Social Media Calling

By Susan Reichert, Editor-in Chief, Southern Writers Magazine

 They say it is imperative that authors have a social network in order to promote their books and themselves as authors.  I decided to look at a few and this is what I saw.

There is Facebook and Twitter. Then I’m told you need to subscribe to LinkedIn, YouTube,  Digg, Stumbleupon, Del.icio.us and My Space.  From there they move onto aNobii,   weRead, and then of course let us not forget Pinterest,  Shelfari, Google and reddit.com.

Now we find another ‘ sect’ has been added  for authors called voiceBoks, Fireflies, Book Launch & Paint Party, Calling All Authors, Branch Out, Author News, Crazy for books, Christian Poets and Writers, The Book Club Network.

Rather than naming anymore, I will just say, there are sites popping up every day for authors to use to get their books and their names out to the public. These are promotion tools for authors but if not careful, they can consume an entire day putting information on each one. Because authors are responsible for their own marketing and promotion maybe it would be a good idea to take some time and look at each one and perhaps categorize them as to what information is best to put on each one. For the most part, there are different audiences on each. After all that is what authors are after, to touch different audiences and introduce them to their books. 

If you know the purpose of each one, the audience it is reaching then you will be able to divide them into categories, using the same information. This certainly cuts down on the amount of time spent. See if you can get them divided into threes. Then you only have to have three segments of content. One segment goes on one list, another segment goes on the second list and the last segment goes on the third list.

If authors are spending a lot of time on building social media my question becomes is when do they find time to write? For authors their passion is writing. Most authors could sit for hours and just write. Yet all authors have to slice out of their workday time to work on the Social Media junket. So maybe if authors segment into list their promotions there will be more time for writing.