The Introverted Writer During the Age of Social Media

Fact:

Platforms like Amazon's KDP has made it easy for anyone to self-publish.

However, self-publishing goes hand in hand with the M word.

Marketing.

The responsibility of garnering attention for a new book has become the responsibility of the indie writer.

Enter social media.

And blogging.

There are plenty of debates on how relevant it is for writers to build a platform vs. devoting more time to the craft. 

Personally, I prefer to be on a beach somewhere writing. (Or watching Walking Dead.)

Really, social media confounds me a bit.  I have so much to do already.  I work a 9-5, have a two hour daily commute, and have to do other stuff like bathe, eat, procrastinate on working out - finding more time to read about other people doing stuff seems . . .

Well I don't want to be rude.  If you're reading this, you're taking time out of your very important life to read my blathering.

In 'real' life I'm not overly chatty.  Given a choice, I'd much rather be reading a good action novel than striking up a conversation. 

So what does the slightly introverted writer or person do in the age of social media?

Da, da, da, daaaaaaa -

Here's some ideas for posting on facebook, or a blog or twitter or whatever-- -

1. Take pics of your town or city.  Nothing too fancy.  Maybe post them with a motivational quote.  Folks love those.

I'm going to do this one, from time to time.   I'm a born and bred New Yorker.  There's ton of stuff I can take pics of.  In fact this one here is a pic of the steeple of St. Andrew's church from my office window.  (this is the church that many of the relief workers during 9/11 found sanctuary in)

2.  Dust off an old short story and post it in installments

3.  Find other interesting blog posts and write a brief commentary linking back to the original article

4.  Post pics or video of your pet.  I just heard on NPR (yes I listen to NPR) that there's an annual cat video convention.  Yes, they only show cat videos

Pick one or a few, load em up in one of those auto-poster things like hootsuite, and its done.  The only thing is you have to make an effort to go comment on other people's stuff.

The key for all of the above is to inject a little bit of your personality into every post.  That's the real reason people are stopping by, to check you out. 

Then go back to writing about werewolves.