This social media is a funny kettle of fish, and no mistake.
Fish. (No kettle)
I have my blog (you’re reading it), which is pretty straightforward. I write about the history behind my books, or historical things that I think might interest my readers, or writing, or completely random stuff like tango. It is a mystery to me why some posts attract a lot of interest and others, which seem reasonably similar to me, are much less well read, but month on month it ticks along with a fair few readers (and, I suspect, quite a lot of bots) and it makes sense to me and all is well with the world.
To get readers on my blog, though, I need to let people know that it is there. I do this partly through Facebook. I have a Facebook author page. This mainly lets people know what’s on my blog that week but I may use it for bits of news that don’t really justify a blog post but which may interest readers. Sometimes I just share stuff because it excites me and you might like it.
I recently posted a photo of my son’s wedding, which I expected would get quite a few visits and Facebook says that it has – partly, I think, friends (real-life friends rather than Facebook friends) who hadn’t seen any of the wedding photos yet. Last week, though, I also posted a photo of a fire flickering in the grate in our front room. I don’t know why I posted it really: it was just that I’d had a day doing no work at all and I was putting in my excuses, I guess. It turns out that this picture is (apart from the wedding) the most popular thing I’ve posted for ages.
Why?
You liked it so much I’m posting it again.
Would you like more scenes of domestic life? What, and, really, why? I’m all in favour of giving the public what they want, so do let me know and I’ll try to oblige.
“Let me know,” I say, which brings me to another strange thing. There is a comment box below my blog every week so that you can, well, comment. I generally reply to comments and it lets other people join in. But very few people comment on the blog. This isn’t because they don’t have opinions on it. They post their views on Facebook and Twitter. Very occasionally they may e-mail or message me directly. But hardly anyone puts comments in the ‘Comment’ box. I’d love to know why not.
The third social media channel I use is Twitter. Again, I let people know what’s on my blog and I even suggest occasionally that they might be interested in reading one of my books. Otherwise I re-tweet stuff that has amused or interested me, respond to other people’s tweets and generally maunder on. As we’re restricted to 280 characters, the amount of maundering is quite limited so I don’t have to worry about being too boring. Twitter is also where I post photos I think people will like. Some people have suggested, reasonably enough, that I should post photos on Instagram but, seriously, you have to restrict the number of social media channels that you use and I think three is enough for me.
Prettier than the Twitter bird, I think
I used to hate Twitter, but I’ve come to quite enjoy it, especially as people seem to be deserting Facebook as a way to keep in touch. I’ve met lovely people on Twitter, though they are overwhelmingly other writers, which seems odd as I went on Twitter to try to connect with readers. I’m also confused about what people read on Twitter. Why do some tweets seem to attract a reasonable amount of interest (none of mine have ever attracted an enormous amount of interest, but I’m cool with that) while others remain unloved and unre-tweeted?
Does any of this matter? Nowadays writers are told that they have to have a social media presence and they tend to be judged by the number of followers they have or the number of Facebook page likes they have, so many people spend an amazing amount of time on social media. Often people suggest that it’s time that would be better spent actually writing the books, but without the social media presence it seems unlikely that they will sell their books, because nobody will have heard of them. On the other hand, most writers sell so few books anyway that the hours spent on social media per copy sold might more usefully be applied to standing at a crossroads with a box of paperbacks and hawking them to whoever passes by.
It’s a quandary or, as I said at the beginning, this social media is a funny kettle of fish.
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…standing at a crossroads with a box of paperbacks and hawking them to whoever passes by….
Did make me laugh Tom – know the feeling. Thought I’d drop a comment just to say I enjoyed the article and understand where you’re coming from. No words of wisdom I’m afraid but maybe the key thing is you’re not alone in this and we’re a resilient lot and as long as you get enjoyment from the creative process then do keep the blog going.
Oh, and nice fireplace!
Paul
Very many thanks for this.
I have started an author blog and it has been running for couple of months. My reason for doing this is to raise my author profile. I have written so many books and do so many other things such as writing for Writers’ Forum and doing children’s book reviews but nobody knows who I am. I realised how are they supposed to know if I don’t tell them. However I do not know how to create traffic to my blog and hardly ever have comments. I have scheduled regular posts and tweet about these posts. People like the tweets but statistics show they don’t follow the links to my blog. Is there anything else I could be doing?
Thanks for making this comment here as well as on Facebook. I know that somebody has replied on Facebook suggesting that you make more use of SEO. She clearly knows what she’s talking about, but I don’t optimise for SEO, although I probably should.
I rely on social media to promote my blog. I find that I get a lot of hits when something is mentioned in a Facebook group that is related to the blog topic. So if I write about Napoleon I always talk about this in the Napoleonic Historical Society Facebook group and this means that posts on Napoleon always get a lot of visitors.
