My social media book is stalled out right now because of Life, so I’m going to be sharing a few insights on social media for writers here on the blog in the meantime.
One of the most important truths to keep in mind when crafting a social media strategy is this: as writers, most of us are in this for the long haul. We need to pace ourselves so that we can continue to use social media to connect with our audiences over the course of an entire career. We need to find a balance so we don’t impede our own ability to write.
I talk a lot about priorities, and I firmly believe that for most fiction writers, the first priority has to be writing our fiction. Any social media strategy needs to support this goal instead of getting in its way. Otherwise it will prove to be unsustainable over any significant period of time.
So when you are crafting your own personal strategy, keep the following in mind:
1. As writers, we don’t need to do All The Things (or in this case, be on all the sites). Yes, it’s better to be using more than one form of social media. But you don’t need to be active on six or seven different sites. For most of us, that way lies madness (and a severe time crunch). It’s fine to try the newest, hottest thing in social media to see if it has a particular resonance for us, but it’s also fine to drop the services that aren’t pulling their weight. It’s generally better to choose a few places to focus your social media energies, rather than not being able to do a good job anywhere.
2. Assess your time honestly. If you need to manually track your schedule for a while in order to do this, then go ahead and do that. Between day jobs, families, and other commitments, some writers simply don’t have time to regularly blog, for example. Other writers can put aside an hour or so a week for one blog post, and still other writers have time to blog every day. But even very time-crunched writers can squeeze in five minutes most days for Twitter or Facebook. By realistically thinking about the time that is available to you, you can choose which sites to craft the bulk of your strategy around.
3. Choose your ONE top social media priority. Sometimes you’ll be sick, or you’ll have multiple deadlines, or someone close to you will be getting married, or Life. During these times, you might not have the time or energy to use social media as much as you normally do. So choose one social media activity that you’ll try to carry on no matter what’s going on. Only one. Right now, mine is this blog. But you can choose any service you want, depending on your overall strategy. And then when things get hectic or difficult, you can drop everything else and still be maintaining your presence.
What about you? What do you have time for? What sites do you focus on? What is your top social media priority?
[…] So here, if you’re interested, a few people who have said it a bit more eloquently: Lillian Cohen-Moore discusses how to deal with burn out. Then, Damian Walters-Grintalis talks about writing when you are broken and John Nakamura Remy talk about how he learned to stop worrying and love his goals. Finally, Amy Sundburg discusses priorities and social media. […]
Oh wow, this is timely. Thank you Amy. i was just pontificating about how to balance it all myself. Current online life for me is reduced to retweeting a few things of interest, and *liking* a few status updates. I need to figure out a better way to stay connected and still keep on top of deadlines.
I’m suspecting it takes less interaction to stay connected than you think. A few tweets most days is not so bad for Twitter, for example.
For me, social media is for fun. One can be connected and tuned in as much as humanly possible, but it won’t do any good if the thing to be promoted isn’t good (or doesn’t exist). The most important part is the writing.
It’s true. If you aren’t producing work, there’s no reason to build yourself a platform as a writer.
[…] well, that’s not really true, but whatevs! Here’s a post from Amy Sundberg taking a frank look at social media and writer priorities. Check it out. Also, an interesting look at the whole Reddit thing from John Scalzi over at […]
[…] up where I left off. There’s no right answer to that. Amy Sundberg wrote a great piece about Priorities and Social Media with considerations in crafting your own personal strategy as a creative person. Jim C. Hines […]
[…] Priorities and Social Media (Lately, I’ve been blogging a lot. And I like it. It’s emotionally challenging–I’m learning to read my own intestines, see. But I can also tell it’s encroaching on the important stuff, like writing the really real things (as if a blog post isn’t actually made of words–but YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. okay?). And reading. This particular post (which I stole from this post) is brief, but true: I need to make a schedule. Tattoo it to the backs of my eyelids if I really need, where I can never forget it. Right now, I’m trying for four posts a week. This is probably too much, but I like to overwhelm myself.) […]