Social Media – to
use or not to use, that is the question. But what is the answer?
As a new member of
loveahappyending.com, I have been using Facebook and Twitter much more than
hitherto and whilst I have been quite enjoying doing so, the thought has
occurred to me as to whether or not using social media to promote myself and my
book is a legitimate activity. When I say legitimate, I don’t mean is it legal,
i.e. am I breaking any laws, but perhaps more: is it an appropriate use of
social media?
Asking this question
leads inevitably to another question which is: what is the purpose or function
of social media? Is it simply meant to be a facility for friends (perhaps
acquaintances would be a more appropriate term) to keep in touch with each
other? Is it also meant to be an enjoyable activity, something that is fun to
do, regardless of whether or not it shares information between friends, like
playing a game? I think that might well be applicable in the case of Twitter
but maybe less so for Facebook.
If social media is
primarily a means of keeping in touch with people, then it seems to me that it
is perfectly legitimate to use it to tell your friends (or acquaintances) what
you are up to, i.e. what you are spending your time on and what’s happening in
your life.
But what about when
what's happening in your life revolves around activities you are undertaking to
promote yourself and your creations to the general public? Is it still
legitimate? The thing is, you could now be perceived (particularly by your
acquaintances, as opposed to your friends) as abusing the facility by trying to
sell your creations to them, and perhaps even worse, by trying to get them to
sell your creations to their friends and acquaintances.
The fact of the
matter is that by using social media, it is possible to spread word of mouth
(or, more accurately, word of keyboard) much faster and much more extensively
than ever before, as long as you don’t alienate those whose support you are
seeking. When using social media as a means of promotion, the aim is for word
of mouth about your creation to spread rapidly as your followers re-tweet your
tweets to their followers and your friends share your Facebook postings with
their friends, and so on and so on, ad-infinitum. This can then lead to word
about your creation going viral and reaching tens, if not hundreds of thousands
of people, some of whom hopefully will buy it, or view it, or whatever.
I was reminded of the
whole going viral thing this week when I received an email telling me someone
had subscribed to my video channel on YouTube. This caused me to go to my
channel where I discovered that a short film of mine which I had put on YouTube six months ago had
been viewed by 38,763 people in 174 countries and that it is currently being
viewed by an average of 600 people a day! I have done absolutely nothing to
promote this film and I didn’t tell anyone I had put it up there, although I
did put a link to it from my book’s website.
So, in conclusion, I think it is
legitimate to use social media to promote your creations as long as you do it
sensitively and with intent to inform rather than to browbeat. Excessive postings
or tweets of the same information over and over again will just get you
unfollowed or unfriended and will, therefore be counter productive. I think we
have to remember that most people use social media for fun and to stay in touch
with people they know and that is what they expect everyone else to use it for.
Social media is not seen by most users as a sales channel but as an information
channel. It is, therefore, perfectly acceptable to use it to promulgate
information but it is not acceptable to use it to sell - there's a difference.
