A Necessary Evil

I’ll be the first to admit that as a guy in my thirties, I’m not the main authority on how to use social media. I mean, I’m from the time where you could only make a Facebook account if you had a .edu email address! I also believe that social media is generally unhealthy for our monkey brains, but I won’t get into that in this Guide. 🙊

That all being said, I do have some recommendations for some best practices while you’re on the web promoting your work and interacting with followers. I’ll keep it short and sweet, but If you have a younger sibling or kids of your own, I won’t be offended if you take their advice over mine!

Use What You Already Use 

I’ve written and rewritten this section many times and all were too long. Essentially, this one is just common sense to me. I know myself and I pretty much only use Instagram to share things with my friends and family and followers, so that’s the platform I’m going to continue to use. There’s no point in me trying to break into an already saturated market on another social media platform.

That’s not to say social media isn’t useful. At no time in history has it been easier to access millions, if not billions, of people with the right amount of persistence and luck. Just ask yourself, would you rather be spending a few hours a day making silly trend videos that someone may only scroll past? Or would you rather spend that time reading, writing, and honing your craft? Be honest.

You’ll find that Part 12 will be way more useful to you as far as sales and outreach go.

Keep It Uniform

As I’ve said earlier, I pretty much only use Instagram. As a byproduct of Meta ownership, I also have a Facebook page. The other profiles I have because of their relationship to publishing outlets are Goodreads, Amazon Author, and my own website.

When you use multiple platforms, you in-turn have multiple ways for people to discover you. I recommend you try to use the following so visitors (i.e. potential customers) know they are on your actual account and not an imposter.

• Same username or @ across the board
• Display same email address (If you want public)
• Sign up with same email address (this is more for you to keep track of your accounts)
• Use the same bio. This could mean that a section of it looks identical to others or only minor variations depending on the platform.
• Use the same links. Ideally, everywhere would end up back at your website, but if there is the option for more links make sure the lead to the same places.

There will also be a section on the Self Publishing Checklist for you to list all of your social media account information!

Keep It You

You’re self published. You don’t have a PR person to force you to speak in corporate lingo or master question dodging like a politician. And that gives you/us an advantage. We control our name and our brand. We can be ourselves and talk like real human beings. Embrace that. Develop relationships. Open discourse with online communities. Answer questions from random followers. Be you! Just don’t be stupid. 😉

Limit Your Time On Reddit and Forums

All I’ll say is while writing forums and r/selfpublished can be useful for some writing/publishing information, they are not the places to go to get free editing or to sell your work. They exist for general advice from all ends of the spectrum and that’s how they should be viewed. I mean, you spend 5 minutes on any of those outlets and you’ll start to question everything you’ve ever done and that’s not healthy for creative development. Be smart!

Like, Comment and Subscribe, Scoob!

Now that you’ve smashed that validation button, you can move on to the soul crippling topic of advertising with money and in-person face time! Head on over to Part 12: Advertising and Expectations.