I know I touched on this topic a bit back in this entry, but I want to revisit it again now that I’ve had the better part of a year to explore different platforms.
Right before Christmas the fan on my heatsink died, and I couldn’t find a replacement for it. I had to special order a new heatsink, a new fan, and wait two weeks for them to be delivered. Since the screen on my laptop is broken, and my desktop was dead–I was officially computer-less.
So I turned to the last option I had left–my phone. Just the two of us, out there in no computer-land.
Now, browsing the internet on a phone is an okay thing, provided it’s done in small amounts. If you want to write on it, you’re out of luck. Trust me, I tried. I tried several times, but it just didn’t work. And drawing? Well, typically I’d say forget it, but I have a Galaxy Note, and drawing is totally feasible on one… but I wasn’t inspired to draw at all for those two weeks. So, in a fit of… I dunno… curiosity, boredom–maybe both–I decided to set up an Instagram account.
[I’m poking fun at myself, because my first post was of cheese. I like cheese.]
I originally stayed far away from Instagram because of the failure that was my Twitter [More on that in a bit] and because it’s a visual medium. I didn’t think it was a good fit–until the computer died. Then I thought, “Hey, light novels have pictures. I have a lot of images of my characters, actually. Maybe this could work…”
Within fourteen days of starting my account, I have tripled my monthly sales, and all I did was post some pictures–sketches, some previously unseen completed artwork, some pics of stuff from my day-to-day life–a random smattering of things. I don’t even have that many followers. I really regret not utilizing it sooner. Something I was neglecting to take into account is that people are highly visual these days, and they are often browsing social media quickly between tasks. You only have a small window to capture their attention–and as the saying goes, pictures are worth a thousand words.
Authors–self and traditionally published ones alike–have to do their own promotion nowadays. For new or aspiring writers, this can be a tough task! It is difficult to sell yourself and your work, but having the right platform to do it through can make all the difference. This is what I have gathered from my personal experience with Social Media:
-Facebook-
Age of Account: 1 year+
Pros:
- Large, diverse audience
- Your page can be “suggested” based on other things people have liked [it’s like a free targeted ad]
- Ads are cheap
- You can schedule status updates
Cons:
- Sometimes smaller pages and posts get lost if you don’t tune your page settings
- Audience tends to be older
- After a certain amount of free “reach”, you have to pay to stay in people’s newsfeeds
- When posting links, preview pics seem to be pulled at random
-Twitter-
Age of Account: 1 year+
Pros:
- Large, diverse audience
- Able to post images
Cons:
- Difficult to gain followers
- Unless you post often you are lost in the crowd
- Hashtags eat into your character limit
- If your posts don’t fall under “trending” tags, then they are rarely seen
- Pictures use up a portion of your character limit
- Cannot schedule tweets unless you pay
- Character limit
-Tumblr-
Age of Account: 7 months
Pros:
- Highly visual
- Younger audience
- Able to categorize posts with hashtags
Cons:
- User base has infamous reputation
- Hashtags are abused
- People heart and reblog, but don’t really interact with or comment on your stuff
- Difficult to build a following
-Instagram-
Age of Account: 2 Weeks
Pros:
- Extremely visual
- Easy to use app
- Hashtags actually bring people to your work
- Ads work just like on Facebook [same parent company]
- Small image size [keeps image theft down]
Cons:
- Only able to update through a phone
- Random tags from spammers
- So. Much. Random. Porn.
- Small image size [Hard to show large-scale artwork]
In conclusion, if I was forced to choose only two social media accounts, then I would pick Facebook, followed by Instagram. The others have [sadly] been useless in driving people to my work, or even encouraging people to engage with me. Those two outlets, combined with this blog and the natural mysterious powers of Amazon, have been the driving force behind my sales. For standard authors, I don’t think Instagram would be as useful, but because light novels are visual it works to my advantage. But this is just my opinion/experience. I know of many authors that have gained traction and sales on Twitter, but had poor luck on Facebook. Your mileage may vary.
