Getting Your Name out There Part 3

I posted the first two parts of this presentation in November, then had too many other things to post in December. As you read this, I'll probably be sitting in the hospital with my Hubby while he recovers from a total knee replacement. Due to the magic of scheduling, I'm posting lessons 3 through 5 this month to finish up this series. I hope someone gets something from these!

FACEBOOK

Facebook. I have a love/hate relationship with it, and I'll bet everyone on it does, too.

I started on Facebook when my son in another state told me that, henceforth, all his children's pictures would be loaded there instead of being attached to emails or put up on snapfish, like he had been doing. It was with much reluctance and dragging of feet, well fingers I guess, that I dove in, but I soon found lots--I mean tons--of people there to connect to. A colleague I worked with 10 years ago found me and my masseuse from when we lived in Dallas. And I started dialoging regularly with my relatives that I usually only see and talk to once every year or two. I really like some of them, too!

My son has loaded grandchild pictures once. I think this is a common tale for people my age.

I have an advantage with  my pen name. I keep my family and close friends on the profile with my real name, and have writer friends and contacts under my pen name.

There's a limit to how many friends you can have on FB. I think it's 5000. After that you have to create a Fan Page. At least that's how it was last week. Whatever FB does, you can count on them changing it within a month or so. That's the most frustrating thing about it.

This is from my friend, Krista Davis, author of the  Domestic Diva mysteries:

/////

Random Observations about Facebook

1. It takes about two weeks of consistent work to reach 3,000 friends.

2. There are a *lot* of bored people in this world.

3. A surprising number of erotic romance writers live in Utah.

4. There are millions of writers out there.

5. People have strange ideas about what kinds of pictures they should
use. Why is an otherwise normal woman, who is not an erotic writer,
posing so that she gives the appearance of being nude? Why would
someone use a photo with hair combed down into her face? Why do
people use pictures of children? I don't know if it's a cute picture
of the person as a child, if it's a picture of the person's child, or
if (heaven forbid anyone think I'm an evil Facebooker) I'm asking a
child to be my friend.
/////

MYSPACE

This is completely unknown territory for me and I think this may be obsolete for most people.

GOODREADS

This is mainly a place for people to tell about what books they've read and to rate them with a five star system. If you have a book out, you should set up an author page and put your book or books there to make it easy for people there to pick them and read them. There are a LOT of avid readers there.

LINKEDIN

I honestly don't know what good this is to a writer, but people keep adding me to their lists and I just reciprocate. I don't do anything there except participate in a couple discussions that others invited me into.

KINDLE FORUMS

The forum set up is very difficult for me. I'm told authors must be very careful about saying they're authors, or they'll be banned from discussions. Some people have gotten a lot out of the forums, but I haven't done much with them. I'm too afraid of being banned!

TWITTER

My friend, Krista Davis, insists that Twitter is different, and better than, Facebook. She says it's because it's viral. (Can you tell she's my informal, but official, social media consultant?)

Krista guest blogged for Cozy Chicks on April 3^rd and her topic was Twitter for Authors, Part I. The next day was Part II.

I've put the urls for these blog entries in the handout. They're worth reading if you're new to Twitter.

TWITTER LESSONS

http://www.cozychicksblog.com/2010/04/guest-kirsta-davis-twitter-for-authors.html

http://www.cozychicksblog.com/2010/04/twitter-202.html

Mostly I tweet links to my blogs. When other people retweet me, I try to find something of theirs to retweet. Krista says she treats Twitter like a Times Square billboard. Some people will walk by, some will be too busy to read her post, but some will stop and look.

Diane Vallere likens it to a cocktail party. You can pass one group by, maybe stop and chat with another one, maybe get fully engaged in another discussion.

A subject, or topic, is designated by the number sign, #, called a hash tag. These two, #writer and #books, are topics that a lot of people follow and pay attention to. So if your tweet contains either of those, quite a few people will see it. When someone sees a good topic (usually the tweet takes you to a blog or website), they will retweet it, their followers will retweet it and, voila--viral.

Tweetdeck and Tweetchat make the messages more managable since they allow sorting. There are also ways to line up tweets ahead of time so they'll go out at intervals during the day, but I haven't seen the need to do that.