It occurred to me recently that, instead of giving authors some arbitrary list of social media profiles they must have and social media outlets in which they must participate, maybe we should be asking a different question—what, exactly, do you like to do? How can we leverage that like/ hobby into something that will help you sell books?
Here’s an example: if you love chit-chatting on Twitter, you are much more likely to be able to engage people there, to make connections, to form bonds, and ultimately, to build up a community of people who want to support your work (by buying and reviewing your books, of course!). This will not be the case if you grudge-Tweet for 15 minutes every day, wandering around Twitter like a lost puppy. If you hate (or just don’t get) Twitter, that’s fine—don’t force it. While I don’t think you should ignore Twitter altogether and I encourage all authors to at least have a Twitter profile with a link back to their main website, I feel like time spent on a platform you don’t get/ don’t like isn’t going to be effective, so I would tell that author to set up their blog to just feed out to their Twitter accounts (as a best practice) and leave it at that. You’ll see many well-known authors doing this, and I think if the real truth of the matter is that you don’t get/ like Twitter, that is the best use of it.
That’s not to say that you can just dismiss social media or some form of interaction entirely. Whether you love Pinterest, you’re obsessed with Facebook, or you adore Instagram, or you just do a great job writing on your blog and building up your email list (we’ll talk more about that tomorrow), you do need to be doing SOMETHING you enjoy to build up and interact with your community.
The bottom line—hate Twitter all you want, that’s fine. But, don’t get discouraged because you haven’t found your ideal form of communication yet. Keep looking until you find one that fits, and when you do, make that platform a part of your daily life as a writer and marketer/ entrepreneur.
