Writing & Promoting While On Overload

Whether I am experiencing life at a slow or fast pace, I often feel like I am on social media overload. It is great that there are so many social media platforms to meet my social and self-publishing, self-marketing needs. But while trying to decide which ones best suit my needs, it has been overwhelming at times.

Before publishing my book last summer, I mainly used email, texting, Snapchat, and Facebook. For my day job, I used LinkedIn; however, I did not post much on it. Once my book was published, I started to view platforms, and interacting on them, differently. So now, I was not simply looking at them as a way to interact with family and friends or to shop from artists and creatives, I was also viewing them in relation to promoting my book and myself as a new author.

In the beginning and for several months, I posted on Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as newly opened accounts like Goodreads, Amazon Author Central, and a Facebook author page. I also gave this account which I am blogging on – my website – a facelift. Slowly, over the past few months, as hubs and I are getting closer to our transition from city life to country living, I have let go of a few of these platforms, as yet more social media opportunities have opened up for me, such as the Indie Texas (Indie Author Project) and Bookshop.org.

Today, I focus mainly on Instagram, my website (this account), and my Facebook author page, while simply updating those related to my book – as needed. Occasionally, I may share a blog post to Twitter and LinkedIn, but have found that I am stretched too thin, creatively, if I do more than that. Still, I hear of more platforms, such as Reddit, Tumblr, and YouTube, that I could be posting on to get my book into the wider community.

There are apps which allow a person to make one post shareable to several platforms at different times. However, I am currently so extended with our upcoming move and my day job that my brain cannot wrap itself around one more thing to do, even if it saves me more time somewhere along the way. I believe that once life slows down a bit, I will have time to learn these apps and to better promote my current book and future ones in ways I cannot do at this moment. For now, I will continue to focus on what I can, and to do the best that I can at each one.

Before I close this post off, let me leave you with the idea that whatever social media platforms you choose to use that they should work for you not the other way around. Any platform you use should make life easier for you and should serve the purpose you need. For me, a writer with a passion to express herself in the written word to the wider community, I have found that this website, Instagram, my Facebook author page, and perhaps, my bookshop.org author page are what is currently working for me.

Are you using the right platform for yourself? Are you using too many? Do you have time to learn about ways to make one post available on several platforms? It is my hopes to share in my next post (the fourth Sunday of the month) how we can use our time more wisely in the social media world, so that we can go from overload to confident blogger, self-marketer, and whatever the future holds for us. In the meantime, keep posting, keep sharing, and keep smiling.

As always, I encourage you to check out my book, “HONOR ONE ANOTHER: The ABCs of Embracing Our Spirit Within.” It’s a nonfiction, inspirational, easy-to-read, feel-good kind of book and makes a great gift for anyone.

You can find it on my Books page, by visiting my Amazon author page, Barnes & Noble, or Bookshop.org.

If you read it, please take time to leave me a review, donate a copy to your local library, and even place a copy in a “little free library.” Please let me know if you do at honeysucklepublishingllc@yahoo.com, as I am tracking getting my book into as many libraries and “little free libraries” as possible.

Thank you and have a blessed day.