Monday, September 19, 2011

On social media marketing.

I'm still pretty new at this whole blogging thing, as you know, though I'm pleased that (so far!) I'm sticking to my resolution to post at least three times a week. Yay, me.

I'm also on Twitter (@millercallihan) and Facebook (though I only "friend" people I actually know personally or professionally), and I'm starting to use Google Plus a bit as well. Link is here; let me know if you'd like an invite and don't have one yet (whether I "know you" or not).

I use LinkedIn but have never found it particularly helpful in my line of work. A friend of mine gets head-hunted at least once a week via LinkedIn, though, so I think that one depends on your industry.

What other social media platforms do you use? Have you found anything else that's useful for self-promotion? What's the next big thing going to be?

3 comments:

Allan Petersen said...

Social media is such a great tool for authors and agents alike.

Personally, Google+ is becoming my blog. I get more interaction there for my own posts, and I can add my thoughts in comment form to other people's posts. In fact, top tech bloggers are seeing their highest interactivity numbers on Google+ (not Facebook).

The only benefit I see to maintaining a blog is for posterity: blog posts are permanent. Google+ caps you at your 250 most recent posts -- this is a bug that Google will "eventually fix." Recordkeeping is really the only reason why I cross-post on Google+ and on my legacy blog.

I do maintain a short story blog at ampshorts.tumblr.com. Reason: I want a chronological record of the short stories I write. And I want a short-story-only site where I can direct interested people. Tumblr is the perfect format for such a thing: easy to update, incredibly simple reader interface.

Jessica Brockmole said...

I haven't yet gotten into Google + and I'm still a sporadic tweeter. I have made some excellent connections via Facebook, so I don't discount that as a viable social media outlet for me. I'm waiting to get as excited about Google + as everyone else seems to be!

Shoshanna Evers said...

For me, Twitter is my favorite hands-down. I can interact with my readers, with other authors, with industry peeps, I can tell people about my books and I can find new books that I want to read too!

Once I got serious about Twitter, my sales increased dramatically. I'm also on Facebook and I friend everybody because I want to get to know as many of my readers as I can, and I also want to get to know other authors.

I blog sporadically and I belong to a bunch of Yahoo loops as well. I'm on Google+, but so far all I've been doing with it is adding people to circles and staring at the circles in confusion...

I'm on Twitter @ShoshannaEvers - and I follow back! See you guys there!