Is Blue Sky A Haven For Creators? Or Just Another Social Media Mirage?

Social media has been in something of a spiral for creators the past several years. I talked about this a while back in The Reason Social Media Sucks For Everyone (Not Just Creators), but to catch you up on it we're caught in the middle of serious platform decay. If you've never heard the term, that's when social media platforms have sucked up a huge audience, and then the people in charge start tightening the screws in order to suck more money out of advertisers, as well as users on the platform. It's why Facebook has edged out more and more of your actual friends to show you ads, it's why Reddit has ever-more vigilant bots that attempt to stop you from sharing things instead of buying ad space, and so on, and so forth.

One of the worst, of course, was what happened to Twitter. The bird site was where a lot of independent creators spoke directly to their audiences, and where they made a lot of their online sales. And Musk, like any spoiled kid with an expensive toy, has been breaking it ever since he acquired it so that it's nearly useless for the purpose it was made for.

Enter our supposed savior... Blue Sky! A website that (supposedly) functions like social media was supposed to back in the glory days. A clean interface, a suite of perfectly normal features, and your feed is full of things from people you actually follow and subscribe to. It sounds like a perfect solution, but as we've learned well over the years anything that sounds too good to be true probably isn't.

So, what can I say about Blue Sky?

Well, I've been flying pretty high since I joined!

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

What Has My Experience Been Like So Far?

I want to start with something of a disclaimer. I was never a heavy user on Twitter. I'm still technically there with just over 1,800 followers under @nlitherl, but I never really got much in the way of traction on that site. Even with participation in online follow trains, and being part of regular events like Self Promotion Days, I'm lucky to get any interaction at all on my posts over there. Usually 1 or 2 people will give something I share a heart, and maybe retweet it, but that's about it.

For comparison, I've been actually active on Blue Sky on @literarymercenary for a little over a week and change. I've had the account longer, but it was mostly dormant until recently when I started purposefully trying to expand it. At time of writing I've got only 72 people who are following me on there, but perhaps some folks reading this right now will be kind enough to push me toward triple digits. However, even with such a dramatically smaller audience, I'm finding that my posts are regularly getting a minimum of 4 interactions from people actually following me, and often it goes pretty well above that number.

So, absolute base numbers, Blue Sky is definitely showing promise, since it's outperforming the site it most resembles pretty much straight out of the gate in terms of people actually seeing and interacting with your posts.

Of course, those numbers are just one aspect of things.

Raw numbers and interactions do not a social media website make, though. With that said, Blue Sky does have some other features going for it that I feel are worth mentioning.

One of the things I find most valuable is that it has no trouble generating previews of images from your posts. A picture is worth a thousand words, and if a post you make has a black box or no preview at all, then no one is going to stop their scrolling long enough to register what it is you're talking about. When I shared my recent blog entry World's Oldest Profession... Is The Third Time The Charm? on both Blue Sky and Twitter. On the former, folks got a lovely preview of the shiny cover of the supplement, while on Twitter folks just got a bunch of text, and no image at all.

Seriously, check this thing out if you're a tabletop gamer!

In addition to this feature (which is pretty damn important if you're looking to expand your audience, make sales, etc.), Blue Sky has made statements that it won't allow content generated on the site to be used for AI scraping... which is something Twitter is apparently going to do. Blue Sky has an entire culture of blocking people who harass or abuse you without arguments and drama, unlike Twitter where not only is this kind of toxicity the day-to-day business, but there have been talks about modifying or outright removing the block feature.

Does this make Blue Sky perfect? No, don't be ridiculous. It's still a social media website, which means there are conflicts between users, there's technical issues due to the massive numbers of people they're onboarding, and there are going to be some features you want that aren't there, and there will be decisions they make you won't like. It's operating as an alternative to other websites out there, which means it is still a business.

