self publishing advice for social media peacocks

Social Media, in my eyes, is a dazzle of alluring content… all looking back at me with big blue eyes. Where do I start with it all?

As an author, I am a self publisher because I want to sell my book… and write and sell more books. Because I want to make a living at it.
It’s important to keep telling myself this so that I can stay focused on WHY I am doing all of this… the website, and the research, and the learning, and the contacting people, and the blogging…
Especially as I start reaching out into the noisy, distracting, alluring, challenging, fast moving, and fast changing world of social media.

My purpose for using social media is the same for any other business… to get my product and brand to more and more and more people. And to create a dialog with my customers – which enhances everything I want to do with my business. It’s more than traditional marketing, because the responses from people through the medium of social media will influence how I do business. It’s modern marketing… it’s relationship building.

And now that I have my purpose firmly in mind… I’m ready to take the plunge,
But there are HUNDREDS of social media sites… literally.
So I will start with the ones with the biggest market share… because there my efforts will reach the most people.

I’ll start with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pintrest.

The determination of who has the biggest market share is big business in the big business world, and in June 2012 Forbes Magazine said that Experian Marketing Services said that Pintrest was #3. But SEOmoz doesn’t yet agree, and I like their approach better. But more than all that… Facebook and Twitter are undeniably number 1 and 2 and they are pretty easy to get started. LinkedIn is where I’m supposed to be spending a lot of time polishing my resume to get or keep a real job. And YouTube is movies… I can make movies. Pintrest is on my list and it’s important, but it’s a brain bender because it is a totally new social media approach.

I’m an author. I’m a writer. It’s not a stretch to imagine that I’m kind of an introvert. The social media work is challenging for me – both to understand for my business, and to take the plunge and interact. It’s also so very very tempting to go clicking away for hours as I see bright shiny object after shark-eating-whale-carcass clip… (just. so. tempting.)…. and I’ve noticed that this effort is one of the things offered by self publishing helper companies. They offer to establish your platform on some of the major sites, populate it with your content, and link you up with the right kind of groups and people. And that might be worth the money. I won’t suggest any helper companies by name because I haven’t tried them… have you?

I’ve got to Do It Myself because that’s part of my mission. Do it, learn it, understand it… but
…. those shark videos……… so distracting.

 

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