More Social Media & Me

So I'm on Twitter and even have a new phone to make those all important tweets more of a possibility.  To date I've tweeted about my first strawberries, redecorating my spare room and what's going on in my writing world.

I also did a bit of research to see if there were any other sites out there which suited my personality better than the 140 character restriction of Twitter. That in itself proved time consuming and confusing. There's just so many of them.

See what I mean?

It forced me to ask myself if joining a whole load of different social media sites was really right for me. I can see some serious downfalls.

• It's a time consuming business and there are so many things to get distracted by.
• There's the danger of drowning in the vast ocean of Twitter, Pinterest, facebook, tumblr, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, flickr.....
• Added to this, all the Social Media focus could lead to not doing what we (writers) really want to be doing – the writing.

But I've worked out a little method to help with the potential risk of madness. And here are my suggestions:

1. If you don't have a blog or website then create an Author Page on facebook or Pinterest or whatever site you fancy. Make sure it says what you and your writing are about.
2. Stick to the social media sites you feel most comfortable with as you won't be fumbling around for what to write.
3. Choose sites which allow you to link one to the other.
4. Share posts between your media pages to make your life easier.
5. Set aside time for your social media pages in your writing schedule and think of it as FUN TIME – this is where you get to interact with the public and show them a bit of your persona.
6. Post as often as you can manage on each – consider a rotating schedule (am told by Emily Benet that for Twitter it's best to tweet every day).
7. It's worth remembering that some forms of social media give you the option of scheduling posts so you don't actually have to be anywhere near a device for your word to spread across the universe.
8. Respond to people who like your page or retweet – it shows you're grateful and damn it people, it's the polite thing to do and it costs absolutely NOTHING.

But, in your bid to become more of the social animal than you already are, remember not to take that evolution one step too far.

Evolution

To help you decide which is the one for you, here is a link for the top 15 social media sites out there right now.

http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networking-websites