Why Blog When You Can Facebook?

What is it you're writing? I think that's really relevant in this.

If you're writing fiction, you don't need a platform.

If you're writing non-fic, you do (in addition to expertise), but the best way to build and feed one will depend on your audience. If you're writing about politics, there's a lot of blog presence there. If you're doing a book on Kardashian fashion, I'd think Facebook would be as hopelessly old school as blogs, and you'd need an Instagram, etc.

It depends on how you use your social media, though, doesn't it? I know plenty of fellow writers on Twitter and Facebook who have accounts but seldom use them--but they post a lot on their website or blog. Then there are others who tweet a lot and don't have Facebook--and although Twitter is fun, how much is an agent going to learn about you from 140 characters? I have a personal Facebook account and an author page.

I've been on Facebook since 2004 and I've seen it change and grow--but I've never felt comfortable with posting longer pieces of writing on Fb (by longer, I mean, like, longer than a paragraph). I'm conscious of not cluttering up peoples' news feeds. Not everyone that I'm Facebook friends with needs to know that I'm a writer. That's what ye olde blog is for. It's also more customizable than Facebook and more accessible (if you can Google, you can find a blog. If you're not on Facebook, you're not going to see stuff on Facebook).

Same here. I've had several FB pages over the years, and trimmed them back to one, which I barely use. My blog is a better clearinghouse for art, ranting, and writing. I'm just not fond of FB. And I certainly don't care that blogging is somehow too 20th Century. I have a text heavy blog for deliberate and contrary reasons. For lighter and more visual fare I use Tumblr. I like Twitter but I'm not on it 24-7, either at work or home.

You need a home base that will come up on google with your contact information and full list of your published works. This is so people can find you and your books. Facebook does not do this well. You can also do hundred other strategic things with a blog that Facebook does not do, and vice versa.

Again, what're you writing?

NickIandolo said:

I just feel like all this time on social media seems like a big distraction from the real work which is writing my books. I know, I know that we're supposed to have the social media channels and lots of content on them but still, I don't have endless hours during the day—especially with a day job—to be Tweeting, Facebooking, Instagramming, SnapChatting, Pinteresting, and Blogging (and anything else that's out there), when I should be writing.

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Write. You can't sell a book that's not well-written. The number of well-written books in slushpiles is a surprisingly small percentage of the overall--much smaller than the percentage of authors with FB pages or blogs.

The have-a-platform advice is a favourite of vanity pubs and dodgy agents because they're not prepared to promote the work and it engages well with the sort of person looking for a simple solution to being an Author instead of a writer. If I just create a social media profile, I'll sell a million copies! No, you won't. The tricky bit is, there's a tiny bit of legit crossover with author platforms because, once a book comes out, they're frequently part of a publisher's marketing plan for the author. In certain specific cases, having a pre-existing fan base can be beneficial, but note that it's the fan base, not the platform itself, that's of benefit. You don't get fans by having the platform. You need content, which you don't have unless you write the book.

NickIandolo said:

Science Fiction is what I love to write. I've written a couple of non-fiction books but they didn't sell very well in the self-published world. Plus, I realize now that those books weren't ready to be published self or traditional. But they were just a phase that I was going through to be something that I really wasn't when all along I really wanted to be a Science Fiction author.

I've been writing sci-fi stories since I was a kid and wrote three sci-fi novels that I never published before I even thought about self-publishing my latest venture. But as I mentioned in my profile's bio, last year I un-published all of my books (sci-fi and non-fiction) because of an incident that happened at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con that broke me as a writer and made me go back to the drawing board.

Now I am on the path to get traditionally published. Not that I have anything against self-publishing, I've done it myself five times! And have all the respect in the world for authors who take on that massive endeavor, which is even greater than the writing itself! But now it's time for me to take my writing in a different direction—and that is towards representation and traditional publication.

And I have no illusions about it. It's going to be a looooong haaaaaard road!

But I've gotta do it. I just have to.

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Ok, then you don't need a platform, or to worry about your social media presence, or etc. Just write the book you want, polish, query.

Sounds like you're on the right path, then.

Two things to keep in mind, both of which you'll get lots of help with around AW .

1. All the best writing comes from BIC. Butt-in-chair. It's hard, but it's fun. You learn a lot in communities like this by learning how to be self-aware and that's a huge part of learning to write well because you have to be both your own champion and your own conscience.

