Much of modern business conducted online today is connected to social media of various types. It has proven a highly-useful thing in both the realms of promotion and consumer feedback and (nearly) everyone can acknowledge that socially-shared links, recommendations and ads have ridden roughshod over the old standbys of phone books, mailers and newspapers. But, when do all the social media inlets and outlets become too much of a time hog?
For the many folks that run their online businesses themselves (and on a budget) there is only so much free time in the day to update profiles, read posts, type comments, share videos, post blogs, find links, share links, look at new pages, try out new platforms and ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ new groups/pages/stuff/things/etc.
Many writers figure into that burgeoning, entrepreneurial group with the rather underwhelming title of “Self Employed.” For some strange reason outside folks assume that we do not keep track of our time, let alone regard it with value… but we do. Anywhere from thirty to one-hundred times a day I get invites to check out a new online self-publishing platform, author’s page, forum, selling platform, book-review hub, book-trashing group, device community, business group, publishing discussion, live meeting, new product, op-ed piece and on and on and on. Most of these various invitations are simply deleted; I have barely enough time–in between my various daily obligations and nightly writing demands—to even check out the links provided. All in all, I spend an average of 30 minutes a day simply deleting unwanted messages of various types, mostly connected to social media. That’s over 180 hours a year.
The way these invites/requests/recommendations are delivered matters a great deal in whether or not they are clicked on at all in my precious free time: emailed links are never looked at–and always deleted–which is the main reason why I don’t spam my fellow writers’ email addresses with requests of my own. Time Requests purveyed through folks I’ve voluntarily connected with on trusted sites—such as LinkedIN, Facebook, Twitter and Scribd—outweigh all others as far as ‘validity’ is concerned.
However, as the number of industry contacts I’ve gathered soars past 2,000 the number of requests becomes harder and harder to keep up with. The sheer number of articles I’m requested to read by fellow writers is daunting, despite knowing how worthy of reading many of them are. Sorting through them I pick out the most relevant to the subjects I’m interested in and delete the rest, an action which makes me feel rather guilty about sending out my own announcements/reading requests.
Some social media sites, apps & platforms saw the glut-of-things-to-update-online coming and allow an individual to input data once for several sites, like Scribd; this particular site updates six different social media sites for us and also harbors free items, which explains its relatively high traffic numbers.
Platforms are a different matter altogether. In order to sell our eBooks my husband and I regularly check and update a variety of eBook-selling/self-publishing platforms, but not as many that we used to. Only a few have managed to both attract a sufficient number of new customers and keep them coming back for more. New selling/publishing platforms get belated attention (if any) and usually only if one of our fellow authors recommends we try it out. The same goes for the glut of writer/eBook groups we’re invited to join, but turn down; there’s just not enough time to read and contribute to all of the one’s we like to be a part of.
Now, if only there was a group/platform/hub called ‘A Million Folks Buying eBooks; Please Sell To Us’. That’s an invite I’d accept.
