I haven’t been around much recently. Because my first book in the Tales of Butternut Creek came out April 3, I’ve spent a lot of time on promo. Friends were lovely enough to invite me to their blogs to promote the book. The publicist at FaithWords set up a blog tours for me and I’ve been tweeting and facebooking.
One of my firsts blogs was about my fear of using social media. During the last few weeks, I’ve learned a lot and am much braver about using it.
TWITTER; Can be fun. Can also be a waste of time. While I’m working on a particularly difficult scene or I have a bunch of line edits to do, my brain says, “Hey, let’s run over to Twitter and see if anyone retweeted you,” Takes great discipline not to take a break. PROS: Twitter is a great way to do promo; I’ve meet interesting people; people post articles I enjoy; it’s a good break when the brain is overloaded. CONS: Because lots of other people use Twitter for promo, many tweets are boring and the sheer numbers is overwhelming. No one can read them all because they just keep coming. The worst part is that there are a great number of retweets. At one time, a man I’m following retweeted SEVENTY messages in a row–I counted. Fortunately, there is a button that blocks retweets from individuals and I used it! LESSON: Write content people will enjoy instead of constant self promotion.
FACEBOOK: Can also be fun. I’ve found this to be less overwhelming than Twitter. I love keeping up with friends and seeing photos, but it can take up a great deal of time. LESSON: Don’t save every cute animal 
picture that’s posted.
BLOGGING: There are many wonderful blogs out there. The publicist had me blog at http://dimplesandtangles.blogspot.com/ and http://www.delightingintoday.com/ Both were gorgeous and had links to other sites I didn’t know existed.
I survived. I’m back home, a grizzled veteran of social media. I’d love to know how you feel about Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. Do you have any blogs you’d recommend?
I agree with your assessment. Twitter moves too fast for me, but it does keep me alerted to new releases and such. Last year during the RWA conference, people tweeted some good info snippets from publisher panels, and I found that fascinating.
My favorite blog is edittorrent. The neat thing is that I get their updates via email, and I read them religiously. Great blog for style and craft, especially for new writers like me.
Glad to see you survived the foray into social media!
Thanks for the input and agreement (I really enjoy agreement!) I’ll have to remember to broaden the people I cover during RWA. I’ll run over and check edittorrent. Yes, I survived and learned stuff!
A post that I fully agree with about Twitter, Jane. Maybe its because we are both mature women, Who knows…ha.
Sorry if my Tweets to you today were too many. I am so confused with Twitter. I figure we should be able to see at a GLANCE what we have tweeted and who we tweeted to, instead of having to leave that page to go in search of them. By the time I get back to the page I wanted to reply to a post on, I’ve forgot who it was..ha haaa. Prolly another age thing. The darn Tweets just fly by eh.
Vivien Jackson, I am going to checkout edittorrent, it sounds promising, mostly you mentioned the RWA. A while back I was a member of the Van island group and they were really awesome people, and so much fun at the meetings!
Jessie, So good to hear from you! Send as many Twitters as you like–getting everything in 140 characters isn’t easy. Did you figure out what I meant by retweeting? Please stop by any time! And, yes, I too like RWA. I wouldn’t be published without that group.
Thank you Jane! You’re a step ahead of me…I haven’t jumped on the Twitter bandwagon yet. I do use facebook occasionally for personal friends but really feel like if I participated in all of the social media out there it would be way too much to keep up with. It’s all I can do to write posts and answer e-mails for my little blog. I feel like any more would just be creating more work for myself! Hope all is going well with the book. It was so good!
Jennifer! Thanks for stopping by. And your blog isn’t LITTLE–it’s glorious. I believe it is possible to survive without twitter. Glad you enjoyed the book!