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.

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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!

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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!

 

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Use Text Posts and Comments To Avoid Getting Your Self-Promotion Labeled as Spam

Creative professionals of all stripes are told that if they want to be successful then they have to get out there, and get themselves noticed. Post up fliers, attend events, shake hands, pass out cards, get reviews... whatever it takes to get your name, and your work, in front of people's eyeballs. And, since we live in the Age of the Internet, this means there are a lot of authors out there who are trying to leverage a following on social media as a way to get their work noticed.

However, there's a Catch-22 when it comes to posting on social media sites. Because on forums, Facebook groups, and other online gathering places where people talk about books, blogs, and other creative projects, no one wants to hear you talk about your work; the second you do, you tend to get labeled as a spammer, and either have your posts removed, or limited. If someone else shared a post about your latest release, that would be fine and good... of course, if you had other people boosting your signal, then you wouldn't need to promote yourself in the first place!

So people are pissed at the messenger, not the message?

This attitude of, "if you're talking about yourself, then you are a spammer," is one of the most common things online. Even if the piece you're sharing is relevant to the group's interests, even if it's free (like a blog, a story sample, etc.), you'll still get tagged for bigging-up your own signal.

However, there are still ways you can draw attention to yourself, while avoiding much of this criticism. It requires being a bit crafty, though.

Links, Texts, and Comments

Let's take Reddit as an example, though you can translate this advice to practically any social media platform. You login, and decide you want to make some posts to let interested communities know about your latest book release. So you go to the subreddit for fantasy, sci-fi, noir, or whatever genre you're writing in, and post a link to a free sample.

Now, it's possible you'll get a hundred up votes, and a slew of people telling you how awesome your book sounds. What's more likely is that your post will be up for all of 10 minutes before a moderator takes it down, and chastises you for using their group for self-promotion. Even though what you're promoting is clearly in their wheelhouse, and free to anyone who wants to take a look at it.

And... BANHAMMER!

So what do you do? You want to get eyes on your work, and these groups have thousands (sometimes millions) of members... one lucky break there could be the start of a career landslide. But you can't do anything if every time you put up a link it gets hammered down where no one will see it.

That's where text posts and comments come in.

You see, instead of just dropping a link and moving on (something that requires no effort, and gives very little context), you can instead make a text post. This post opens discussion, and gives a fuller explanation of what it is you want to say. All you have to do is find a place in the text to add your link so that people who are interested in what you have to say will follow it.

Sometimes, though, you don't have time for that. You just want to hop on someone else's coattails, and get a free ride (or as free as such things can be on the Internet). When that happens you need to scroll through the subreddits, and look for popular topics. Places where people are discussing something, asking questions, or giving advice. What you need to do is swoop in, give an answer that is eye-catching and noticeable, and include a link to a blog post you've written, a book you published, etc. that fits into the context of the discussion in question.

Both of these options have their pros and cons. Text posts take more time, and you're starting a conversation, but if someone clicks in to see what all the fuss is about then you are always on center stage. However, text posts might be shut down, too, if you are too blatantly pushing your own content as the sole thing you're offering. Comments, on the other hand, tend to be much more open about links. As long as you contributed something in the comment other than your link, you'll typically be okay. However, comments are more difficult to get noticed, so the topic you're leaving the comment on needs to be something that's getting a lot of attention, and a lot of engagement.

Becoming Part of The Community

The whole thing about how no one wants you promoting your stuff in their community has one caveat to it... if you're recognized as a member of the community, you can get away with it.

So... huh?

The basic idea is that you don't want strangers just coming in, posting their promo, and leaving. However, if you know someone, they're familiar to the community, and they make posts/leave comments on the regular, then they aren't strangers. They're part of the community, so of course you're going to be more lax about them posting about their new book, or blog post, or YouTube video, or whatever. Because that's Geoff, and we all know him round these parts.

The key is that you have to get your foot in the door by proving you're valuable to the community. That you have good insights, that you talk about things other than yourself, and that you're trying to answer questions, contribute to conversations, etc. The longer you do that (even if you're slipping in self-promo along with your posts, like a spoonful of sugar to get the medicine to go down), the easier it is to avoid someone simply tarring you with the spammer label.

Mileage will vary, of course, but if you can't batter down the gates then it might be time to pack your message into a wooden horse, and see if they'll pull you inside of their own volition.

That's all for this week's Business of Writing post. Hopefully it helps some folks out there who are tired of making futile charges, and want some way to get over those gates. If you'd like to support me and my work, head on over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page, and toss a little change in my jar. $1 a month is all I ask, and everyone who contributes at least that much gets a free book! Lastly, if you want to keep up with all my latest updates, then follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.

Like and Share This Post

Most people think that authors are literary rock stars. They sit in their posh studios writing down made up stories, and when they're done cashing their million dollar checks they take vacations to go to book signing events or conventions to rub elbows with the unwashed masses.

It's not like that. It's more like this.

We who are about to write, salute you!

In the coliseum of modern entertainment, authors have become the new gladiators. We create a personal experience, a unique brand, and in many cases a persona just to get noticed. We practice, sharpen, and edit ourselves until we reach the peak of our game. We are not there to perform for the publishers, the Caesar who sits above the game and decides yay or nay on whether we publish or perish. We are there to perform for you. The Mob.

The Truth of the Metaphor

It's a little sad, but it's true. As I said in this post, publishers are not interested in art. They're not interested, by and large, in literary merit. They don't really care if the books they publish are going to remembered for years to come as the books that set the standard of the age. What publishers care about is whether or not they sell books. As with the gladiators of old, the arena masters care about how well their staff of authors plays with the crowd. The louder the crowd roars, the more support they throw behind a particular author, the longer and more fruitful that author's career will be on the bloody sands of the bestseller lists.

So if you want to see an author succeed, you need to raise your voice and make sure those on high can hear you loud and clear.

How to Support Your Favorites

Now that your illusions about how easy your favorite artists have it has been irrevocably shattered, you might start to worry. After all if the audience goes silent then it doesn't matter how long the gladiator in question has been the champion; the blade's coming down. Unless you and all your fellow fans start making yourselves heard, that is.

The best way to do that is of course to buy books. Publishers notice when people buy books, and they make sure to do more promotion for authors who's books fly off the shelves. Unfortunately money is not an easy-to-come-by commodity, no matter how big of a fan someone is. Fortunately you can raise a ruckus even if your pocket book is a little on the lighter side.

The next best thing you can do is to help promote authors you like. For instance, if someone wanted to help promote me, I would ask them to follow my blog here, and to drop by my author Facebook page, to follow me on Tumblr, and to drop by my Goodreads page to see what books I have available. I would also ask my readers to leave reviews of the books they'd read, and to help me signal boost posts about my work. Sometimes all it takes is for one person to start the wave for the rest of the bleachers to join in, and that will catch everyone's attention.

Is That All it Takes?

Yes and no. If an author writes a novel that is a smash hit, but doesn't do anything else (the literary equivalent of pop music's one-hit-wonders) then that one splash in the pond is going to stagnate pretty quickly. The same is true of an author's fan base. Someone who writers a book review that goes viral has done a great service for that author in the short-term. But the wheels turn on constant awareness. Authors have to keep writing, and fans have to keep talking them up.

Lastly, remember this. Cheers are contagious, especially in crowds. The louder you cheer, the more interested your fellow mob-members are going to be. Pretty soon they're going to be cheering right alongside you.