Mastering Social Media – One Platform at a Time

By Debra DuPreeWilliams @DDuPreeWilliams

Are you getting the most out of your social media applications? I admit—I’m not. There’s no excuse for my not making the most of the tools at my disposal.

So, what’s my/our problem?

Assuredly, I’m not the only writer who doesn’t use social media to its full potential. Week after week, day after day, I make excuses.

Lame excuses.

There’s not enough time, it’s too much work, I don’t understand what to do. Yep. I’ve said all of these. Many times.

PINTEREST EXPERIENCE

As an example, I’m going to share my Pinterest account info with you.

A few months ago, before they changed their algorithms, I had over 200,000 views to my page per month. I must have been doing something right.

Then that change came along.

I don’t know what they did, I don’t understand the inner workings or the lingo of such (one of my many failures in social media), but I dropped to 30,000, then to 12,000, then to 8,000. But something I did brought those numbers up. It was a matter of adding different titles, inserting the right things into my profile, making sure I had good hashtags, and pinning original content.

My numbers climbed back to the 60,000 views per month range.

Then life took over again. Other things took priority. Every effort was made to pin new posts, original photos, add my latest blog post, but my numbers dropped again and again.

Today, I was at a tic over 6,000. That’s a huge drop. From 200,000 just a few months ago to 6,000 in early May. I know something’s going on. But it’s something I don’t understand and I don’t know exactly how to deal with it.

One of my boards is Pinterest for Writers. Duh. Why had I not thought of going there? Plus, I have a dear friend who can help me for a small fee. I don’t mind paying someone for their services when my writing career will benefit from that money. It’s a win-win. I learn something new, and my friend gets paid for sharing her knowledge with me.

KEEP UP WITH CHANGES

It’s not easy to keep up with all the changes that seem to happen almost daily on social media. At this age, it’s much more difficult for me to maneuver those changes and to turn the negatives into positives.

But it is not impossible.

Dig your heels in, find information online or through a friend, such as mine. Get back in the game. After all, being a writer doesn’t mean just sitting at a keyboard and pouring out words day after day. To be noticed we must have a social media presence whether we like it or not.

Besides, learning new things is always fun. Challenging on some level? Certainly, but the journey to new knowledge can be fun if your attitude is right.

Mastering Social Media - One Platform at a Time @DDuPreeWilliams #writing #socialmedia Share on X

DECIDE TO MASTER THE PLATFORMS

Decide you’re going to master social media once and for all. Either find lessons on YouTube (isn’t that our new best friend these days?) or find a friend like mine who knows so much more about this than I. Keeping up on a day-to-day basis after we’ve mastered all the platforms is a matter of about thirty minutes per day, according to social media guru, Edie Melson. Y’all know her, for sure!

There are plenty of places to learn these things. Christian Writers’ Institute, Serious Writer, and so many more have excellent content about using each of the main social media platforms most authors use. Hire a private social media coach. I’ve had one for years, but our lives took a turn neither of us had foreseen this past year, in addition to Covid, so I didn’t keep up well at all.

All it takes is reaching out and asking for help. It’s readily available.

Check out your friends’ Pinterest pages. They’re filled with all manner of helpful hints for writers.

I’ll be praying for each of you as you tread the waters of social media. In the end, it will be well worth the effort you put into learning to master each one.

An afterthought—did you know that Pinterest is a visual search engine? It makes sense, but I’d never considered that. Learning something new all the time!

Blessings, y’all.

 

Here are some helpful links.  There are others, but this is a start. Some offer classes in writing and marketing as well as mastering social media use.

www.ChristianWritersInstitute.com

https://www.seriouswriteracademy.com/

https://www.udemy.com/courses/search/?q=social+media+basics&src=sac&kw=social+media++basics+for+writers