Years ago (nine, to be exact) when I started blogging on a blogosphere, we, all the bloggers, were told to ‘market’ our posts on the different social media sites. Fast forward to today, where I’m blogging on my very own website (https://brickoneil.com/bonblog) and I’ve been ‘marketing’ and ‘sharing’ across different social media sites, trying to bring in views, readers and hopefully-ultimately-buyers/marketshare for my eight books (soon to be nine this fall).
You know what happens? Zilch. Nada. Absolutely nothing. There are views of my blog posts and website, I can see the stats myself. There are no shares across the different social media sites, there are no comments, there is no discussion that each social media site promises if you just open an account with them. At one time, I was a member of 12 social media sites.
All the ‘social media experts’ shared, in their expert opinion, what to do to increase comments, shares, views and buyers. And they all say something like this:
1. Comment on others’ posts, stories and articles. Make your comment relevant to what is written, share a link back to your website, blog that add to the discussion.
2. Join communities on social media sites, share your relevant articles, add to discussions, offer jobs to others, comment on as many topics as you can, make friends with community members.
3. Engage your expected audience with timely, relevant articles and blog posts. Write effectively, research and write with your audience in mind; make them want to comment!
4. Be happy and engaging when commenting, posting and offering your opinion or advice! No one wants to be lectured to, so keep in mind the tone of your post.
5. Always thank people for commenting on your article or blog, no matter what they say.
6. Create a blogroll on your website, sharing links (and getting put on others’ blogrolls) is a great way to generate traffic!
What these self-help-social-media-experts-turned-godlike-gurus fail to keep in mind, is people never acknowledge I’ve ever commented/shared/liked/blogrolled in the first place. I have previously spent hours upon hours commenting/liking/sharing others’ articles, posts, books, research. And guess what? People LOVED me helping them reach top-ten spots in their respective fields, getting their work published or ‘found’.
What about when I needed help? You guessed it. Big Fat Goose Eggs. People fail to even acknowledge I had even commented, shared or liked their work anymore. I don’t know about you, but in my way of thinking, that is extremely rude. Especially when I help them reach ‘top status’.
Another reason I don’t get these social media marketing gurus and their ‘advice’, is what do they think? I really do not have hours upon hours each day to spend crafting social media anymore. You know what? I actually have work to do! I have eight books to market, I have a cookbook to sell (that previous ‘social media friends’ promised to buy–now i’m stuck with 200 cookbooks). I have venues to try to find to sell these cookbooks, I have a website to keep up with 15 pages-in addition to keeping up the ever-changing ebook retailer links , I have five more books to write in my Mystery Series in addition to daily blog posts I have had to neglect. That doesn’t take into account a household to run, Dr.’s appointments (if you’ve read my biography-you know I have a lot), cats to herd and a life to live.
So, I have deleted the seven social media accounts that I was ignored on (the absolute worst? Google Plus! Others that were equally bad: Tumblr, Quora, Path; Reddit, Digg and Vine blocked me outright. Never have understood what or how LinkedIn is supposed to help me sell books) keeping the least-worst of the social media bunch-being Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn. And then I have cut back on my ‘social media’ time.
I have actual work to get back to.
Brick ONeil 
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