Twitter is useful. Look at #MondayBlogs and see if this might help. I think it’s important that you don’t just tweet about your blog. I go for a mix of tweets about my blog, some promotional tweets about my books, RTs (usually with a comment) and general chatter. So far this month my top tweet is a photo of my son’s wedding (https://twitter.com/TomCW99/status/1068899550440693761/photo/1). It’s odd that people respond to personal things like this as very few (if any) of my real life friends follow me on Twitter. I suspect most are unaware that I even have an account.
I hope this stimulates some ideas. I think most of us are blundering around in the dark, but we may get somewhere eventually.
Do you interact with other people’s blogs? Comment and share their posts? Reciprocity is a good way to get your blog posts out to a new audience. However, don’t just do it to push your stuff, genuine engagement and forming relationships seems to be the key.
People like to get to know people. I would suggest this is why the fire photo was popular. People can relate to domesticity in other people’s lives as either a common ground or as aspirational. The more of your personality you share about, the more people will respond, at least this is what i have found. People don’t like being sold to but they do like being talked to.
Just my observations from two years of blogging and social media, for what its worth, which may not be a huge amount!
I get most engagement on posts that reveal something about me as a person, my life, my feelings, my dreams. Human curiosity? I don’t have a magic formula, only what I have seen from my experiences.
Absolutely agree with you here, Julie – ages ago, I read a moan by a writer saying that she couldn’t get views on her blog. I asked her how many other blog posts she read and shared, and she said, ‘oh, none; I don’t have time’. btw, Tom does share other people’s stuff!!!
I find I get more interest in stuff that others can relate to, rather than stuff that’s actually about ME.
You’re right about genuine being all, too. A while back a friend said, ‘sorry I haven’t commented on your blog lately’, to which I replied, ‘That’s okay, if you had wanted to, you would have; please, never comment just because you feel you should.’ That would be as pointless as those who ‘like’ everything. 😉
This is an interesting example of how much conflicting advice there is out there. Some people have responded to this post on Facebook. If you are on Facebook, you might be interested in joining the Book Connectors group (www.facebook.com/groups/1466353170351020) where there has been a bit of chat about this. One woman, who does seem to know what she’s talking about, wrote:
“Unless you have a HUGE platform, people don’t want to hear about your daily life.”
On the other hand, I have often seen people give the advice that you give. I really have no idea.
My most popular blogs are about historical events, usually in the Napoleonic war although the one I posted recently about the British in India up to 1857 (http://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/by-request-some-indian-history/) has, for some reason, been hugely popular. On the other hand a piece I wrote a while back about the social conventions around dancing tango has had a lot of views recently. (It’s on my old blog site at http://thewhiterajah.blogspot.com/2016/08/tango-etiquette-or-how-to-persuade.html)
I do interact with other people’s blogs. In fact, reading blogs before I tweet about them or comment on them is one of the reasons that I find social media eats into my time. Fascinating as many of them are, it’s often difficult to justify the time spent. For example, just yesterday I read a brilliant piece about place names in an Essex village (https://www.coggeshallhistory.com/coggeshall-hare-bridge). It was huge fun, but my plan for the day had been to read about the First Gurkha War.
I do invite guest posters onto my blog and that is always fun, and many (though not all) of these posts are very well read.
I agree – I’ve never seen much interest in those ‘diary’ sort of blogs, unless they contain lots of useful info as well. They always seem a little self-indulgent – who cares? I might be interested in the day to day life of a person of great accomplishment who I admire/respect/fancy (!), but not some random writer like me, ha ha!
Book Connectors is good, I agree – I joined, but as I avoid Facebook like the plague these days, I never get round to using it.
Ah, the comments on the blog thing. I usually find that the same few writers/bloggers comment on my posts about writing or domestic issues (the recent one about high street shopping gained a few!) with a few random guests according to subjecy. What surprises me most is the lack of comments on my posts about The Walking Dead, which receive anything from 500-1000 views, so the #TWDFamily must like them, but rarely any comments apart from a couple of (you guessed it) writers who love the show as much as I do.
I think it’s the same as book reviews. We, as writers and bloggers, are used to expressing ourselves via the written word. Most people aren’t. We click on and give our opinions at the drop of a hat – try stopping us! But we’re in the minority. I always remember asking one of my oldest friends (who reads all my books) why she had never reviewed. She said, oh, I dunno, I wouldn’t know what to put. She is of above average intelligence and not ill-educated. But her intelligence is of a different sort; she doesn’t use social media, either.
BTW, love the fireplace pic. I think I would like your house.