2. Beware vanity publishers and agents who prey on that desire for publication people have to rope folks into scams and well-meaning but very flawed contracts. Take pleasure in writing, and in selling to readers--keep those two things central and you'll find lots of good publishers who can help out. It's when things become about the authors and not the readers that problems start to emerge.

You'll find Uncle Jim's threads in the Novels sub-forum very useful as a place to start.

See you around!

Blogs vs. Facebook is too simple a classification.

The word "blog" itself is too simple a label. A lot of people use the word to mean rapidly changing posts (weekly, daily, even hourly), a LOG in other words.

They often confuse this with a "web site" which contains rarely changing stuff like a bio, a list of your books, maybe some background info such as the history of your fictional universe if you have created one.

Two different kinds of entities: quickly changing, rarely changing.

Wordpress.com lets you combine the two. Often you can see this in the Menu line across the top of the page. It might look like this: HOME, UNIVERSE1, UNIVERSE2, NONFICTION1, NONFICTION2, ABOUT.

HOME is the blog part. ABOUT is the bio part. The ones in the middle are for the universes and kinds of nonfiction you write about.
Let's focus on the blog part.

There are different kinds of blogs. Roughly personal and professional.

For personal blogs you blather on (usually) boringly about purely personal matters. If you're incredibly witty you may get a lot of followers, otherwise only a few family and friends will follow you. Personal bloggers may post several times a day, seven days a week. Usually the only person who reads these posts is the blogger. Not even their loved ones care about these posts. UNLESS you are a celeb.

A pro blog is for writers announcing interesting developments. This includes new books published, older books republished. A new agent or publisher. A movie or TV show based on one of your books.

But the pro blog may also include interesting developments which fans of your books might also care about. You write historicals? Readers of those may be interested in equitation news. You write military fiction? Developments in new equipment or tactics. Space opera? Happenings on the space front.

What about exciting new authors you've discovered? Movies? TV shows? Bios of a favorite writer?

I post at least once per week to keep my readers interested. Rarely more often than that. I don't want to bore them.

Many pro writers have two blogs: one personal, one professional. They cross link from each to the other. Nora Roberts does this. Some pros combine the two. John Scalzi does this and has literally hundreds of thousands of followers. So either tactic can work.
Now Facebook. It's more useful for personal blog posts, but you can use it for pro posts. Posts are limited to two or three hundred characters but if you go over Fb adds a MORE link. Click it and you can read the full post.

Basically Fb and your blog/site are two kinds of animals. Each have their strengths and weaknesses.

You don't want to bother with social media? Spend all your time just writing? Produce genius and "they will come"? Tough. Writing is a profession. EVENTUALLY you will have to develop a social media presence. Best time is to start now, BEFORE you need a presence. START SMALL, TAKE BABY STEPS, STAY SMALL so you spend most of your time writing writing writing.

In my previous post I expanded the topic to the whole array of platforms. Now I want to narrow it to Facebook and Twitter. What do they offer us? And what do they NOT give us?
They offer us convenience, first of all. You sign up (takes no more than a minute), you post (a few minutes). That's it. Post a hundred times a day if you want. You can include an image or a video in your post, and the process is quick and almost painless.

Facebook offers us a large audience, some 70% of all internet users. Twitter is around 20%. The Twitter audience is a younger crowd. The Fb audience is more evenly distributed across all age categories.

Facebook has a per post limit of about 400 characters, Twitter 140 - though that second number is likely going up to 10,000 in a few months. (This suggests to me that Twitter is going to make more changes in the following months, some possibly radical.)

For now convenience, audience share, demographics, and flexibility suggests that an author wanting to create a "social presence" on the web should probably begin with Fb. For a good example of such a page go to Dan Brown's.

Know, however, that a page like that takes a good deal of work to set up. However, once it's done it's very quick and easy to use. Leaving you more time to exercise your genius to become the next billionaire writer a la J. K. Rowling.
Now to drop the other shoe.

Look at Dan Brown's Fb page, left-hand side, about halfway down, under ABOUT. Notice something?

A link to his web page.

That's because of the features Fb (and Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and all the other microblogging sites) do NOT give you. This is conveniently available "static" content: nearly permanent, rarely changing stuff. Most especially this includes all the books you have available.

One quick and easy way to get that is with a link to Goodreads. Or maybe to Amazon's Author Pages.

