A post about establishing your "brand" on social media
Courtesy of the Friday list of jongibbs, Here is author Maureen Johnson explaining that she is not a brand, dammit! She is a person! And so are you! Even on the Internet!
This is a delightful post, and if nothing else it reassures me on a point I once wondered if I should worry about: if I ever get published, should I actually create an "author blog" or should I just f'lock any posts with spoilers to my stories and carry on as normal?
Based on Johnson's post, I think the latter is not only the easier option but probably the better one. Nobody wants to read sales pitches from me. They would be grateful to me, however, for showing them posts about Mitzi and the cats and Flashpoint and Matt Mays!
No, really!
The microphone-wrestling story in the post is pretty funny, but haven't we all been there? I know I sure have: a couple of years ago I was made a moderator on a Yahoo! mystery writer list. All new members were placed on moderated status and received an email telling them the rules of the community, including the fact that the list was not a stocked pond of customers for your new book. New writers often want to promote their book--that's fine if the writer is an active member of the list, because then fellow list members give a crap. If the person's first message is "you don't know me but I want you to buy my book!"--that's a bad sign.
I usually keep an eye on new members until they demonstrate that they're going to enter into discussions like a reasonable person. If a new member's first post is "buy my book," I reject it with an explanation. (Which is nicer for everyone than having list members respond with variations on "drop dead!") Once in a while someone goes back on moderated status because they lose interest in the discussion, but not the self-promotion.
And a few members stay on mod status for years without ever participating or apparently noticing that their self-promotion bulletins aren't being passed along to the list.
Or so I thought, until a few months ago when something touched off a brief meta discussion about the list itself. It happened at a time when I was offline, and when I checked my email I saw a message about something in the moderated queue, from a guy who never posted anything except promotional items about books he never discussed on the list. I never passed these messages along because he'd had the intro message, and the first-post explanation, and periodically I would re-post the bit about "don't try to sell us stuff if you're not going to talk to us between sales pitches."
The email I get about messages in the moderation queue includes the first couple of lines of the message. This one began something like this: "I'll tell you what this list is, it's supposed to be about writing but the moderator never approves messages about my books!"
When I went to the mod queue, the list owner had already spotted the message, deleted it (presumably with a personal message back to the writer) and had posted a message to the list in support of the way I was moderating, which was by enforcing list rules.
The funny thing is, I would have sent the message through, because it represented an attempt to discuss something. (Of course, I'd have followed it up with yet another reminder that the impersonal marketing messages he kept sending were violations of the list rules.)
Anyway, since then I've deleted a dozen or so messages from the same guy, for the same reason, so apparently he has no interest in changing his ways. Which means I have no interest in approving his messages.
I would bet a substantial number of cookies that this guy thinks he is "establishing a brand" on the Internet, when in fact he is mostly making himself obnoxious. (When he's not irritating the moderator who is the only person who sees his promotional items.) He is accomplishing less than nothing on our list, because the only person who sees his messages is now so irked at him I will never, never buy any of his stupid books.
Johnson's point in her post is that the Internet is made up of people, and there is no down side to acting like a person and assuming other people are people as well. I think this is excellent advice, me. You might not sell a lot of books with that approach but at least you won't aggravate and bore your audience--and really, who buys a book from someone who aggravates and bores them?
This is a delightful post, and if nothing else it reassures me on a point I once wondered if I should worry about: if I ever get published, should I actually create an "author blog" or should I just f'lock any posts with spoilers to my stories and carry on as normal?
Based on Johnson's post, I think the latter is not only the easier option but probably the better one. Nobody wants to read sales pitches from me. They would be grateful to me, however, for showing them posts about Mitzi and the cats and Flashpoint and Matt Mays!
No, really!
The microphone-wrestling story in the post is pretty funny, but haven't we all been there? I know I sure have: a couple of years ago I was made a moderator on a Yahoo! mystery writer list. All new members were placed on moderated status and received an email telling them the rules of the community, including the fact that the list was not a stocked pond of customers for your new book. New writers often want to promote their book--that's fine if the writer is an active member of the list, because then fellow list members give a crap. If the person's first message is "you don't know me but I want you to buy my book!"--that's a bad sign.
I usually keep an eye on new members until they demonstrate that they're going to enter into discussions like a reasonable person. If a new member's first post is "buy my book," I reject it with an explanation. (Which is nicer for everyone than having list members respond with variations on "drop dead!") Once in a while someone goes back on moderated status because they lose interest in the discussion, but not the self-promotion.
And a few members stay on mod status for years without ever participating or apparently noticing that their self-promotion bulletins aren't being passed along to the list.
Or so I thought, until a few months ago when something touched off a brief meta discussion about the list itself. It happened at a time when I was offline, and when I checked my email I saw a message about something in the moderated queue, from a guy who never posted anything except promotional items about books he never discussed on the list. I never passed these messages along because he'd had the intro message, and the first-post explanation, and periodically I would re-post the bit about "don't try to sell us stuff if you're not going to talk to us between sales pitches."
The email I get about messages in the moderation queue includes the first couple of lines of the message. This one began something like this: "I'll tell you what this list is, it's supposed to be about writing but the moderator never approves messages about my books!"
When I went to the mod queue, the list owner had already spotted the message, deleted it (presumably with a personal message back to the writer) and had posted a message to the list in support of the way I was moderating, which was by enforcing list rules.
The funny thing is, I would have sent the message through, because it represented an attempt to discuss something. (Of course, I'd have followed it up with yet another reminder that the impersonal marketing messages he kept sending were violations of the list rules.)
Anyway, since then I've deleted a dozen or so messages from the same guy, for the same reason, so apparently he has no interest in changing his ways. Which means I have no interest in approving his messages.
I would bet a substantial number of cookies that this guy thinks he is "establishing a brand" on the Internet, when in fact he is mostly making himself obnoxious. (When he's not irritating the moderator who is the only person who sees his promotional items.) He is accomplishing less than nothing on our list, because the only person who sees his messages is now so irked at him I will never, never buy any of his stupid books.
Johnson's point in her post is that the Internet is made up of people, and there is no down side to acting like a person and assuming other people are people as well. I think this is excellent advice, me. You might not sell a lot of books with that approach but at least you won't aggravate and bore your audience--and really, who buys a book from someone who aggravates and bores them?