Social media is not my thing. I am sure you have all picked up on that by now. I just want to write. I would rather not spend my time and energy on building and maintaining a social media presence. But, it is a necessity to support my writing aspirations. So, I have been seeking a balance that works for me, knowing very well I will never be as successful as those who master social media and also knowing, if I tried, I would quickly burn out.
That said, social media consumed much of my time the past couple weeks. I kept telling myself that if I could just get it sorted out, then it would be done and I could move on. Of course, that isn’t the case. It will never be done. I will always need to keep engaging. There is always something to improve. But, I needed to tell myself that if I could just set a good foundation, it would be on auto-pilot for a while.
There is so much to decide, so much to consider about how I am engaging and connecting with others, how I am presenting myself. I immediately began to over-analyze and question everything.
Should my Facebook page be titled after my blog or with my name? Should my posts be all about writing or should it be an eclectic mix of the different topics I cover when I write? Should I change the design of my blog? Am I damaging my image by not having a custom domain? I even began contemplating mailing lists!
There was much over-thinking, indecision, and polling of family and friends. I am grateful for the valuable feedback I was offered, but the opinions were split and, ultimately, these were decisions I had to make.
There were two realizations that allowed me to make some progress. First, nothing I decide now needs to be final. It is not a big deal if I change my mind and readjust in the future. Second, my reason for doing it all is to promote myself as a writer. I am not trying to promote my blog. My blogs are truly old school weblog style – I am posting an online journal of my thoughts, nothing more. They are an outlet but not my product.
With that in mind, I got many (non-writing) things accomplished:
- I redesigned the layout of my blog. This started as a very basic, single page, blog but I now need it to serve as a portfolio of sorts, as well. To accommodate this, and keep it uncluttered, I removed the sidebar and created new pages: Bio, Published, and Works-in-Progress. I also added a contact form and even went ahead and added a mailing list form (though I am not yet going to be drafting any newsletters). Social media links were created for both the footer and the navbar and (I am quite proud of this) I enabled the navbar to float. I have picked up some basic HTML through the years, but I really had to dive into the code to get that to work.
- I improved my bio. My bio is a reader’s first glimpse of who I am and what else I have to offer. So, I spent some time attempting to craft a better bio in hopes of getting more readers to click through and connect with me further.
- I submitted a name change request for my Facebook page. This was one of the hardest decisions. I originally named it I May Never Write A Book but it seemed clear that I should be promoting myself as a writer and not this blog which is merely an outlet. I went through several ideas of how to use my name; Elizabeth Joyce {Writer} was what I settled on, only to find out it is not allowed. Also not allowed were: Elizabeth Joyce [Writer] and Elizabeth Joyce (Writer). I thought Elizabeth Joyce - Writer looked like a hyphenated surname and I never had a good feeling about Elizabeth Joyce, Writer. So, I ended up with Writer Elizabeth Joyce, which was one of my first favs but had been eliminated.
- I created a Facebook group. This was not something I was expecting to do. One of the things I liked about having my Facebook page called I May Never Write A Book was that I hoped it would appeal to fellow writers who would follow along and, hopefully, find some encouragement and enjoy the commiseration. I didn’t want to give that up, but gearing my page towards fellow writers served to limit interest from non-writers, readers who just happened to click through to my page. One morning, it came to me – I should have a group for writers connected to my page. With that, it all fell into place and I felt like I was making the right decision to change the Facebook page name. (Wish me luck with admining a group, though!)
All of this will continue to evolve as I continue on this adventure; I am still barely launched. You’ll notice I have not addressed all the nagging questions yet, either. But I am glad to feel like the foundation is set. I can move on, at least for a while, and focus again on writing.