want to read about which I have found to be a great inspiration for my writing. Sitting at a desk most days can be quite lonely at times, but I have met the most fascinating, supportive and wonderful people through social media and see it as a huge bonus to everything I do.
Social media is a big prong of my marketing strategy. I find that Facebook is nice for my friends and family who’ve liked my page, twitter is nice for a rapid growth of new followers, and the others are just other platforms to post the same content.
Twitter, in particular, is powerful to connect those interested in the traditional publishing route to agents. Twitter hashtags such as #Pitchwars help connect queries with agents faster. For those going the indie route, it’s a place to connect with like minded authors.
Still: for my genre (sci fi), the best place to sell books is face to face.
I use Twitter as a writing community, where I’ll encourage other writers in their writing, and we’ll do writing sprints. Facebook is private, family and friends only.
My second book ‘The Skywhale’ was published on July 18th 2014 by the Canadian ebook publisher MuseItUp Publishing (MIU). As with most books it started off higher up on the Amazon rankings and slowly drifted downwards. MIU sends out lots of postings on Facebook groups but other than that only uses price discounting as a marketing tool. I’m OK with that when my next book, a sequel to ‘The Skywhale’ is published, but felt I had to do something to support sales in a positive fashion, so I began advertising ‘The Skywhale’ on Facebook.
Facebook advertising is very user friendly. The site gets you set up very quickly so you can start posting. You can choose to boost each posting for a budget you choose from a drop down menu so that it reaches people that you’ve chosen to target by country, age group, gender and interests. The analytics page tells you how many thousands of people saw your posting advert, who clicked on it, liked it, shared it or clicked on a link through to your Amazon sales page. Brilliant. I’m totally addicted. I like the fact that my posting turns up on their Facebook page, in their personal on-line space. It’s very intimate.
I’ve experimented with different wording, links and target audience and found the one that works best for my book and has the highest click through rate to my Amazon sales page. I’ve stopped the long slide downwards on the book rankings and have even sold more copies of my previous book which I haven’t advertised at all. Bravo Facebook, that’s what I say.
Deborah Richards, author of ‘The Skywhale’ and ‘Jiddu’s Journey’.
As someone who has been, shall we say, sleeping for too many years, social media has woken me up to the reality of writing and publishing today. It keeps me on the pulse in a manageable way, and has put me in touch with a wonderful and diverse community of fellow writers, in a way that would have been out of my reach previously.
Only a few weeks in, it is still a terrifying and sobering experience; very much a challenge despite my still young-ish 31 years. I’ve a lot of catching up to do!
It is also rather distracting and absorbs a LOT of time, time that traditionally would have been poured into actual writing. Perhaps. Potentially troublesome for any hardcore procrastinators like myself!
Social media can be overwhelming if you let it – you need to learn to control and curate your interactions and this, I am learning, takes time to perfect.
Overall, the big SM is inspiring me to push forward and start writing again. It is making me re-think who I am and how I present myself to the world. Yes, really – that deep!
It’s a massively useful professional tool, and I now simply cannot imagine life without it. We are a lucky generation to have this virtual best friend at our beck and call.
Social media allows me to engage with my audience and people who share similar interests in ways never available with out it. I have found that, through social media, I can connect with people across the globe who share my love of fantasy and YA fiction. Furthermore, I have been able to better connect with my own local community. Many of the community action events in my area are organized through Facebook.
Social Media has become multiple things for me. It has provided me with a job, tweeting for a non-profit organization. It has also become a great connector, linking me with dear friends who live all over the world and writers who have neat things to share. Sadly, it has also become a huge time-waster and procrastination tool. For instance, I should be writing right now. Instead, I found this link on twitter and have now begun perusing this website. I love social. I also just want to unplug and pretend it doesn’t exist. Every day. 🙂
Social media, certainly for me at least, is a place rather than a thing. Somewhere to go and mingle. A safe zone where I can stop judging myself and what I do. It’s a place I can find informative text and opportunities shared by like-minded people and where I can offer links to what interests me. I find inspiration, comfort, debate, smiles and laughter there. From wacky to silly, and from serious to sad. On the down side, of course it’s distracting and can produce an awful lot of green-eyed emotion but, overall, it’s an escape from bouts of frustration and loneliness. Social media is a touch. A light.
