Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Vine, Flickr, Pinterest, YouTube, Periscope, and, of course the 800 pound gorilla, Facebook: Social Media. Social fucking Media.

Okay, that was a little harsh. I don’t hate Social Media, not at all. I actually find it a pleasant diversion most of the time. Like a lot of people, I had a Facebook page that I had put up at the request of friends and family for a long time that I looked at sporadically at best. Like I said, a pleasant diversion so long as I avoided the folks looking to debate politics or religion.

Then, about a year ago, I learned about Kindle Direct Publishing and decided to put all these years of writing in the dark out into the light of day. As I wrote my books and tried to learn about the mechanics of being a sawbuck chasing story-monkey in the modern era, one thing became abundantly clear: you have to be on Social Media. Social Media has the combined potential to reach billions of people. Social Media is a built in platform for your work and your message and your brand and your profile and your links to sell direct and your name and your…well, everything!

That is all true and reasonably common knowledge. So, I jumped in feet first and now I frequent Twitter and Instagram as well as having a Facebook page dedicated to my writing life (because, let’s face it, most people who are on my personal family page really don’t give a shit at best and think I have a cute hobby at worst), this blog and website and, most recently, I’ve started looking over Wattpad, a social media site for storytellers.

I’ve been juggling the Social Media chainsaws for a little less than a year now. I’ve run ads and promoted free giveaways and gained followers and posted and retweeted and Vined and reposted and posted some more and re-vined until-

Yeah, it’s kind of like that.

I’ve learned a few things in the months since I started my journey into Social Media land:

1) I’m getting old, because most of what’s happening online seems to be happening between people who I want to check IDs on. That’s more of a personal issue between writer-me and dad-me, though.

2) The biggest problem with finding readers and building a fan base on really any social media platform I use is that everybody in the freaking world and their entire family are trying to do the same thing or sell something to somebody- anybody – and we all get lost in the tsunami of commerce that ensues. Do not get me wrong: I’ve got nothing against people pitching their wares and products and trying to make an honest buck with a good product or service. Hell, I’m right there with them (BOOKS ONE AND TWO OF THE PARAGONS TRILOGY AVAILABLE HERE: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016QB9412 BOOK THREE COMING SOON!) but I think that in the tumult of information, we all get lost in the shuffle.

3) If you’re one of the hordes of us who are turning Social Media into a machine gun that fires digital billboards, then you’d better have a nice large fan base already in place if you want unpaid self-promotion to do you any good. I’ve got a couple of books out. They’re a genre mash-up really- a little superhero, a little urban fantasy, a little sci-fi thriller –but I think they’re pretty well written and edited and I’ve got a small number of reviews from total strangers who found them entertaining. I’ve tried promoting them with both paid and unpaid promotions. Unpaid- even on free giveaway days –barely moved the sales needle if at all. Paid ones did better, but I still have yet to have one pay for itself (that being said, I feel I should say that I have yet to get the oft lauded Boobkbub ad that Indies like me pine for). Just because millions of people have the potential to see your product doesn’t mean that they will or that they will click a link even if they do.

4) If you’re an author, I really don’t think Social Media is for selling.

Yep. I’ve been doing it wrong; Oh, so wrong.

You know what social media is good for? Connecting with people. Finding similar interests and experiences and generally conversing with people around the world you might otherwise never have had the chance to get to know. Even if you never lay eyes on them in the real world, you have a means to exchange ideas that didn’t exist a few decades ago. It’s good for, you know, socializing. Right there in the name. Who’d a thunk it?

Aside from mistaking it for my own personal marketing firm, I’ve made a few other Social Media faux paus, though, the worst of which was falling for the false sense of familiarity that you get when you follow someone long enough and read enough of their posts. I felt bad for a writer I follow because of a slew of harsh- and I felt undeserved –reviews that he was getting on a recent release. So, I sent him a private message offering him free copies of my books as a way to say thanks for all of his work that I had enjoyed, including the one that was getting slammed. I told him I didn’t want anything at all in return and I was sincere in that. Thing is, I did this to a professional, gets paid for this shit writer that I didn’t know from Adam like we were old buddies or something and I’ve never even met the guy.

He promptly ignored me and- after I’d had some time to think about it –I felt like a pathetic little wanna-be fanboy stalker. It was a stupid and poorly thought out thing to do, but is the essence of my bewilderment at the Social Media experience. Social Media is, indeed, social, but it’s like going to a party where everyone attending is some kind of undercover spy or criminal; you might be able to see their faces, but you really don’t know how much of what you hear or see is genuine. It’s a metropolis of open anonymity.

So what’s this old dog trying to learn new tricks to do? Well, when faced with things like this, I’m always reminded of a Maya Angelou quote; “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

So, I’m going to do better. I’m going to shift my focus away from pushing me and my work on the world and try to find the people who love the same things I love and talk about that. I’m going to try and make this new class of acquaintance that I’ve recently learned about- the internet friend.

In short, I’m going to try to makes connections more than sales and build relationships instead of a fan base. This will be harder for me. I’m an introvert by nature, but I’m also a man that knows life happens out in the world and not within the confines and safety of my little office. It’ll mean opening up a little more and being a little more genuine with that metropolis of strangers. I love what I do, though,- profitable or not -and in this day and age, this is how it’s done. So, I’m in.

Oh, and if by some chance the writer that I sent that awkward email to happens to be reading this (you know who you are); Sorry, man. That was a weird thing to do.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.