With that said, if you're someone who has been dismayed at the state of websites like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. with regards to your promotional efforts, I would recommend at least reserving your place on Blue Sky. Whether you want to build up your following and use it seriously to try to reach a bigger audience, or you just want to keep it in your back pocket, it's certainly worth taking a little bit to set up your profile, and to reconnect with some folks.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

The Reason Social Media Sucks For Everyone These Days (Not Just Creators)

Social media these days sucks. That's probably a statement you've heard before, and it's the sort of statement that sounds like the usual old person griping about how things have changed since their day. You hear it with fashion, movies, music, and every other aspect of life, so of course people are going to complain that social media was so much better when they were young, and in the prime of their life.

As someone who depends on social media for at least part of my living, though, you aren't imagining it. It really does suck more now than it did before... and if you're a creator, that's a storm that just might sink your boat.

And it doesn't look like it's going to get better any time soon.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

The Enshittification of Everything

I really wish I could take credit for this term, but alas, I cannot. Enshittification, or to use its more polite term according to The Chainsaw platform decay, is basically a microcosm of the capitalist mindset on fast-forward.

So how does it work?

Well, the first stage of the cycle is where you create a platform, and do everything you possibly can to attract a huge user base to it. You charge little to no fees, you provide great features, you keep it open to as many people as possible, and most importantly you provide something of value to your audience. Maybe you're a search engine that gives fast, accurate results, an online storefront that gives you access to a massive amount of products at a low price, or maybe you're a social media platform that gives people a smooth timeline, ease of use, and the ability to connect to all of their friends.

Once a platform has made itself valuable to the users (often by running at a deficit, or by barely breaking even), that's when it starts altering its priorities. Maybe your social media site or your search engine starts slipping in more ads. It's subtle at first, but they're bringing in revenue, and they aren't too big of an eyesore. Maybe your video streaming platform ads a second ad at the beginning, or has several ad breaks throughout longer videos. Maybe your digital store now has "recommended" products at the top of your search results that are paid placement from clients who want to make sure shoppers see their stuff first. The platform isn't terrible yet, but it's taking its first steps down the path to hell.

Just sign here on the dotted line, if you will...

The decay continues as the platform's greed increases. Now the platform is choking off the signal for average creators, trying to squeeze money out of them to force them to pay for ad space. This also stops users from seeing anything from their friends, family and community. The platform increases the cost to bigger clients for ads as well, making it a huge pay-to-play market. In the end, no one other than the platform is getting anything out of this arrangement.

By the time you reach the end of the decay cycle, you have a platform that is rotten to the core. It's trying to squeeze its clients, its users, and the service it was providing is being actively degraded as it tries to charge you for more, and more, and more. And when all is said and done, there will come a point where everyone on both sides of the corrupt middleman dusts off their hands and simply says, "No more." They abandon the platform, moving on to somewhere else, and leaving the platform without the blood and treasure it needs to keep itself alive. Maybe it backs up and readjusts its course, but it's entirely possible that the platform just dies, leaving a power vacuum for something else to try to take its place.

This is Happening To Social Media Before Our Eyes

If you've been watching the trash fire that is Twitter, then you've seen this kind of action in real time. While the platform had its flaws before Musk took over, he put on the gas on the enshittification process. He started removing features users liked (and firing a lot of people to reduce the overhead), charging for things which were previously included (the ongoing saga of how much users would have to pay for the blue check mark), and actively alienating both users and clients with the way the platform was run.

Twitter is, of course, not the only platform dealing with this kind of decay.

We see it with Facebook, where user signals don't travel nearly as far as they once did, and creators are constantly encouraged to pay for advertising if they want people to see their posts. We see it on Reddit with the removal of fixes and work arounds that helped keep many communities functional. We see it on YouTube as they enact more and more stringent guidelines on many creators if they want to be monetized, eliminating entire genres of content off the platform, and leading to a bizarre kind of doublespeak as people try to avoid invoking the wrath of the algorithm.

And we're all suffering from this. The users in our audience, the creators writing books, running blogs, and making videos, and the companies who want to find a place to sell their products or sponsor us as creators... we're all getting squeezed.

And it's why so many of us rely on straight crowd funding these days.

