Tag Archives: Social Media

Some Thoughts on Social Media

For those who don’t remember, the social media 10-year Challenge was simply posting photos of yourself currently and from 10 years ago. It was a popular Facebook and Instagram thing in 2018, and there’s a reason for that: that’s about the time that Facebook got critically popular (even if launched earlier). Instagram itself launched in 2010 before being bought by Facebook a couple of years later. I guess ten years is a good interval to put out some thoughts on social media.

What I learned was that ten years of it was probably enough! Ten years of photos, rants, videos, sharing memes, sharing political opinions. I mean, did any of us think this was something we’d have to pursue forever?

11/28/11, Jim Arnold with Movember mustache

Jim Arnold in 2021 at the Pacific Ocean in NorCal

I had to ask myself: What has it gotten me? How has my life become better because of this? Because of all the precious time I’ve spent on social media?

Social Media Good for Author Presence?

To be honest, I mainly see a presence on social media as an avenue for publicity, ultimately resulting in curiosity about me sufficient to result in book sales. I don’t have much concrete evidence of that, although the concept is sound.

Perhaps that sounds selfish – but then again, I am under no illusions that I’m not the product on a service like Facebook or Twitter, where my data is being sold to advertisers. So for me to have loftier ambitions is really kind of silly when then entire enterprise is exploitive, right?

Yet I’ve never gotten over what I see as the lack of Integrity on social media and the ease of being an asshole, and of calling people names. I’m guilty of this myself. It’s so easy, when you’re behind a screen, to be a boor. (Especially on Twitter, I find.)

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Should I Ditch Twitter?

How hard would it be to give up Twitter? I call people names there, usually Republicans, led by Donald Trump or his surrogates. Maybe they deserve to be called names, but I tell you, even at age 66, soon to be 67, I still hear my mother’s voice telling me “don’t call people names.” That was good advice then and it’s good advice now. We were raised to be kind and decent.

Otherwise, I don’t scroll Twitter looking for information or to follow anyone in particular. There’s just too much there and I’ve always found that just daunting and basically uninteresting. I’d rather read a professionally edited newspaper I trust. That’s enough.

What About “Meta?”

Instagram would be harder because while I get almost zero comments or likes or anything on Twitter, I get more dopamine hits from Instagram. Although, still, it’s not a lot compared to true social media butterflies. I find my presence there low stress, and there’s not much animosity. So for now, I’m keeping it.

I recently rejoined Facebook for the author publicity reasons – I read a book on promotions that insisted a Facebook Page was a very good thing for authors, so I have one now. It’s only been a few months, but I find that Facebook itself is kind of boring these days and prefer looking at the photos on Instagram.

Still I really wonder about the opportunity cost of social media and is it really a worthwhile trade-off: there’s so many other things I could be doing, including fitness activities, piano playing, more writing, even. Work, certainly. Pursuing sex and lovers. Interacting with pets and animals. Cooking delicious food. Seeking more love in the world?

Those are some of my thoughts on social media, but the conversation’s not over. Stay tuned.

Incorporating Social Media into a Novel

And, by this, I mean making social media a subject or a tool inside your novel. This has nothing to do with marketing or publicizing the book itself, that’s a different subject.

No, I wanted social media to be part of the landscape of how my characters interacted in “The Forest Dark.” Because a) it’s part of all our lives in 2013 and b) it provides more of a contrast between 1984 (the year in which the first part of the book is set) and 2009, where the second part of the book lives.

But how to do this while avoiding a specific app or technology that may go completely obsolete at any time, probably sooner rather than later? Can you imagine how you’d feel if you wrote a novel where all the characters left messages for each other via MySpace? I guess it would be OK if your book was all about 2006 or something, but you know it would be looked on as a curious period piece and would not, as they say in Hollywood, have legs.

I thought about this and tempted as I was to refer directly to such household names as Facebook and Twitter, I decided to allude to them but to be ever so much more generic.

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No, instead I referred to the content of a communication as a “message” – as in, somebody posted a “message online.” That could be a Facebook post, or a tweet. I had another character tapping out a “message” to a “fan” or “fans,” which I hoped would be read as Character A just tweeted their followers – without actually saying that.

