My Current Take on Social Media: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

Like many writers, I have a love/hate relationship with social media. Marketing gurus tell writers that a social media presence is an essential part of an author platform, and we must have a platform and an author brand to sell books. And yet, we also hear we can’t be everywhere, so we should pick the social media sites we like.

I’m losing patience with all social media sites, which seem to become more clogged with ads and irrelevant posts every week. I wrote a similar post last year, so this post is mostly an update.

I started on social media with Facebook and Twitter, even before I had novels to market. Facebook began as a nice way to keep in touch with family and friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in years. Twitter was an easy way to be online—140 characters max, though I didn’t know many people on Twitter (other than my son).

Over the years, I’ve added accounts on LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, and probably others. And over the years, most of these sites have become more meaningless.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand Twitter. I’m told it’s a good way to connect with other writers. I see my son and his wife having conversations with like-minded individuals. But much of what I see on Twitter is profanity and politics. And I’d rather not engage in either.

I like the visuals of Pinterest and Instagram. I could spend hours scrolling through the pretty pictures. But over time, the pictures from my friends and a few travel and news sites I like have been buried in ads. I’ll admit to clicking on a few of these ads, but I generally wish I hadn’t. Because after I do, I see more ads. And more ads. So I don’t post to these sites very often.

Thankfully, Instagram now allows users to view only “Following” or “Favorites”. These views limit the clutter. Instead of it taking an hour to scroll through a day’s worth of posts, I can view my Favorites in ten minutes or less. Of course, I don’t have many Favorites. (And I won’t tell you if you’re one of them.)

LinkedIn is equally cluttered. I have legal connections, Human Resources connections, corporate connections, writing connections, and many of these connections are no longer relevant to my life (though some in each category are friends). I have connections of connections—people I don’t know and probably never will. I wish all these people well, and I am vaguely interested in their professional careers, but I don’t want to scroll through another social media feed of marginal relevance. (If you’re reading this post, I don’t mean you—of course, I want to read what you have to say.)

Then there is Facebook—the first social media site I was on, and the one where I still spend the most time. But a lot of my time there is wasted as well. First, there is the chore of determining which posts are ads and which are real content. Then there is deciding whether to focus on friends and family or the various groups I’m in. Some of these groups teach me useful things—like Scrivener tips. Others contain good information but are also depressing—like those that focus on health care and caregiving.

And finally are the Facebook pages and groups I curate or administer—Read Local Kansas City (for readers), Write Brain Trust (for authors), and Historical Novel Society—Heartland USA Chapter (a private group for Midwestern writers of historical fiction). These take a little time every week to monitor and to add posts or comments.

No wonder I try to let this blog do most of my social media work for me. I post here, and feed the posts to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and LinkedIn. And I also link to some of my blog posts in my monthly newsletter. One former colleague recommended we “shamelessly steal” from each other, so I steal from myself. Why re-create the wheel?

That’s enough curmudgeonly complaining about social media for today. I’ll probably complain again in another year or so.

Which social media sites do you like and why?