Those who know me understand just how painful the thought of being on social media actually is. When I was hired at my last job they did the usual scan the Interweb for my presence thing and found almost nothing. This seemed to shock them, but I felt nothing but a deep sense of contentment.
I’m a private person, who wants to stay that way, and the mere thought of sharing my activities and such is immensely distasteful. Nor do I find myself all that interesting…/shrug
I’ve had to get over that, of course, as evidenced by this blog. Still, when I started to write seriously I was told that you have to be on FaceBook, Twitter, etcetera if you want to be effective at marketing and interacting with potential fans. Meh.
I still hate FB and almost never use it, but for the last couple of weeks I have been dipping my toes into the Twitterverse. I still don’t love it, and being limited to 250 characters at a time is a PITD (Pain In The DIck), but I also don’t hate it. Like anything else it has its share of ass-hats, but there are also some genuinely funny individuals as well.
The writing community seems to have a strong presence there and it is nice to get other perspectives once in a while, or a kick in the ass if needed, or even some encouragement for those who have hit a breaking point. You can find almost anything you may be looking for there.
But it is also a huge time-sink. Time spent on Twitter is time not spent being productive. I have a full-time job, a family, and I still need to squeeze in time to write. That time available now has to be sub-divided so I can stay active on Twitter. There are algorithms that track your participation and if you don’t meet minimums you will become invisible. And no one wants that.
So…I find myself torn. Do I sacrifice to the Social Media gods in the hopes of selling more books? Or do I climb back into my hole and pull the cover over it? I guess time will tell.
