Effing Social Media

Now you see me...now you see me AGAIN.

Twitter, Facebook, Myspaz, Livejournal, Blogger, Google +, Pinterest...okay, I am not really using all of them at the moment, but I've made my electronic footprint on them all.  I replicate myself over and over into the digital universe, hopeing that people will be able to find me without looking too hard.  Why bother, you may ask.  The answer is simple; it's because I'm a writer, and currently a self-published one at that.  Social media is free marketing, and I plan to use it as much as I can.   

As you have likely seen, I now have two blogs and I think I like it this way.  Each one does something completely different.  One is about a particular subject, and this one is about my writing and my work.  I maintain that my goal is to write in them minimally twice per week, each.  Since I have to regard media as more than just a way of communicating lunch plans with my pals, I have developed a social calendar to keep things rolling.  There are some pretty swell opportunities out there for writers who can keep a decent online writing presence.  It took me some time to arrive on how to plan out this new approach to social media, which is only half the reason why I'm so late getting started.  That first novel kind of devoured my time, you know?

Blogs make great portfolio material, so long as they don't overlap too much into the personal diary or journal spectrum.  Further, I think blogs should be written with an audience in mind, whether the audience is 12 or 12,000.  This is why I left Livejournal, and why it's taken me this long to get these started.  I just didn't feel the need for an audience per se.  All my personal stuff migrated to Facebook, and many of my friends on one medium were the same friends I had the other.  Facebook is great for the everyday, random, and short attention span stuff.  Blogs are where I can get into the meat of a subject.

I am still in the baby steps phase of blogging.  While I am writing to an audience, I am still trying to build my readership.  This means getting an idea of what interests people, and what too many blogs are already talking about.  I've done so much blog reading these past few weeks that my head is about to explode.  I've read a lot of garbage, particularily from people claiming to be experts on erotic fiction writing.  I'm not going to limit my tips to a specific genre, but I do want to use this as a sandbox for Dangerous Fiction.  I'm also going to avoid the obligatory plea for comments and critiques.  If you have them, you know what to do.  We all use enough social media to know how it works.

So if you want small doses of information on writing, including writing tips and updates on my books and related projects, go add me on Twitter: @iwritesmut.  And if you want to see pictures of the King Cake we just devoured during Tuesday Night writers group, find me on Facebook.  And if you want to see the giant invisible knot of 20 different kinds of social media that is my favorites bar, you'll have to become my  friend in real life first.