Because I figured no matter what apps survive and which go away, whatever does replace them will still have interaction between communicators with some kind of message content, whether that be text or voice or video or static photography or something we have yet to imagine.

Anyway, that’s how I solved that little problem. It turned out to be really easy. Do you include specific social media companies or app names in your fiction writing? Why or why not?

Tips on Social Media from Digital Hollywood

Graphic by Grapplica via Flickr

Had the opportunity for Jim Arnold Communications to attend the EPPS (Entertainment Publicists Professional Society) One Day Conference in conjunction with Digital Hollywood a while back (May, 2011) at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey.

Most of the panels I attended were on the how-to of social media marketing for entertainment products, to which I add the book category, because they are definitely entertaining!

Here are a few tips I gleaned from my day in Marina del Rey, in no particular order, re-posted from prior Jim Arnold Communications blog (and still very applicable one year later):

1) TIP: Many, if not most – or all – journalists are on Facebook and Twitter. Friend them on Facebook, follow them on Twitter. Good way to build a social media “media” list.

2) TIP: Use Twitter to find niche audiences – even more effective than Google – using hashtag (#) searches to find interests.

3) TIP: sometimes you can invite controversy on the web. For instance, if you know that there is some opposition to your book (or whatever product it is) this can be a good thing, as it stimulates a conversation, and as such, publicity.

4) TIP: Making your video go viral – what helps, though there is no universal formula – is the definite WTF factor. Also, when you need to bump up numbers a quick and sure way is to find something with cute, furry little animals (a winner every time!)

5) TRANSMEDIA definition: this is storytelling across different media – with each media type giving up something different – different information, different twist – about the story. If it’s the same message just going out on different media, that’s defined as MULTIMEDIA. The TV show “Lost” is a great example of an entertainment property that used Transmedia very successfully.

6) TIP: People are using Twitter for Customer Service requests, complaints, and recommendations – as in, trying to avoid phone trees and automated systems, people have found they get better and quicker results Tweeting about the problem.

7) OTHER GENERIC TIPS for Social Media:

Have a demographic you are trying to reach, rather than “everyone”
Think about the words you use in blog titles and tweets, as they show up in key word searches
Do optimize your links – that means, use links that are reputable and popular
Do have a strategy for your social media
For Twitter and Facebook, use separate accounts for business and for personal
Social media is about a conversation. Therefore, comment on replies/posts to your Facebook pages and respond to your tweets
Social media is also all about sharing information, so encourage it
Limit yourself to a single call for action in any particular post or tweet

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I hope these are helpful. I’m going to incorporate most of these into my own work ASAP! What are your best-working tips? Add them to the list in the comments.

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EPPS Panel on Social Media

(from October 20, 2011 – this is a reposting from the Jim Arnold Communications blog, which as been combined with Jimbolaya. I have several columns to repost over the next couple of weeks.)

This morning I attended the monthly Entertainment Publicists Professional Society’s Hollywood meeting, where the panel topic was ” The Integration of Social Media into PR Campaigns.”

Panelists included Todd Beck, Beth Braen, Jenny Connelly, Tracy St. Pierre, Andrew Stachler, Laurel Whitcomb and Dawn Wilcox – all moderated by Rosalind Jarrett, here at the podium standing behind the “E.”

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They discussed how their various companies – including NBC, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Allison & Partners, NATPE, Beck Media & Marketing, SAG and Warner Bros. – worked with the various social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube were the most talked about) to make use of their continually changing nature.

A couple of instructional takeaways:

roles and goals – as in, (at a company or even solo) define first what it is you want from social media and who is going to handle the day-to-day jobs of posting, monitoring, measuring, etc. Like with all PR, a strategy is essential.
Facebook for conversations, Twitter for announcements (or for the first place an announcement shows up) – can be a rule of thumb.
Social Media strategy is not static, ever – it evolves. I think all the companies presenting this morning had war stories to tell about how they’ve adapted as these platforms have matured and people have figured out how to best use them.

All of this, of course, is applicable to book publishing or to an author’s fan page or twitter account. Like with so much in life, it’s the commitment and perseverance that counts.

What have you done that’s been successful? Have you tried something with social media that fell flat, or that on second thought, you would have changed?