I've got the numbers myself, just from my own little corner of the Internet. In ye olde days, I could share a blog post from Improved Initiative, or even from right here on The Literary Mercenary on just Facebook, and it would usually get around 400 hits just from the groups I shared it in. That was my bottom floor. If it was a popular topic it could get up to 800 or 1,000. If I also shared it on Reddit, I could easily see it climb to between 1,500 and 5,000 hits.

These days? I'm sharing my articles in more than double the locations on Facebook, and it generates about 20-50 hits. On Reddit I'm also going into more subs than I ever did in the past, and I'm lucky if a single post even breaks 1,000 hits. For something to get more than that it has to really catch the attention of a community, and start a small firestorm of replies, shares, etc. And even then, the reactions from the community are worth so much less than they were in the past, making it a monumental task to even be seen, much less to make sales.

So What The Hell Are We Supposed To Do?

As I said back in Why Writers Hate All These Twitter Alternatives (Hint: It's Because They're Useless), all of us are caught in the whirlpool of the drain of enshittification. It's not just Twitter, or Facebook, or Reddit, or YouTube. It's not just Amazon, or Netflix, or any other titan of industry... it's all of them. They grow as big as they can, crush their competition so they're the biggest name in town, and then they start turning the screws until eventually there's no more blood left in the stone.

So what are we going to do? Unfortunately, the answer boils down to, "Try our best to survive."

And that also means we need to rely on our audience more than ever.

Surviving has a lot of aspects to it. On the one hand, we need to try to navigate the changing faces of the platforms we're already using, even as they decay right under our feet. On another hand, we have to try to keep an eye out for replacement platforms that give us more tools, a more direct connection to our audience, or which help us find a bit of breathing room. And while we're doing all of that we still need to find time to actually create new content, write new books, or whatever else it is we're doing.

And let me tell you... it is exhausting trying to navigate a sinking ship day in and day out while also keeping an eye on the horizon for a more seaworthy ship, and remembering to play enough music for people to hear us. And most of us could really use a life preserver right about now.

Support The Literary Mercenary

For folks who just want to do their part to help keep me making more content, please subscribe/follow me in these locations:

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Why Writers Hate All These Twitter Alternatives (Hint: It's Because They're Useless)

If you exist on the Internet today, then you are likely well aware of the ongoing downfall of Twitter. One of the major social media websites with years of growth behind it, the site was bought by Elon Musk, who has been doing almost everything in his power to light it on fire, and drive it off a cliff.

In the wake of all of Musk's bad decisions, a slew of other social media sites and platforms have sprung into action, trying to claim the real estate that Twitter has lost. And while I definitely endorse more social media platforms existing, I wanted to take a moment to explain something that a lot of people seem confused by. Because a majority of the challengers to Twitter's throne have tidal waves of hype behind them... but if you're a creator, they're utterly useless for your needs.

Buckle up folks, this one is gonna be depressing.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

The Wrong Tools For The Wrong Job

There have been dozens of sites and platforms that folks have gone to in the wake of Musk's... let's call them decisions regarding Twitter. Facebook created Threads, Discord has exploded in popularity, Mastodon has trampled onto the scene, and Blue.Sky has gotten leagues of subscribers all its own. Hell, even Tumblr saw a lurch in popularity in the wake of the Twitter disaster. And those are just some of the alternatives that have come on the scene.

With all of those choices, why would anyone actually stay on Twitter and keep playing music on a sinking ship, which seems to be the choice that a majority of creators have made?

Because these new tools simply don't do what the old one did.

To answer that question, I need to explain what Twitter did from the perspective of a creator.

First and foremost, Twitter had an established audience, and established communities. More importantly, it allowed you to speak directly to your audience, and to establish a rapport with them. Most importantly, though, Twitter had something called discoverability. For those who've never heard the term before, discoverability is the ability for your content to be found (or "discovered") by people you don't have a pre-existing connection to. Discoverability is what allows your post to grow, and spread, letting you go viral across a platform if people keep reacting to it.

While there are a lot of websites and platforms trying to fill this gap, they have none of these things. Worse, many of them are designed specifically so that they will never have these things.