Social media has been a life changer for me. I have met some of my closest friends through social media, learnt a lot that I would have never learnt at school or university and it has my horizons. Social media is a big part of my life as an 18 year old, and helps me organize contacts and share my life with others. Although social media can be time consuming, I never feel like I am wasting my time (unless I am using social media to procrastinate!). Its usually a safe space to express myself and connect with likeminded people, which is why I love it.
Social media provided me with a community that I needed. For years, I simply wrote for myself. I wrote stories that no one else ever saw. Social media introduced me to so many writing opportunities and so many other writers. I started writing for different websites, and as I continued to do so, I interacted with other passionate writers whom I could connect with. They all inspired me and encouraged me. Even recently, when I started feeling discouraged, I felt better again after having social media interactions with other writers. Speaking with other writers through social media about my passions, goals, journeys, and obstacles has made me a better, more confident writer. Without social media, I would have a hard time even meeting other writers, yet alone connecting with them.
I have had quite the ride on social media since joining last year. Yup. It all began with Twitter. I’d just had surgery last April and was recovering. For motivation and inspiration I began watching a Fox show series called ‘So You Think You Can Dance’. I was so moved by the artistic finesse of the show and its’ dancers (one in particular – Paul Karmyrian) that I began writing in earnest again. As a result I used social media as a tool to network and market my writing. It also was used to connect with other artists including those who inspired me from Season 10 ‘So You Think You Can Dance’. Since my intro to the world of subtweets, hashtags, dashboards and avis there have been good and not-so-much experiences. The good far outweigh the bad. I have blogged that you must often take things on the platform with a grain of salt because you honestly do not know with 100% certainty who you are actually dealing with. At the same time I have connected with some truly amazing people. There are ways to safeguard your interactions on or out here – whichever digital geographic scope you prefer to use;) There is really no way one can be successful whether you are an artist, entrepreneur or athlete without somehow being a part of this conglomerate of digital personas. We are real people, some of us, and if you manage to connect with the right circles it can be a difference maker to someone just starting out to those already out there deep in the social stratosphere. It’s all about building an audience or following. Starting a movement.
To read more from Rachel Wilson who pens under Escribana Viva:
http://www.scribeoflife.blogspot.com
http://www.wordstodanceby.blogspot.com
http://www.sf49ers3rdEyeView.blogspot.com
http://www.sportsintrigue.blogspot.com
http://www.kidsrpeepl2.blogspot.com
http://escribana7.tumblr.com/
Social media got me writing seriously again. I had been posting privately on G+ and wasn’t getting much out of it, so I decided to post publicly that I was going to be doing NaNoWriMo. I got circled by a couple of people, then a few more, then shared around, and suddenly I had hundreds of writers in my stream, all cheering each other on. Many of these writers were pursuing their craft year-round with a dedication I’d lost sight of, but their example and encouragement got me back on the horse. Now I’m in thousands of circles and have found myself part of a truly remarkable community of writers there, and now I have a novel that I’ve edited and polished enough that I finally feel ready to submit to agents. It can occasionally be a time sink (usually that means I need to go through and trim some people out) but seeing other people writing helps remind me of what I should be doing.
Without social media I wouldn’t have had nearly as much success with my self published novel as I did. I was able to reach fans that I wouldn’t have been able to without the help of the wonderful world of Facebook. I don’t have a massive amount of fans on Facebook or anything but the ones I do have are very interactive and supportive. Do I think social media leads to procrastination? Yes. So I guess it’s a double edged sword. Like finding this blog for instance; I should be writing right now but instead I was posting a Twitter update and found this. As a writer you just have to be strong enough to say “No Words with Friends, this isn’t really helping me build a better vocabulary I have to go now. My farm will have to survive without me.”
hi, I am new on social media, it seems like I am entering in a different world of communication as well as sharing ideas. Here I can share my thoughts and at the same time can get response from others. Social media has it’s own advantages and disadvantages, it’s up to us that how we can benefited from it.It is an excellent platform to improve your writing skill as well as power of thinking. so use social media wisely……carefully….
