Comments on: What does Social Media mean to you?

By: Tatum

Tatum — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 19:24:10 +0000

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.

By: sue watson

sue watson — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 18:50:36 +0000

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.

By: S. Usher Evans

S. Usher Evans — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 15:43:30 +0000

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.

By: Anna Casadei

Anna Casadei — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 12:40:24 +0000

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.

By: Deborah Richards

Deborah Richards — Fri, 22 Aug 2014 08:55:43 +0000

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’.

By: Gemma Corden

Gemma Corden — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 19:22:46 +0000

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.

By: Emily Jean Roche

Emily Jean Roche — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 11:06:39 +0000

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.

By: Trisha Loehr

Trisha Loehr — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 03:08:02 +0000

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. 🙂

By: Kate Foster

Kate Foster — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 01:15:09 +0000

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.

By: Andrea Nevay

Andrea Nevay — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 16:01:26 +0000

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.