Thanks for commenting. I like our house but it has rooms in all the wrong places and bits are constantly falling off, which we quite like but it may not be to everybody’s taste. (That’s definitely a good thing as otherwise we could never have afforded it.)
I prefer houses like that. 🙂
For me it is to do with time and interest. I skim read a lot of blog posts, but few interest me enough to spend a long time reading. I’ll share posts so that others may find them and read them if the content appeals.
Everyone is on social media, but how many have the time or want to spend it reading anything more than a couple of short paragraphs?
The roller-coaster that is social media, seems to me, to be that you move on quickly in case you miss something new. Skimming but vary engaging.
Totally with Rosie on this one – I read the first paragraph or so of a lots of posts – few engage me enough to read the whole thing. This did, though!
Posts are more likely to keep a reader’s interest if they have short paragraphs, include bullet points/lists, have sub-headings and or illustrations.
Always surprises me which tweets/posts/pictures of mine receive the most interest/approval, too. Usually, it’s the comments about writing difficulties!! I think I might do a ‘top 20 most popular blog posts of the year’ post, actually – could be interesting 🙂
Terry (there have been so many comments as I’m replying that my replies aren’t necessarily in the right place):
Everything you say is right. I do try to put illustrations into my posts, although finding copyright free pictures can take as long as writing the thing. (IMPORTANT NOTE to other bloggers: if you use copyrighted photographs you will usually get away with it, but if the copyright holder decides to pursue you it’s going to be very expensive. Probably best not take the risk.) I end up taking a lot of my own photographs specifically to illustrate blog posts, which is fun but distracting.
Although I know that it is likely to make my posts less popular, I do go for long-form writing. This is simply because the people I most want to appeal to people who will read my books, which are 70,000 to 95,000 words and so I reckon they’ll probably be able to cope with a 1000 word blog piece on some history of the periods I set my books in. FWIW the most popular blog post since I moved to WordPress was almost exactly 1,000 words on why Napoleon moved against Belgium in 1815. (http://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/napoleon-choose-attack-belgium/)
Why some posts are so popular is often a mystery. I look at my top 20 posts every year and I’m often surprised at what turns up. This was the Top Twenty for 2017: http://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/2017-year-blog-posts/
Rosie:
Yes.
Not really anything to add to that, really. Thanks for the comment.
I’ve long had a nagging feeling that social media is too often just an echo chamber. People who are interested in writing are, I suspect, also the ones most likely to follow other writers. This doesn’t necessarily apply to ‘famous’ authors, who also trade on their celebrity. But for all the unheralded wordsmiths, it’s hard to get the attention of readers. That’s why publishers (and record companies) continue to exist. They have the resources to promote beyond anything social media use by an individual is likely to achieve. New books don’t go viral.
I hope I’m being too pessimistic about this, because it is all a bit depressing. We all know that the vast majority of writers won’t become rich and famous. It will be a significant achievement for most if they can sustain themselves just by writing, giving up the day job. So surely the primary reason for putting pen to page or fingers to keyboard is just because we like doing it? Build it and they will come. Maybe. But either way, you’ve built something to be proud of.
Thanks for this.
Yes, I won’t become rich or famous but I hope enough people will see my blog for some of them to read the books. I was invited to speak at a book festival this summer (http://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/rambling-round-wales-malvern-and-my-head/) which I suspect was because someone had seen the blog and that was fun (and may even have sold the odd book).
Sadly most people published even by the big publishers get very little marketing support. Almost all the budget goes on a small number of books the publishers can be confident will sell (that’s how they can put ‘Best Seller’ on the cover of the first edition) and other authors are expected to do their own marketing. I believe some publishers now require authors to blog. I’m lucky: I do it because I enjoy it. And I write because I enjoy it. And some people read my books and seem to like them, so all-in-all I’m blessed. I hope the same works out for you.
I like your history posts the most. I’ve noticed you seem to write about a lot of battles. Would you be open to writing posts about interesting individuals (or families) you’ve learned about while studying those battles?
I don’t comment on a lot of your posts simply because I’m not an expert on history. You’re teaching me a lot, though!
I would. I’ve written about Napoleon and Wellington on this blog. If you want the links, please ask. My book, ‘The White Rajah’ is centred on James Brooke, the first White Rajah of Sarawak. You still have time to buy it for Christmas. On my old blog I’ve written about Nana Sahib, who led the rising against the British that I wrote about in ‘Cawnpore’. If you’re really interested I might re-run it in the current blog.
It’s difficult to do justice to an individual in 1,000 words, but if there’s anyone you are particularly interested in, please let me know.
Yes, I think you should rerun that post. I didn’t have anyone in particular in mind. 🙂