Take Discord and Blue.Sky, for example. These platforms are designed specifically so that you can curate your own feed, and avoid coming into contact with subjects and types of content you wish to avoid. From a user perspective, this may be seen as an advantage, because now you have the ability to insulate yourself from stuff you don't want to cross paths with. From a creator perspective, though, it means that you have a serious handicap to overcome, because you need to either find (or somehow make) a community that is so large that its members can help support your work all on their own, or you need to somehow find a huge collection of such communities, and stitch together a functional quilt out of them all, while then posting in each and every one of them as often as you can (which can rapidly eat up hours of your time every, single day). When you add in the relative youth of these sites and platforms (at least when compared with older sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc.), and the fact that communities to help support creators are not as established on them (if they exist at all), they really aren't doing you any favors.

In short, to use these platforms, you would have to put in significantly more effort, with the likelihood that your efforts are going to generate much smaller results, if they generate any results at all. Because these platforms, simply put, do not do what Twitter did, or what Facebook, Reddit, and other established social media sites do. These sites instead largely operate as a series of closed rooms that explicitly stop fires from passing from one section to another... but as creators, we need the potential that our content will grow and spread, otherwise the embers will be smothered before we even get started.

Tumblr is the one exception... honestly, it just doesn't have the interaction and audience it would need to be what it once was.

Help Keep The Fires Going!

The issue that a lot of creators are facing these days is that algorithms in general, and social media in particular, throttle our signals to the point where it's basically impossible to be successful just making posts all on our own. And in a world where more and more platforms are moving away from discoverability, and forcing people to pay if they want their posts to be seen, we need all the help we can get.

In short, we need help from folks like you. The audience. Our followers.

I'm helping!

There are only so many posts we can make, so many websites we can join, and so many platforms we can curate. We can't do this alone... but you can help us. Because every time you leave a heart on a post, every time you share something, and every time you leave a comment or review, it helps boost the signal, and it tells those same algorithms that we have made something that other people should see. And every time you share our content in a closed group that we couldn't normally reach, you put our stuff in front of people who might otherwise never hear of us.

So if you want to help, that's how you can throw us a life preserver so we can keep treading water, and making more stuff for all of you to enjoy!

Support The Literary Mercenary

For folks who just want to do their part to help keep me making more content, please subscribe/follow me in these locations:

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Leveraging The Algorithm: How You Can Help Creators You Love Get Seen

Being a creator is no walk in the park. Whether you're a novelist, a short story writer, someone who makes videos and audio dramas, or you just put together weekly blog entries for people, it takes a lot of work to keep making art. However, that challenge is nowhere near as difficult as it is getting that art you've made seen by people.

And while I've talked in the past about how absolutely necessary it is for fans of a creator to lift them up and boost their signal, this week I wanted to provide a look behind the scenes, and explain why the actions you take matter to the creators you follow. And how you can help them succeed, even if you don't have the money to toss patronage their way.

Because numbers really do matter in this game.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

Actions, and The Algorithm

Social media is a major component of a professional creator's toolbox these days. Sure, a lot of us will go to conventions, or appear in more traditional venues like talk shows, TV slots, etc., but most of us don't have the fame or budget for that. So most of us use social media as a way to get our work into the hands of people who like it.

Unfortunately, this means that we have to contend with the dreaded algorithm.

We are algorithm, and we are many.

Algorithms are, generally defined, just systems that crunch numbers, and process data. In other words, it's the formula that tries to figure out what you want to see, and what is going to get more interaction/attention from people on a given site. As a caveat, it's important to remember that not all algorithms are the same, and they are constantly shifting and changing depending on what alterations are being made by the various sites that use them. Because of this I'm going to try to keep the following advice as general as I can, while still giving folks directions that can actually be followed.

Okay? Okay.

So what are the things you need to do to help the creators you like get seen so that we can get an audience large enough that we can pay rent, eat, and keep making stuff you want to see? It's pretty simple, actually.

