Tag: social media

First, a quick update, because you have to eat your meat before you get your pudding.

November was a very productive month for me. I’m flirting with a repetitive strain injury with all the time at the keyboard, but it’s really paying off. I participated in the ProWritingAid Challenge (the replacement for NaNoWriMo) and finished the first draft of my next thriller. It’s about a retired FBI forensic psychiatrist whose past comes back to haunt him. I’m plowing through the second draft now and loving it. More on that in the new year.

This fall, I started up the Vocab Menace Series, putting out videos every day. I LOVE WORDS! I love learning their origins and playing with ideas and I’ve had a lot of fun with it. I will continue, but not every day.

Evaluating Social Media

For years, I posted regularly on my writing blog (ChazzWrites.com). That was helpful early in my publishing career. I connected with some wonderful authors and made allies. Eventually, I decided it was best to consolidate my posts on my author blog and only post when I had something new and trenchant to say.

I found that posting everywhere (Bluesky, YouTube, Threads, Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium, Substack, TikTok, and the Book of Faces) takes a lot of time. Not all those platforms are worth the energy I invested.

My impressions of the usefulness of social media platforms (your mileage may vary):

I find the user interface for Bluesky and Threads unfriendly. The people are nice, but the platforms are not where they need to be yet. Discoverability is an opaque enigma wrapped in a burrito of mystery.

YouTube is good. Eventually, YouTube might pay me actual money.

One of the most active content categories on Medium is writing. Put that in your keywords, and people will look. Medium’s interface is cool, but following and connecting with people there is probably more useful than dedicating too much time to post every day. Because they are so alike, I feel similarly about Substack. I’m posting less on Medium now, more on Substack.

I’m not looking for a job or writing business books, so LinkedIn is a waste of time and energy.

I like Instagram. As a news source, I find many of the creators I follow there provide thoughtful commentary.

For the authors out there, BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

As for Facebook, you can have a lot of followers, but your audience is far too throttled. They want you to pay to have your content seen. There are many ways it’s problematic. However, I connect with my inner circle of readers there.

I enjoy Facebook for my fan page and hope they never delete it. That happens sometimes, and when it happens, you probably won’t even know why. As a writer hoping to sell my work, it’s always best for me to have my own platform that can’t be ripped away.

The trouble with TikTok

TikTok has really fallen in terms of usefulness and tone. I used to be addicted to political debates there, but my favorite content creators left the platform. Others are competent, but very repetitive. Mostly, the live debates are angry people talking over each other. (Oh, and don’t forget the racist trolls. Lots of those.)

TikTok is a special case in some ways. BookTok can be great, but is often repetitive, covering the same few books (read: rarely mine). Also, some of the BookTok drama is ridiculous.

I would pursue book promotion there more avidly, but things are about to change for the worse. If you’re a Canadian author, sending review copies to the United States is expensive. To complicate things further for non-American authors, TikTok will soon become a walled garden, for the United States only. The details on that change are muddy, but when that happens, I won’t be able to reach my American readers through that platform. (That’s a shame. Most of my readers are from the United States.)

Conclusions

1. When my American readers can only see other Americans on TikTok, the platform’s value will plunge even further.
2. Between the forest of TikTok-friendly language and the suppression of posts meant to appease political actors and the new owners, TT’s once robust foundation will eventually sink into the shifting sands of irrelevancy.
3. Unless another app rises in TikTok’s stead, the change in ownership will benefit Instagram.
4. LinkedIn is for business. Not my business, though.
5. If you post for self-expression alone, enjoy using whatever platform you like.
6. From a time management perspective, don’t invest too much energy trying to post everywhere. It’s a lot to keep up with, and the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.
7. For gaining visibility and leverage social media platforms, follow and engage with people you enjoy.
8. Authentic engagement has more value than solely sending out signals.
9. Agents and publishers are obsessed with follower count. They shouldn’t be. Follower count means much less than engagement.
10. Social media is free to use for book promotion, but you get what you pay for. Author Jason Pargin posts excellent content. He has said that even with all his followers, that work does not translate significantly to a greater readership.
11. There are plenty of book marketing strategies out there. Some gurus push complicated flow charts of funnels. They all enthuse about newsletters. Some content creators make money from sharing “the newest trick.” The solution to selling books may be going direct, going wide, learning how to advertise (and funding it), keyword optimization, consistent branding, or some combination of all of the above, plus something else. Answers abound, but social media alone surely isn’t the cheap, easy solution.
12. You can’t make a viral video happen. Others choose that for you. I’ve gone viral once, but only because I made a lot of trolls angry. TikTok hid a lot of the nastiest comments because “the collapsed comments could be detrimental to your mental well-being.” Ha! As if my mental well-being was all that great to begin with! I could see the threats, and I had a peek. I just had to click on them to see the tidal waves of crash-outs.
    
    My question: If the platform’s AI detects mean messages suggesting harm to me, why doesn’t the platform ban those trolls?
    
    The hullabaloo hardly mattered in the end. The experience did lower my estimation of my fellow humans, but I didn’t respond to the trolls much. Arguing with fascists who are determined to be idiots is the ultimate waste of time. Always preserve your peace (between the punching Nazis thing, I mean).
    
    On reaching readers:

All social media platforms suppress your signal to some degree.

To break through all the noise requires time, talent, energy, editing, and savvy marketing. Consistency is paramount, but only if you have the time and energy. As much as I love posting Vocab Menace content, it was cutting into my writing time. To get the next book out, protect that time. Prioritize productivity.

My writing time and energy is paramount to me at present. That much is working. My next thriller will be released early in 2026. That’s a concrete achievement I can measure.

~ REMINDER: Buy your books for Christmas now so you can read them before you wrap them for others. Happy holidays!

FYI: All my work is available on Amazon. Endemic is available everywhere.