Why I’m Scaling Back on Social Media and Getting Back to Blogging

Social media is key to selling loads of books. That’s what people say and they’re probably right but… Urgh. It’s a pain, and in my experience, it’s not been all that profitable.

I have social media accounts all over the place: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, TikTok, Instagram, you name it, but I’m not entirely convinced these have been responsible for most of my book sales.

Why would they be? Most of my engagement on social media comes from posting trivialities about what’s on my fridge while trying to sift through myriad arguements about politics (something I’m careful to avoid getting involved in from one corner of the internet to the next).

I know, I know. I’m doing it wrong. Maybe so. All I know is I used to reach more of the people I really wanted to when I kept this blog up to date every week.

So, I’m making some changes.

I can’t get rid of social media, not if I want to sell any books but I am going to change how I use it.

I’ll still respond to my non-spammy messages, link my blog posts and perhaps drop the occasional tweet but I’m going to concentrate the strength of the things I want to say, be it about writing or any other subject, here on my blog and go back to using social media primarily to promote myself there. I’ll keep my hand in enough to keep it ticking over, and you’ll still be able to contact me that way if you want to, but I’m done with endless doom scrolling, frantically checking notifications or trying to come up with replacement words in movie titles in the vain hope it might clock up a few likes.

Life’s too short for any of that. From now on, all my writerly updates, random thoughts, book reviews, dad jokes, culinary triumphs, and whatever other rubbish I post on social media are going to be happening right here where they belong and will be getting shared via social media so anyone who actually wants to read them, can.