The Mark Dykeman Web Niche

Are writers abusing social media to promote themselves?  I found an interesting article on this topic from Monika Mundell at The Writers Manifesto Blog. 

Her article starts with the following paragraph:

Lets face it, social media is very big amongst bloggers in the make money industry. I’m not saying that other bloggers don’t use social media. They are probably better users to be honest and I’ll explain why I think so.

From there, Monika writes about:

• what social media is
• what social media isn’t
• what a genuine social media user is
• the downside of social media

It’s a thoughfully written article and it’s certainly worth looking at.

For my part, I have used social media to attempt to promote my on-line writing.  My promotion has been geared towards creating visibility for my writing at places like Helium and the Triond family of websites.  Generally speaking, while posting links to my articles at sites like Digg, Shoutwire, and Mixx has attracted the interest of a few new readers and some interesting acquaintances, I’ve really only hit the jackpot three times by submitting my own material.  They were decent sized jackpots, in that I had two articles and one post that each got between 2500 and 6000 “hits”, but generally speaking they were statistical blips (see this previous post for an example of the impact of a submission that made it to Shoutwire’s front page).

I agree with Monika that bloggers (as well as anyone who’s trying to use social media to promote a product or service) can certainly cross a line and abuse the soapbox that social media provide.  However, my experience is that established social media sites (primarily Digg, Reddit, and Shoutwire) will naturally ignore or even remove content that they don’t want or need.  Eventually a writer (blogger or otherwise) who spams the social media sites will wear out their welcome and they will either be ignored, shunned or banned.

My interpretations of Monica’s conclusion is that it’s OK to use social media to promote or disseminate your blogging or articles as long as you are:

• thoughtful
• respectful
• contributing to the social media site as a whole
• minimizing blatant self-promotion or at least using it while following the other guidelines noted above

Basically, I think she’s spot on.  I also think that you’re doomed to failure if you don’t follow those rules.

This article was meaningful to me as I’ve been reevaluating my own approach to social media, which was “trial and error”.  Monika found a good way to summarize the subject, so I’d suggest that you check out her article.

I will continue to use social media to promote my writing where and when I think it makes sense to do so.  My approach will be similar to what Monika has suggested below.   I won’t abandon it completely, however, since it does have the potential to attract readers and in this environment (thousands upon thousands of voices screaming for attention), any little bit helps.

What do you think?