My Primary Social Media Sites and How I Use Them as an Author

There are so many social media sites, and it can be overwhelming. I heard some good advice at a conference a while back -- "You can't do it all." Authors feel they need to be everywhere -- all the time. And sometimes, that takes me away from writing and editing.

Here are the sites that I'm more active with and how I use them.

Facebook - I have a personal page, an author page, and a group page for superfans. My personal page has information that I share with friends and family. I share book things on my author page, and my fan group is for previews and early review requests.

I like to use Facebook to keep up with people, learn about new events, and see what everybody's reading or writing. I probably post more to my author page than I do my personal one. I also occasionally boost posts about look launches and sales on the author page. I also create events for meetings or signings that I like to invite people to.

Make sure to tag people that appear in your photos or posts. 

Twitter - I use Twitter to keep up with the book world and all my mystery reader and writer friends. I like to share others' information and celebrations. 

I use Tweepi to manage my Twitter followers. Often there are accounts that follow you, and then they drop you shortly after. I use TweetDeck to schedule posts. I also make lists to keep up with different groups of people. The lists help me organize groups of folks that I'm interested in, so I can see their tweets.

I tweet links to my blog posts and announcements about my books. I also try to share good content from others. If you tweet about events or post pictures, make sure to tag those who are with you.

Instagram - I love looking at and taking pictures. I can spend hours flipping through Instagram. I post pictures of what I'm doing. My dogs get a lot of face time on my account. I always try to take pictures at all the events I go to. Make sure to tag anyone with you in your photos. 

Pinterest - Did I mention that I love looking at pictures? I have Pinterest boards for all kinds of things that I want to see again. I create boards for all my books and stories. I save pictures of what my characters and settings look like. I also have a board of blog posts. I also have boards for crafts and recipes that I want to try.

LinkedIn - This is my "professional" social media site that has my key jobs and skills. I use this for business networking. I have also started to post links to my blog here. 

My recommendation is to find the sites that you like to interact with and try to focus your time on those. You should have a presence on the others, but I would concentrate on a few. I try to schedule my social media time throughout the day. I catch up at breakfast. (Yes, I tweet at 5:30 AM.) I try to check on my sites at lunch, and then I scroll through my sites after dinner.

Let's Be Social:

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

Goodreads

Amazon Authors

Pinterest

LinkedIn

BookBub

GooglePlus

AllAuthor

YouTube

17 Mystery Pinterest Accounts You Should Follow

Pinterest is a great site for posting about books and blogs.  I always build a board for each story and novel. I also have one for favorite books and another for favorite libraries. Here's my list of 17 folks I think you should follow. They're in no particular order.

1. Mollie Cox Bryan - Scrapbooking Sunday
2. Cozy Chicks
3. Cozy Mystery
4. Themed Cozy Mysteries
5. Ellery Adams
6. Love Cozy Mysteries
7. hot in the Dark Mysteries
8. isters in Crime Tucson
9. Emma Sedlack
10. Mystery Novel
11. Zooey
12. Jenny Kales
13. Genesee District Library
14. ebastine
15. Lisa Shafer
16. Mystery Sequels
17. And me

Ways Writers Can Use Pinterest

I love Pinterest. It's my big electronic scrapbook for thousands of great pictures. I didn't get interested in the site until I ruptured my Achilles tendon, and I was stuck on the couch for months.

I have boards (the containers you create to group pictures) for crafts, DIY projects, funny memes, recipes, and places I've been or dreamt about.

Writers can use this social media platform to highlight their books.

1. Build a board for your book. Post pictures of what characters would look like, what actors you want to play them in the movie, locations where they visit, and things they like. I have a board for the anthology series that I'm a part of. It's Virginia is for Mysteries, and I have pictures of all the sites mentioned in the stories.

My author friend, Mary Miley, has a board for her 1920s mysteries with all the items from that era.

2. Build boards of your favorite books and authors.

3. Make boards for themes in your book (e.g. pets, historic sites, locales, fashion, foods, knitting, etc.) My writer friend, Mollie Cox Bryan, writes a scrapbooking-themed series. Her Pinterest boards are loaded with ideas and templates.

