I was considering titling this post “Social Media: Gift or Curse?” but I thought that sounded a bit overly-dramatic, so I went with a statement of simple fact: What I learned from a month of staying off all my social media. Social media. Some people love it, some people don’t care. Some people are gurus […]
via What I Learned From A Month of Social Media Abstinence —
I like to keep an eye on the chats (discussions) in Goodreads on all kinds of topics and one that struck me recently was a chat I saw about social media. The author wrote up his experience with Facebook promotions. He explained how he promoted, spending quite a bit I might add, and got himself heaps of new ‘likes’ but without a single book sale. He researched it and found that the majority of the ‘likes’ came from “click farms” which are based in other countries, in his case, India. He was very unhappy with his experience and titled his write-up “Beware the Lure of Social Media”. Having that experience would have pissed me off too so I understand his viewpoint. I would strongly suggest to anyone who is going to shell out some jing for promotion that they do their due diligence using Google and any other source that is not the person or entity selling you the promotion. Then hopefully you will have a better experience.
My thoughts? Here’s what I added to the discussion.
 I LOVE to read and I am a HUGE fan of many amazing authors. As an author, I took a look at social media from my viewpoint as a reader/fan.
Do I want the authors I love and adore to be constantly pinging me (whether it be on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram etc.) on their book? No. I have already started following them for some reason – I already know about or have read their book. I want to know where their next signing is. What they’re working on now. What inspires them? What makes them tick? What makes them mad? What things interest them? And, when a new book is coming out, they had better let me know too!
I am actually more interested in THE PERSON. I think a lot of readers are. So my thought is: use the social media to BE social. Readers will go to your website or amazon or Goodreads to find out more about your book(s). But to find out more about you? What better way than to share on social media. 🙂
A good friend of mine posted this experiment and I think it is genius! Wanted to share. Would love your opinion. 🙂 
Author Lisa Barry 