Let’s Talk Social Webbies Part 3: Facebook: The DON'Ts

So last week I was all cuddly and covered the Dos of Facebook. It was a good time and I hope I made everyone feel all warm and snuggly. This week, however, I’m going to cover the DONTs. This post is not going to be as feel good because I’m basically going to stand here with a Sunday edition of the L.A. Times and whack people across the face with it.

Anyway let’s get right into the DON’Ts.

#1: Don’t Make It All About Yourself.

This one’s been drummed into our collective heads so many times that this should practically be a Facebook mantra for writers.

But it’s a tough one.

As writers, we spend hours a day crafting our stories and we’re proud when a new book or story of ours comes out. We love seeing ourselves in print and we want to make sure everyone in the universe knows about it. The downside of only posting about us is that it starts to become a drag for your friends and unfortunately when this happens, they start to tune you out.

Yes, your page has become a freeway billboard.

Passers by may glance at it for a second, but they’re already speeding down the road.

So does this mean you should be posting stuff from your other writer pals when they have a new story or book that comes out?

Sure, any little extra attention helps.

Should you post links to news stories, videos, music, and other general interest content.

Yes

Remember, the point of social media is to get personal. Give people small glimpses of what you’re doing on a daily basis: Let people know what you’re watching, reading, listening to and thinking about. This will break up the monotony of your page and draw people into actually viewing your posts.

#2: Don’t be friends with just writers

‘I’m only Facebook to socialize with people I know.’

I get this, some people are only on Facebook to stay in contact with friends who live cross country and who you only get to see once or twice a year, and there are some writers on Facebook for this exact purpose and there’s nothing wrong with that.

But you know as well as I do that most writers aren’t on Facebook to exclusively stay in contact with friends, they want to spread the word about what they’re writing. And, yeah, it’s great when you first jump online and you see that there are so many writers who you admire or who you’re friends with in the real, real world, but chances are they’re on Facebook for the same reason you are. And chances are they want to support your efforts, but they’re going to want to support themselves even more.

So, how do you get out of the writer rut?

The easiest way is to use the Find Friends/Edit Friends option in the account menu. At this page you will be given several search options including hometown, current city, high school, and college.

Now I can tell a lot of you are cringing when I mention this option and I know all the arguments—I don’t want to re-connect with high school/college/work place/home town douche bags and when it comes right down to it, I don’t want to either. But you can filter the douche bags (just like you did in high school, the only difference is they’re not a physical presence) and maybe connect with people who you really liked. I’ve connected with more than a few guys and gals who I went to high school with and guess what? They’re still just as cool as when we were kids.

And, yes, I’ve rejected more than a few douche bags along the way, too. The great thing about social media marketing is it is selective marketing. You approve who you do and don’t want to have as a friend or who you interact with, so it should be relatively easy to weed out the assholes who you didn’t want around before your writing life.

The one thing to remember, though, is you are on social media sites such as Facebook to develop and expand your fanbase and if all you’re doing is chumming around with writer pals, you’re not exactly doing that.

#3 Don’t Create A Fan Page

So you’re thinking about creating a fan page, huh?

Before you do that, you need to ask yourself these 2 questions.

Is my name:

Stephen King

J.K. Rowling

Cormac McCarthy

Michael Connelly

Stephanie Myers

(Insert any mega-selling author after this)

Or

Do I have 5000 friends? (the Facebook maximum number of friends)

If the answer is NO, then you don’t need a fan page.

A couple of years ago more than a few social media mangers were pushing the idea of creating fan pages down every authors throat. But here’s the problem with fan pages, unless people are interacting with the page on a daily basis, fan pages rarely make it into the Facebook news thread, therefore they’re basically invisible.

Now if you’re an organization such as Crimefactory (yes, I want you to be a fan) or Needle Magazine, or Crimespree then your only real option is to create a fanpage if you want a Facebook presence. But once again, if people are not interacting with the page on a daily basis, it won’t appear in the news feed.

(Quick side note, folks. For those individuals who have a fan page and someone requests your friendship through your individual FB account, don’t be that that guy who then immediately posts a link to your fan page to your new friends wall. Seriously, don’t be that guy, because everyone wants to punch that guy in the face really, really, really hard, or delete/block you as a friend)

#4: Don’t Post Too Much

How much is too much?

Honestly, five times a day is about as much as you want to post and that’s pushing it. My personal comfort level is a couple of posts a day and then I leave it alone and respond to those two posts and posts on other people’s pages. Sometimes I get real crazy and put up a third post, but it’s pretty rare.

And what’s wrong with posting too much, you ask?

Well, it’s just like the people who do not adhere to DON’T #1. Yeah, you’re a freeway billboard, you’re white noise. So, before you think about posting that 17^th cheesecake photo of the day or music video or news article and it’s only nine o’clock in the morning, stop yourself and look at the interactions you’re having with each post, because chances are you’ve been tuned out.

(Another quick side note. Here’s probably the biggest DON’T in the posting too much category: DON’T post to FB using Twitter. I know, I know, it’s so much easier to handle your social networking that way, but here’s the deal: Your FB and Twitter followers are going to be virtually identical. Sure, there’ll be some people who are only on Twitter and some who are only on FB, but for the most part, there is going to be a lot of cross over between the two and if the content you’re posting is identical on both sites, people are going to tune you out. So do me this favor, go to the apps section of FB RIGHT NOW and disable Twitter for Facebook)

#5: Be There

I love it when I get a friend request and I accept it and I go the person’s page (and this is author or otherwise) and the only thing posted on the page is that so and so is now friends with you and fifty other people. Now let’s say you go back to that page a month later and guess what? The only new posts are so and so is now friends with fifty other people….

Yeah, kind of lame.

For authors who have this kind of FB page, let me give you a piece of advice…Are you listening? Good…

You don’t have to be on Facebook to be a writer.

You don’t have to be on any social network to be a writer.

Does it make marketing your writing easier?

Sure it does, but if you’re going to take the time (and it does take time) to create a FB page, do something with it other than collecting friends or just delete it, because otherwise, you’re just static.

Okay, I’m sure there are a bunch more DON’Ts I could cover, but for today that’s what I’ve got.

Remember, if you have a DON’T you’d like to share, feel free to add it in the comments section.

Alrighty, so I’ll be back sometime next week to cover my favorite social media (and least effective) platform, Twitter.