4. Create boards for your author events and upload photos of signings, panels, and workshops. Make sure to include links in the descriptions when you upload photos.

Let's connect on Pinterest. I can be found at: https://www.pinterest.com/crazyforwords13/

The Hamster Wheel

This week, guest blogger, Cortney Cain is writing about her work and writing experiences for Crazy for Words. Cortney is a recovering writer/editor who now teaches English for speakers of other languages. She and her husband, along with their tween and teen daughters, moved to the Shenandoah Valley recently after living near the coast for years.

A look at my Pinterest page is, admittedly, disappointing by most people’s standards. I’ve followed some pretty prolific posters, though, and *their* prowess might give you the impression that I’m upbeat and in touch. I’ve been neither of these for some time, but my family’s recent move from one corner of Virginia to the other has made me realize that it is not an area’s employment and entertainment offerings (or lack thereof) that are to blame for my current state of mind. It’s me.

I’ve cycled through boredom, self-doubt/depression, and then bootstrap-pull-uppance like a clumsy hamster for a while now. I picture myself as a little furry thing that runs really hard for a bit, trips comically and rides the momentum for a number of loop-de-loos, titters in annoyance as she stumbles off into the shavings, and then shakes the shavings off after she realizes how ridiculous it all is, only to look over and discover this shiny silver thing that could be a nice diversion.

Yep, that’d be me.

That cycle is something I noticed only recently when I found myself complaining about my job. (I should note that I’m between paid jobs at the moment.) It’s not that stay-at-home parenting is unfulfilling or tedious, though let’s admit it—we love that back-to-school commercial with “It’s the most wonderful time of the year” playing in the background because WE CAN RELATE. It’s the feeling that other women have this work/home thing worked out, and I’m the only one struggling with split personality disorder.

I had a job offer recently in something that I love: writing and editing. I went so far as to accept it and even get fingerprinted and background checked. If they’d asked, I would’ve peed in a cup. But then I got a call from the most persuasive HR person I’ve ever encountered anywhere—much less for a school system, which is notoriously “take it or leave it” in my experience—and voila! Yes, I found myself saying, I know teaching is the better fit for me right now because I owe it to my kids to be on their schedules. I called the writing/editing job offerer back and apologized for the late news, but I’d been given an offer I couldn’t refuse. How could I refuse being home with the kids on their breaks?

So now I’m in that resentment stage, where I’m dusting my shavings off, but I can already feel the allure of the silver wheel. Maybe, even with only a few weeks until new teacher orientation, there’s another job in writing and editing that will save me from the classroom. (If you have to ask why you need saving from the classroom, that’s a whole other series of blog entries. I don’t even really have horror stories, either, but all you have to do is turn on the TV to get some good ones.)

But then even if I could pull that off, there’d be the guilt. Sure, I’d feel guilty leaving a school to scramble to fill a job they’re already having difficulty filling. (I don’t flatter myself into thinking my resume is that impressive. My specialty is just in demand, and supply is low.) I’m talking about the Mom guilt. Ah, I remember the Mom guilt so well from my last writing job seven years ago, especially during the inevitable lulls. What are my kids up to right now? I should be home with them.

Doing what, though? Watching Spongebob’s latest exploits is my 10-year-old’s favorite pastime, and reading fan fiction about some androgynous lead singer of a band long disbanded is my teenager’s favorite. So now there’s another source of guilt: why am I not using this time to teach the girls about the world? Oh yeah. That usually takes money. Ironically, that’s a resource that, like Superman and Clark Kent, can’t be in the same room with another commodity: time. But isn’t Pinterest just chock-full of thrifty mom-as-inspiration and educator ideas? I hop on that wheel with all the gusto of a never-before-tripped rodent.

Alas, I am a hamster at heart. One of those pre-makeover ones from the cube-shaped car commercials. No, wait, I’d be one of their moms. The one covered in shavings.