It can also include background the books share, perhaps, such as a bio of his main characters and descriptions of the universes they inhabit. Samples of a work-in-progress and comments of your dedicated fans on those samples. Maybe a suggested reading order for a series if you have one. (And if you have a long enough pro career, you likely will someday create one, either deliberately or by inspiration leading to sequels.)

For THAT you will want a dedicated web page.

Hateful thought, right? But remember the conventional wisdom: START SMALL, TAKE BABY STEPS, STAY SMALL. And (my suggestion) go to WordPress.com.

What Laer said. And all the other intelligent responses you've gotten so far! I must congratulate you on all you've accomplished! Here's to writer's remorse. I think we all experience that at least once in our lives. But I, too, would recommend having a blog/website to have all your work in one cohesive manner. Your facebook and blog can be linked together, obviously. You probably know the drill.

Your last question was: where does one find the time to balance out all this social media? When we'd much rather be writing, and being on social media makes us feel guilty, as if we're betraying our inner writer? You have to find what your limits are. There's no formula, but I like to keep my computer time to 20% networking, 80% work. And I typically get social media "obligations" out of the way first so I can be focused on the work.

I would maintain your fb presence, but make your blog a part of it. Share your posts. You don't need to write a blog post everyday. I view blogs as personal and an excellent tool for longer expositions. I spend much more time on wordpress than facebook. Facebook is... eh. But know why you're networking: for the money, for the fame, or something else? Write because you love it. Network like you mean it.

Good luck!

veinglory said:

You need a home base that will come up on google with your contact information and full list of your published works. This is so people can find you and your books. Facebook does not do this well. You can also do hundred other strategic things with a blog that Facebook does not do, and vice versa.

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This, plus not everyone is on Facebook or any other social media website. It was only recently that I made a Facebook after being off all social media for years. You can probably make your Facebook public, even for those who don't have one, but I found that when I didn't have one, I couldn't view a lot of the pages on there.

Everyone can view a blog no matter what.

Hope this helps --

I'm almost finished with the first draft of my first novel, with a few smaller works in progress and one short story submitted to a competition. I wonder about the author platform and social media thing, too. I did quite a bit of research, wrote a draft business plan, and created a website and Facebook page. I do have Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, but I'm not using them (yet). I see my website as me hanging out a shingle, so to speak. The Facebook page is where I share items relevant to my writing or interesting articles. Both were intended to drive people to subscribe to my email list.

So much of the advice pushed building an email subscription base before you release a book. I'm really having difficulty with that part, and I'm wondering how important it is for my plan. I plan on epublishing the first general fiction novel, submitting via traditional publishing the children's book series, and submitting science fiction short stories to various markets along the way.

I'm finding most of the people I know now are moving away from email toward Facebook (and texting). My visit rates for my Facebook page are higher than my website (mainly from friends, family, and acquaintances I had personally friended on Facebook). I'm just starting out, and everyone's mileage will vary.

For now, I schedule posts on a regular basis for the website and Facebook, with more updates on the Facebook page. Occasionally (once a month or so) on my personal Facebook page, I'll suggest visiting my Facebook page or my website.

I'd like to become more active on Goodreads as a reader, and I'd like to take my Facebook page and follow other writers in the genres that I write. We'll see. Right now, I'm trying to be BIC.

CindyRae said:

So much of the advice pushed building an email subscription base before you release a book. I'm really having difficulty with that part, and I'm wondering how important it is for my plan.

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Hi Cindy.

You may be having difficulty with the strategy because it's got the order backwards and for that reason it's not very important. Think about it: can't really promote subscriptions before you have a book that people want to read. Start there.

Your best promotional strategy will be to never, ever use the phrase "fiction novel" ever again.

In all seriousness, it's good to do research on promo but there's a lot of misinformation out there as I and others mentioned in this (slightly old) thread. I'd suggest taking a look at this incredibly useful thread which pretty much covers the basics and then some.

Good luck with the BIC and see you around!

I took a social media class. There, I learnt the value of media, blogs and other websites.

Allowing yourself several social media websites widens the amount of people who see/can see your content. For example, I've changed my Wordpress settings so that new blog posts (which, conveniently, is connected to my website) automatically appear on my Tumblr and Facebook page (author Facebook page). Both have a different number of likes/follows, and ultimately different eyes. Having a blog, while frustrating, allows my viewers to see new content. New content (sometimes) will bring in new viewers. Having a blog allows you to address several groups at once. While it's annoying to maintain, once you get the basics, it gets easier and easier.