Most of the time I very much enjoy social media. For me it’s not just about selling my work, either. I use social media to learn about what’s happening in the world, keeping in touch with activists and campaigns internationally. I find inspiration in other people’s writings and posts, and am able to learn from people I otherwise would have no way of being in touch with – T Thorn Coyle, Alain de Botton, Caroline Lucas, Stephen Fry, Neil Gaiman… to mention some obvious ones. I’ve found with my blog that the real delight is the sharing of ideas and comments, encountering the perspectives that surprise me. I’m also continually delighted by opportunities to connect with likeminded people around the world, and some of those have developed into true friendships. There have been work benefits along the way, but that’s come about because I’ve forged meaningful connections with people, based on shared enthusiasms and values. I’m wary of the hard sale, the authors who show up wanting to tout their book at me, it can all be very pushy and shouty, especially on twitter, and I keep away from that as much as I can, because it’s exhausting. People who use social media to be interested in things and to share things they care about, are much more interesting to me than the streams of ‘buy my stuff’.
(author, professional blogger, press officer, running social media feeds as part of my paid work and to support my authoring habit…)
Blogging has been invaluable to me for sharing my writing, developing a brand, and gathering an audience – but especially for connecting with wonderful people, many of whom become friends. It’s a rich and valuable experience in itself for a writer. I do use my weblog to promote my books, but only because I. the blogger, write books – not because I am an author who blogs in order to sell my writing. Having said that, as an indie author I doubt I would sell anything much at all if I didn’t have a social media platform.
On the other hand, things like twitter, while helpful for driving traffic to your book announcement, don’t necessarily bring about actual sales. I think if you want to be business-minded you have to be strategic about how you use those services and the sort of audience you build there. It doesn’t help that writers seem to follow other writers – that’s not necessarily going to result in readers, or even in link-sharing. Better to connect with people who would like to read the sort of books you write, and who might be willing to buy them. Of course, the characteristics that make a good writer don’t necessarily make a good, strategic business person. 🙂
It’s sometimes easy to find yourself spending hours on social media (especially twitter), yet I’ve never felt like it was time wasted. I’ve found it to be a POWERFUL tool to connect with the world, to give and receive helpful information, and to make your voice heard to those who want to hear it. My writing has evolved due to twitter. I now blog due to input via live chats on twitter. I’ve submitted work via contacts made on twitter, and much of it was accepted and published. Most importantly, I’m a part of a GLOBAL “family” of fellow MSers (multiple sclerosis). Our community is better than any support group out there – we learn, support, and share everything with each other. This has also prompted me to write for them…it’s therapeutic and well received. My writing has inspired others to attempt writing and other creative endeavors. This means the world to me and I can’t wait to see what the future brings!
If you’re a writer, your job is also to be a marketer. Developing an online following, even (or especially) pre-published is building an audience and a cheering section and a street team, and you need all of those things. But it often shouldn’t be explicit. Twitter is all about being witty at a cocktail party.
I’ve been on the Internet, doing social things, since 1990. We didn’t even have this “social media” phrase then. I’ve met a lot of friends that way. Sold books and essays and stories and poems. Met my partner (via LJ, and we’ve been together over seven years).
I’ve also dealt with a lot of BS. The Internet is full of tall poppy syndrome, full of resentment of success and hostility to women who speak. But you’re a writer, and it’s your job to speak anyway.
I have met more amazing people and received more opportunities thanks to the internet and social media than through any other means in my adulthood. And many of those amazing people whom I’ve become friends with offline – I met one the internet! It sounds crazy, right? But it’s the truth. And my writing? I don’t know if I would have given my writing enough credit or focus if social media hadn’t been an influence in my life. I believe today that social media can help us find and build communities in refined ways that are not limited by demographic. And it allows a level of networking unprecedented in history. This is the new frontier. And I am so excited to be a part of it!
