In short, take control of your social media so that you are plugged-in for the things you want to be plugged into. Focus your attention on the things that serve your needs, and that you enjoy, instead of just letting everything overwhelm you all the time. Curate your feed, and start pulling the reins.
Trust me, it's better for you, but it's also better for the creators out there that you're trying to stay connected to.
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| There is a speed you can have between 0 and 60. |
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!
You Are In Control (And Creators Need You To Use That Control)
I've said this before, but I'm going to keep saying it because it's important. Creators of all stripes (artists, authors, filmmakers, and so on) need an active, engaged audience in order for us to keep making things, and to earn enough money at the end of the month to pay our bills. And for smaller creators who don't have the backing of massive corporations, or huge budgets to jet set to big cons, or buy up advertising space, social media is our lifeline to our audience. The deck is thoroughly stacked against us as it is, and we need your help to pull us up out of the muck and mire.
It's our job to make art, tell stories, and offer you things you enjoy... but we are down at the base of the wall, stuck in quicksand, reaching up to you. We cannot grab the wall and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. We need you at the top of the wall to reach down to us, or offer us a rope, so that we have some way to get traction and move forward.
But a lot of folks out there mistake just clapping their hands and cheering with actually throwing out a lifeline... they aren't the same thing.
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| Let's see if I can make it clearer... |
Let me belabor this metaphor a bit, because it is imperative that folks understand this setup.
So, you have your creators who are slowly being swallowed by quicksand at the base of a wall. They're scrabbling at the wall, trying to find a handhold to at least keep their heads above water, even if it isn't possible to haul themselves out of the quicksand entirely. At the top of the wall we have everyone in our potential audience. They're looking down at us. Some of the folks on top of that wall are cheering us on, trying to encourage us to keep going, and not to give up. They're sure we're going to make it! The problem is that for all that shouting, we literally cannot get out of this quicksand on our own.
Worse, there are some people on top of the wall with long poles that are actively trying to smack our hands, to poke us in the eye, and to shove us back down into the mire. Some of them just don't want us to get out. Some of them dislike us personally. Some of them just do it because they're in a bad mood, or they want to lash out. But unless there are people on top of that wall who put in the effort to lower a rope so we can grab on, we're going to drown sooner or later.
For the purposes of this metaphor, the stick-wielders are all the trolls that creatives have to deal with on a daily basis. They're the people who report our posts because they don't like them, the people who try to get YouTube to take down our videos, and the people who pirate our work. They're the people who, instead of trying to help, or just being neutral, put in their efforts to actively hinder us and make what we're doing even harder.
Authors who have advertising budgets and big corporations? They have a powered winch at the top of the wall to haul them up. Yes, they still have to write the book, draw the comic, make the video, etc., but they are being buoyed up by a force that is far stronger than the average trolls and naysayers can do anything to really hinder. A few slings and arrows might hit home, but the creators are going to climb enough that they aren't in any danger of falling back down into the quicksand as long as they have that financial backing.
The rest of us? Well, we need you all on the top of the wall to help pull us up. And the more of you we have helping, the less effort any of you need to put in individually.
But the key part of this is that you need to be purposeful and deliberate with your actions online. Just wanting us to succeed and sending good vibes isn't enough... we need actions to move the needle.
Moving With Purpose
A lot of folks use social media passively. They doomscroll, throw out a like when they see something that catches their eye, watch a video that looks interesting, but they skim along the surface. Put another way, if you were riding a horse you're in the saddle, and you're holding the reins, but you're mostly just letting the horse go wherever the hell it feels like going.
The more deliberate the actions you take, the more that horse is going to go where you want it to go.
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| Tweak the parameters, and you get far better stuff. |
The algorithm pays attention to the things you interact with, and the rules you set. So if you don't want to see posts from certain individuals, you block them (I am telling you this now, leaving people, pages, etc., you don't want to see unblocked just invites them back into your feed... block them, and get yourself peace of mind). The more things you block off, the less clutter you'll see in your recommendations on Facebook, YouTube, etc. If you enjoy the content you find on a particular page, though, then join that group, follow the page, subscribe to that creator. Don't just tell yourself you'll remember, because you won't. More importantly, though, subscribing to something helps that group, that creator, that page get noticed by more people.
Taking action is the currency of social media, both positive and negative. If you see a video, a post, etc. that you like, sure, you can leave a like on it... but taking an extra step can have a much bigger impact. For example, if you leave a comment of at least 7 words, that boost the signal, making it more likely to be seen by more people. If you share from the original creator, that does far more to boost the post than if you just re-shared the original link on your own timeline, because shares are one of the metrics that the algorithm counts toward how much attention it should give a specific post.
Put another way, 25 people sharing a post about an author's new book from that author's page is weighed much more heavily than 25 people copying the link to the book, and making individual posts about it on their own pages.
And if you actually bought a book, or another piece of merch from a creator you like? Go the extra mile! Leave a rating and review on the platform you bought it from, because the products with the biggest numbers of ratings and reviews are the ones the algorithm pushes out, and advertises to other people.
Deliberate effort from an engaged audience is the fuel that makes an artist's career go forward.
With all of that said, if you need to take a break from social media, you should do that. However, take a moment to ask what it is you're taking a break from... because it's possible that just cleaning up the mess and replacing the things you don't like with things you do like will do wonders for how you engage with these information engines.
And if you have creators you want to succeed (again, whether it's me or someone else) we all need you to be active, engaged, and deliberate if you want to help us. The problem is that a lot of people think that cheering from the top of the wall is helping, while in reality you're just letting creators drown.
Toss us a line. Even if it's small, and you aren't strong enough to pull us up all by your lonesome, the more lines a creator has, the more people will notice, and the more people will throw out their own lines in order to help us keep breathing so we can keep creating.
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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!
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