And if you're aiming for professionalism, Facebook is the opposite. It's geared towards a less professional side of social media. You can create a Facebook page (one of the few "kind of" professional aspects of Fb), and present content in a professional manner. OR you can create a Facebook page and a blog, which will allow you to change your settings so the new blogpost will post on your page (and other places as well). Either way, if you're going for Facebook, go for some other platforms to ensure maximum exposure.

Ultimately, the decision is up to you, but I would highly recommend having a Facebook page and blog. The blog content is whatever you want. You can write little snippets, talk about some writer related thing you went through recently, etc.

I hope I helped!

Wordpress allows me to have all my posts automatically posted on Facebook. It's awesome--a two for one. And the Facebook automatically tweets them for me.

I never check Facebook, but it keeps anyone else from using my name, and I do get the odd Wordpress referral from them.

Just throwing it out as a possible way to economize social media time.

The main time sink isn't posting, though. It's reciprocal visits to the people who like and comment on your page. Still, I've made lots of blogging friends that way.

And regarding the OP's question, Wordpress allows me to have index pages. If you visit my blog, you can see all 50 plus writing tip posts in a single place. Or all my short stories. That way, users can easily find what they're interested in.

Also, for some reason, the About Me page is always popular (not just for me). You can put a much more thorough bio (with links to memoir tales) up on Wordpress than you can on Facebook or Twitter.

I know this is an older thread, but since it's been reactivated, I'm adding my 2¢.

Any site (such as Facebook) that forces people to sign up to read your posts, limits you.

Cathleen has great insight on having the blog post automatically to facebook, twitter too. If you use blogger, it can be done as well by signing up for feedburner.

CathleenT said:

Also, for some reason, the About Me page is always popular (not just for me). You can put a much more thorough bio (with links to memoir tales) up on Wordpress than you can on Facebook or Twitter.

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The About Me page is popular because of the phenomenon Medi mentions in that thread I linked: people will click through to find out about you. I do it all the time here on AW. If I see a poster who says interesting things, I'll click a sig link to a website to learn more about them. Or I'll check their full profile before I post a crit.

The mistake a lot of newer people make, of course, is thinking that the About Me page is an end in itself. No, people don't go to your About Me page just because it's there. They go because you're an interesting person, with an interesting book and they've found some creation of yours out in the world and want to follow the breadcrumbs.

Social media is, IMO, one of the most profoundly uninteresting things about a person. It's almost fundamentally narcissistic. What it's good for is for landing access. It's a glance. Designed well, it leads me to either more of that person's work, a way to contact them, or more interesting thoughts. Which is why people on social media who are constantly yelling "buy my book!" are usually not selling very many books: that's not the reason I came. Basic UX.

Great thread, Nick. Thank you for starting it.

I agree that social media is the epitome of narcissism. Rarely am I on FB; I only joined because my few friends are in other cities and countries, and it's a convenient platform to arrange meetings. Seldom do I read blogs, and the thought of 'having' to write a blog is like a visit to the dentist.

I shan't; I'd rather write my next book and work on my drawing skills. Moreover, I don't think I'm a particularly interesting person; what in the universe would I write about besides my books, my travelling experiences and my hobbies? It's even more narcissistic. Yuck.

However, pitch fests like this http://dankoboldt.com/sffpit/ appeal to me, so I guess I shall have to join Twitter once I feel my book is (finally) ready.

There is a stereotype that if you like writing, you must have kept or still keep a journal/diary of your daily life. Nope, not me. I like writing stories, not about myself, thank you very much. Does anyone else feel the same way, or is it like coffee; I'm one of the few writers who abhors that stuff?

I guess it's narcissistic if the only topic you can think to write about is yourself. But there's a lot more to write (and read) about than that.

The two aren't mutually exclusive; one of the questions to ask yourself is what/who do you see as your intended audience?

That said, i would blog then post (possibly automatically) to Facebook because posting to your blog means that you own prior rights to your contant, no matter what rights FB tries to grab in the future.

You don't want FB to own your content.

Helix said:

I guess it's narcissistic if the only topic you can think to write about is yourself. But there's a lot more to write (and read) about than that.

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I'd rather read than write. I don't care to repeat what somebody else had said elsewhere; I'd just link them.

Off topic; but what is that bird in your avatar? Lyrebird? Road-runner?

AWAdmin: I sure don't indeed; anything professional would not go on FB. Best to keep business and personal matters separate.

I write science-fantasy. I think I'll just do what cornflake said.