Love this strong positive experience you name Julia! Thank you!
Thank you Anora! 🙂 I’ve enjoyed reading everyone else’s responses too.
Most useful as I take consider of it, bcoz it boosts your knowledge if you turn your mind on right thing.
Always able to stick up with new things, ideas most importantly going ons of your interested field.
I feel you live life more in present & lively with this…
A “younger” woman taught me how to do Twitter and helped me set up an account. I called it being tutored in Twitter as a Second Language. At first, it was a puzzle, but now I’m getting better at it and find that I enjoy the challenge of finding just the right 140 characters to tweet. Perhaps it’s even helping me to write tighter.
I blogged recently about how I am certain that without Twitter, I would not be a published author today.
I made connections through Twitter that directly led to my becoming published for the first time in a literary magazine (then in another, then another…) which gave me the confidence to independently publish my novel. Then, someone I originally met on Twitter and formed a bond with brought my work to the attention of the publisher that would end up publishing not one, but three of my novels: Booktrope.
Social media is very powerful. That power must be used carefully, and wisely. It must be respected as a way to genuinely get to know people, and not as a means to an end. You have to be authentic in your interactions. If you are, who knows what could happen? At the very least you end up learning from all those you meet along the way. But you just never know where it can take you…I am another case where amazing things have happened for me directly because of social media.
Social media is a necessary tool. I have found my last 4 or 5 freelance jobs via social media contacts. It’s invaluable for connections for writers. Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs connect writers and create strong bonds and friendships. I probably wouldn’t be on Facebook if it wasn’t for connecting with other authors and readers. Yes, it can suck you in if you let it but just like anything else, you need to be disciplined with it and use it to your advantage. Without these tools I would not be working in the field that I love write now. I would also not have landed my literary agent, or have the clients that I have today without twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, so I’m very thankful for social media and the ways I use these channels.
I enjoy Facebook and I both enjoy Twitter and use it to keep myself informed and share news items and issues that interest me and I feel passiomate about, as well as meeting likeminded people. What I don’t like about it is the constant barrage of book promotions. I end up filtering them out as I scroll down my feed. I have never discovered books I want to read this way so I find it difficult to imagine that other people might. Since I dislike the promotion barrage, I find it difficult to promote my writing this way. I send out the occasional tweet when something is worth tweeting about but I find it hard to do concerted promotion this way. It is supposed to be the done thing, but I frankly don’t like constantly shouting to people about my books. I also don’t understand who we’re promoting to.
It’s all writers following each other, as far as I can see. Don’t get me wrong, I think social media is great for networking, getting to know new people, getting in touch with people, and making issues known. I’m not sure it’s so great for selling books. But perhaps it’s just wrong for selling books for those like me who don’t like tooting their own horn.
I love social media and have found it an integral part of creating a writers platform, connecting with fellow creative dreamers and connecting with readers.
Twitter has been very successful for me in terms of blog traffic but more importantly for providing peer support. The kindest comments I have received have come via Twitter and I’m very grateful for them.
I was a bit behind the times when it came to social media, and I refused to get on the twitter Wagon. However, since reading articles about building my author platform, I’ve increased my involvement in media, and twitter has become a huge asset in building a way to reach out to others and learn from experienced writers. I can see where it can be a little distracting, but I control myself well, I think.
Hashtags on Twitter are the reason I’m commenting here. However as a professional author, I use social media selectively, to e-skill myself but do NOT blog and haven’t got a cat for FB photos. My research for ‘Authorpreneurship:The Business of Creativity’ was partly my digital apprenticeship as an author who had been mainly print published by major international publishers , but was investigating e-pubbing for rights reverted titles and setting up my own online store within my website. (www.hazeledwards.com) Which social media is most relevant, is dependent upon your stage of career and type of work. Time and energy management matters for the self-employed and I still spend about an hour daily with online e-administrivia and ‘play’ to learn stuff but am selective in whether it is business relevant or just procrastinating because I’m tired or bored. The bonus of social media is finding out about the writing community market, which is international.But important for me, to link any comment to the tag of my website and resources like my own newsletter.
