Owning vs Renting Digital Platforms For Writers
There are three pieces of digital real estate you must own for author success.
Talking about writing and related matters to a group of writers can be slightly daunting as there are diverse points of view. What works for one person may not work for another. The presentation I gave to one of my writer groups about the best way to promote your author brand online is one example.
Because of the low barrier to entry, relative simplicity, and the ubiquitousness of social media, most writers on a tight budget use it to promote their books while building and engaging with their readers. The downside to social platforms is they’re akin to renting real estate, where the landowner changes the rental agreement unilaterally with little to no notice and is always in their favor. If you write spicy romance, they can also censor or outright ban you for your content on a whim and often with little to no way to challenge it. I suggested dispensing with social media and using resources you can own instead.
Two members opposed the idea that using social media was a poor choice for authors. As they stated, it worked well for them. I countered that while some writers may succeed on the myriad social platforms, most don’t. I suggested the next best option for authors to do is to ditch social media and instead put words on the page for your writing project.
Social media is a time suck no matter how well you manage it. Finding the perfect phrasing, title, photo, and so on eats into your precious writing time. If you believe you must have social media for your author engagement and marketing efforts, pick one or two platforms where you sparingly create posts. Make sure they’re ones that best fit your abilities and skill sets, such as YouTube, if you’re good at scripting and recording videos. Even with the right skills and platform match, please limit yourself to one post a day at most; once a week is better, and keep it focused on your writing as much as possible.
If you desire to engage with your followers more personally, remember the same sparse posting habit and don’t think you have to engage with every person who posts a response. You have no obligation to do that. It’s a matter of your mental health and self-esteem. Your writing is more important than commenting on someone’s response to your tweet.
Social media platforms addict users with a dopamine feedback loop. The site’s content is the stimulus for distraction and releases dopamine, providing pleasure. The process leads to a desire for more and reinforces the behaviors to get it. With sufficient use of social media, it becomes habit forming to engage on the site and leads to addiction because the user keeps seeking the stimulus for their pleasure reward. The behavior-reward loop is great for the platform but not for you as an author or your followers.
The algorithms designed for social platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, bury the posts containing links to external sites deep down in your followers’ feeds, such as your Amazon preorder page or a link to your ARC launch site. If you spend on ads to compensate for it, it’s still a losing proposition.
Even if you do internal links, sites such as Facebook bleed your wallet dry by making you pay and pay some more to reach your followers. It used to be easy, organic, accessible, and possibly viral a little over a decade ago.
Your posts get buried if you are outside the link; even if you aren’t, you must spend money to reach those who follow and like your posts. What exactly are you supposed to do? Either way, the platforms sink your engagement from the start and work to turn everyone on the platform into digital addicts.
Another point to take from my presentation is the matter of social media sites keeping your follower data locked in. You can’t take it with you when you want to leave. Suppose you have to leave because of an arbitrary sanction to an alleged violation of some ambiguous section of the platform’s ever-changing terms of service. In that case, you can’t export your follower data to set up on another platform. Instead, you must start over. All your hard-won fans are gone or may not follow you to a site they don’t use. Social media sinks your dreams again.
If using email to engage your followers seems like an antiquated notion now, just like handwriting letters did when email became mainstream, virtually everyone has at least one email account. That’s a conduit that takes effort to gain access to and win the account holder’s trust, but has a more solid and dependable aspect than social media.
This situation highlights the difference between social platforms and mailing lists. You can’t take your social media follower lists with you, but you can quickly switch from one mailing list/newsletter service to another by exporting your client data from the previous one and importing it into the new one.
Another matter is that while you may have a considerable number of followers, they may not be the kind who will buy your book. Those who let you into their email inbox are more genuine fans who are not only interested in what you have to say and sell, but they invite you into their private domain.
A blog works better than social media for sharing your thoughts and promoting your books as you control the platform and content without self-interested gatekeepers. Except for violating the applicable laws for your jurisdiction, no one will censor your content or delete your account. You can promote yourself with ad services, working with expert BookTokers, BookTubers, and Bookstagrammers, book fairs, writer conferences, and more all you like and your readers can follow your blog through email updates. This piece of digital real estate is another opportunity to build your reader base, and it is one where the subscriber allows you to enter their inner sanctum.
Owning a mailing list collects your fans to send newsletters and product promos to, and owning a blog allows you to post your thoughts and author-related content. A website will enable you to own your real estate online in another way. You can base your book promotion pages on a website, provide author bio information, offer direct sales of your work to diversify your sales channels versus depending solely on Amazon and other online book retailers, and as a bonus, you can sell fan merchandise.
The switch isn’t necessarily an easy one. If you’re willing to allocate at least forty percent of your writer time each week toward creating your website, you’ll be that much closer to owning something to promote and sell your books. Combine that with your mailing list and blog, and you’ll have three pieces of digital real estate you own rather than rent.
The following topics I’ll cover in future articles:
Which mailing list/newsletter provider is for you?
- Which blogging platform fits your needs?
- How do you select the best website design tool for your situation?
- Which hosting option works best for your requirements?
- What do you need to set up a budget-friendly author website?
- Which social media platforms do you keep, and which do you ditch?
- How do you know which social platform will work best with your skills?
If you have questions, please comment. And if you want to receive my articles and short stories a day earlier and browse my newsletter archive, please subscribe to the Sable’s Musings About Writing section of my Silky Whispers In The Moonlight Substack.