#1: Subscribe

It sounds like the most obvious thing possible, but algorithms weight your posts (at least partially) based on how many people you have following you. This is why people with 5 million followers will have their updates show up across a given website, and those with 5k will barely be seen by their own friends. So even if the only thing you do is act as a warm body by subscribing to a channel, profile, etc., that helps in and of itself. Especially when you consider that subscribing means you'll see a creator's content more often, making the following steps easier for you.

#2: React

Most social media sites have some form of react option. If you're on Reddit, it's an upvote. If you're on Twitter, it's a heart. If you're on Facebook... well, you have a slew of options there. Generally speaking, the more reacts a post gets, the more popular it's considered, and the more likely the algorithm is to boost the signal to other users who wouldn't normally see it.

As a side note for Facebook, the different reactions are weighted differently. While it's hard to nail down exactly which ones are more valuable at any given time since the algorithm is often changing, the general wisdom seems to be that if you want to add as much value to a post as you can, use the Love, Laugh, Wow, or Care react. Like is significantly less weighted, and while it was heavily endorsed when it first came out (according to The Washington Post) the Angry react actually seems to be a negative thing to have on your posts these days. Again, this is subject to change at a moment's notice, and your reaction is only one part of the formula... but if you want to min-max your engagement to help a creator, keep this in mind; loving is better than liking.

#3: Comment

Commenting is particularly important when it comes to telling the algorithm what you want to see. I've been told that the general rule of thumb is to have at least 5 words in your comments to get the algorithm's attention, but different sites have different takes on this in my experience.

Regardless, when you leave a comment on a post, it can help generate more interaction from other people (especially if your comment creates a discussion). This is particularly true on sites like Facebook and YouTube, where users can talk for hours (or sometimes days), keeping a post at the top of a group page, or drawing in lots of outside viewers who wouldn't have seen the content on their own, but whose friends are engaged in talking about it.

#4: Share

Sharing a post seems like the most obvious way to get it more traction, and it sort of is. Because on the one hand, you are boosting the signal directly by showing it specifically to your audience. And whether you have a hundred friends and family on your social media profiles, or 50K followers who hang on your every word, that is a direct signal boost that can make a big difference.

However, sharing a post is also counted into how popular it is, and how much engagement it's receiving when the algorithm crunches its numbers. So if you see a post someone made, don't just copy and paste it if you can avoid it, because then your new post will be starting from zero. If you share it from the original creator, though, then all subsequent shares will count toward making that original post bigger and more important in the eyes of the algorithm.

That said, if it's just easier for you to share a link to a video, or a new book, or an article in a group, forum, or Discord channel, it's definitely better for you to do that than to do nothing in terms of finding fresh eyes for a creator's work.

#5: Consistency

This is the step that a lot of folks overlook, or don't think about. Because even if you go through all 4 of the previous steps for a post that you saw a creator make, that's a drop in the bucket for us when it comes to actually getting noticed (barring some strange zeitgeist that makes us explode because the right people all performed the right actions at the right time). But as they say in the gym, consistency is what gets results.

So while creators are always grateful for your help, if you want to make a difference then you need to start making these kinds of behaviors a habit. You don't have to do it on every post, or leave some kind of boilerplate commentary on everything a creator you like puts out, but try to regularly boost up those whose work you like. The more often you do it, the more often it gets seen, and the better it looks to the algorithm... and even more importantly, the more other people are going to see it, and get a chance to do the same.

Lastly, I Have a New(ish) Release!

Before I sign off today, I wanted to let folks know that my novel Old Soldiers is getting a re-release with a sexy new cover, and an inclusion of the original short story Heart of The Myrmidon that inspired the whole thing! I'll likely to a more involved blog on that in the near future, but if you're interested (or just want to help me look good to my new publisher), go preorder your copy of Old Soldiers today!

It's definitely worth a read if you haven't checked it out yet!

Support The Literary Mercenary

For folks who just want to do their part to help keep me making more content, please subscribe/follow me in these locations:

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects! You can also check out my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary for free audio dramas!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!