I have a mixed relationship with social media. I love my blog – I made so many friends through it and it offers constant support both for my writing and for life in general. I blogged daily last year but found I didn’t want to continue with that this year because it was preventing me from writing.
I don’t invest as much time as I should in other platforms – I am on FB and Twitter but I do find I can lose hours reading rubbish and liking cute pictures of cats. I don’t have a proper strategy, it’s more another place to connect when I’m looking for ideas or support or just want to vent.
I don’t know if social media helps me sell books but, as an Indie author, it gets me known (albeit slowly) and it keeps me sane.
Social media is absolutely invaluable for my work. Brilliant for research, and great for building relationships with useful people. Sure, it’s a procrastination tool too, but if I’m going to procrastinate, it might as well be on a forum that can help my work, too!
As a freelance writer and writer by nature, I have found social media both a tool and a distraction. It’s great for when I am using Facebook Business Pages. I had to stop myself from being distracted from my personal page, but now I can focus more on my business page.
Social media has helped me a lot – I’ve made lots of friends and I can honestly say it has led me to three publications
I have found it to be something of a double-edged sword. I don’t belong to Facebook anyway but I have joined LinkedIn and Wattpad recently and I love belonging to Twitter. I also run two blogs. I do find that if I let it, it can get in the way of my writing, so I am very disciplined with myself and seem to have reached a good balance. I cannot deny it has opened new doors for me – I got two articles commissioned through it a few months ago, so it can be enormously helpful. You just have to know when to draw the line.
Jilly, well said. Double-edged the sword. Do you think there’s a blog post in line you’re drawing, the balance you’re reaching? If not a whole blog post, part of one, and we could build on it with input from others? – Email editor@booksbywomen.org if you’re interested. And thanks so much for commenting here!
I really don’t think it’s a matter of having an opinion on social media. If you’re a writer, it’s part of the “job” of writing. In this day and age of publishing, a writer has to be savvy, at least to some extent, on the use of social media to aid promotion, whether or not you choose a self-publishing route or are working through a publisher. I think what we forget is that it’s about building a relationship with your readers– not just touting your latest publication.
Whether or not to use social media– at least to some extent– to me isn’t a relevant question for writers anymore. Perhaps the better question is how to keep it in balance with the real goal: to write.
Agreed.
Social Media. Wow, what a double edged sword! Yes, it is a means of faffing and countless losing hours, but as a sole writer in her immediate community of close friends it has been the means to the creation of a community of writer peers, a method of free Marketing and also, a route to self-education and networking which has stretched me but also allowed me to do things at my own pace. I am extremely grateful to it, actually.
I admit that it can be a procrastination tool; it has to be used wisely I think. Not that I always do that, time can slip away rapidly while I get sucked into Twitter and FB. I don’t use too many platforms for that reason (I’m tempted by Pinterest and Instagram but have so far refrained). I use Twitter to publicise my blog and any pieces that I have written for other sites. As a writer trying to find a niche for myself and to discover my path, I hope that social media will allow me to reach people that I wouldn’t otherwise manage. I’ve also ‘met’ some very interesting people on Twitter and been able to make contact with guest writers for my blog that way.
As a new author just launching The Vineyard as an eBook with a Digital-first publisher, it has definitely helped with marketing because, it is the only real marketing tool available for digital books, apart from the book sites themselves. I wouldn’t say I consider it procrastination although I enjoy hearing and seeing what other people are doing (writers being naturally nosy) but more of an essential.
Well done Karen on your new book, and embracing the opportunity that digital marketing is for digital books.
Social media kick started my writing career! My blog led me to my first publishing deal with Salt publishing. Meanwhile contacts made through Twitter have led to getting articles commissioned and speaking events! It can be used for procrastination, but I’m proof it can be a powerful tool for getting your writing out there too – I’ve just signed a 2 book deal with Harper Impulse after my agent submitted a book I’d written on Wattpad – so yep, big fan of social media 🙂