We recently came upon this quote in a teaser for a blog post on Digital Book World.
“According to the marketers, it’s easier for authors to develop followings on already established social platforms and they shouldn’t waste much effort maintaining a website.”
Since we create and maintain websites for a number of authors, this did get our attention!
To musicians who relied solely on MySpace to promote their band efforts, we might ask ‘How is it going over there?‘ or we could ask anyone trying to promote their efforts on other failing Social Media the same question.
Any social media platform is based on the business model of generating enough views to sell targeted advertising. Social media is not there to help you, and while you are using it for your purposes, they are using YOU for their purposes.
They can change their terms of use any time, they can block you and they can fail.
And while it’s OK to be social on social media, it is still a no-no to actually push your particular product too much. It’s an indistinct line, but you’ll know when you cross it.
On the other hand, it is perfectly alright to boast and shout about how great your book or music is on your OWN domain. And, its also OK to have nice big BUY NOW buttons there as well. And then add some more!
In our work with authors, artists & musicians we stress the importance of social media as part of a campaign effort that always includes YOU being the master of your domain. A domain can be your name, or if you are an author it can be your protagonist or pseudonym. We believe that any commercial concern has to have their own personal marker on the internet, totally under their control and not subject to the whims of the owners of the giant social media platforms.
We also believe that the website attached to that domain name is important. It is possible to not “waste much effort maintaining a website” but we have seen it is a good thing to develop a routine amount of posting on your own website and then use social media to maximize the return of those efforts.
From here, it looks like Digital Book World is doing just that.