I’ll admit that I’m not the ultimate guru at maintaining my social media presence. I don’t spent countless hours reading and responding to other posts, I don’t tweet, or even post on Facebook all that often. With that in mind it’s no surprise that I don’t have tons of interaction with my blogs. You get what you pay for.
The goal of having these platforms is spark the interest of my fellow readers so that one day when I finish my *%#$ book I’ll have a few friends that might be interested in reading it.
With that in mind I attended a Facebook for Authors class. According to the teacher I first need to pay for ads so that people come and see my stuff. This is a great idea for those who have product that they are ready to sell. When I get to that point perhaps I will.
The other bit of advice was to follow the 15-15-70 rule. That is, no more than 10 – 15% of posts on Facebook should be asking anyone to buy anything. Around 10 – 15% should be asking people to go read something, like this blog, and the other 70% of posts should be engaging with other people on the site. If you look at my feed right now it’s more like 100% please go read my blog posts. Oops.
Then we had a lengthy discussion about what should be discussed on blogs and Facebook. This he called finding your culture. What kind of people am I looking to attract? What topics would they want to talk about? What would I be interested in talking about? This is one area I can improve on this blog. Frankly, not everyone is interested in hearing about my adventures in parenting land.
Last but not least, he also told us that having a picture with a person in it will result in more clicks. Which means poor baby elephant has been doing it wrong!
I best remedy this –
Baby elephant wants to cuddle!
Jodi L. Milner, Author 
I’ll take an animal over a person any day!
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There are people and then there are people – if you know what I mean. I like my people, just not all the things they do.
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I’m cutting back my time on FB by about 95%. It’s become a sea of shallowness. There are exceptions, of course, and that’s my 5%. My experience over the course of 6 years, though, tells me that people are there to socialize and not buy, and that most of those are whining or pushing a cause. Besides, FB likes to play with its formula to force you to spend so you can reach the same number of people you were reaching before. After the last change my reach instantly dropped by 75%. Everyone likes to talk about what a huge pond FB is, and they’re right. But it’s a pond without ripples and if you don’t fork out a lot of money for ads you find yourself in a stagnant pond.
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It’s definitely a sea – and as much as people hate it, it does have potential. I’m sticking with it, but aiming for more meaningful interactions instead of being a spectator.
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I was a largely a spectator for a couple of years, but for the last 4 years I’ve been a heavily engaged. I belong to a number of groups that have been welcoming and a tremendous resource to me. I’ve also met authors who friendship I treasure. That’s the good and that’s what you want. There are many negatives and how FB does business is chief among them, so beware. If they catch on that you’re attempting to conduct business on their site they’ll smother your posts and press you to purchase ads
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