My Love/Hate Relationship with Social Media & Marketing

Since my book came out in April, I’ve been engaged in a lot (and I mean, A LOT) of social media marketing. In the past few weeks (since my return from the Italy/Spain trip), I’ve had some time to really dig back in again before school starts up next week.

On the one hand, I LOVE it. Or at least, I’m totally fascinated by it. I’m wondering what will work and what won’t work. And sometimes the results are very interesting. I’m thinking things like . . .

• How can I promote this awesome review I got on Readers’ Favorite? I’ve tweeted it, pinned it, and posted it to both my personal and professional Facebook pages. So far I’m getting the most likes on my personal Facebook page. But is that helping? Most of those people have already bought the book.
• How do I make really attractive Pinterest pins that people will repin and that will bring traffic to my website? I wrote a whole blog post on that one.
• What hashtags work the best in Twitter?
• How do I make press releases that actually show up in online newspapers?
• How do I can get more Pinterest followers? (I’ve quadrupled my followers in the last week. Of course, my numbers were small, so it wasn’t too hard. Ha! Follow me here, if you want to help my Pinteresting crusade. Leave me a note in the comments of this post, and I’ll follow you back.)
• How do I get more subscribers to my monthly newsletter? You can subscribe here to learn about my writing news, appearances, and giveaways.
• Should I have a YouTube channel? Guess what? Yes, I should. And do. It only has two videos so far, but still. Come visit me.

On the other hand, I HATE it. It’s sucking up my time. I follow one lead to build up my social media marketing and end up down a whole rabbit hole of information that makes the beautiful summer day outside suddenly disappear. What happened to my day? I’ve been tied to my laptop, my phone, and my iPad.

Argh! And I used to think marketing was boring! My college roommate majored in it, and I couldn’t figure out why. Of course, that was all before the social media explosion. I wonder if they teach a whole course in social media marketing in colleges now.

Got any social media marketing tips for me? I’d love to hear them! Of course, I may never again see the light of day if you do share them.

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