We’ve all been there.

We pummel and pummel and pummel, but nothing seems to work.

How can we become more effective at promoting our work?

There is no magic bullet, but I’m going to give you at least a few ideas.

There’s plenty more that could be said, but maybe next time!

Do you have any good ideas yourself?

Please leave your thoughts below, in the comment section.

Also, feel free to email the Managing Editor at any time: wallacerunnymede @ gmail.com (minus the spaces!)

Old Guard & New Guard

Old school, well established social media outlets include Instagram for photos, Youtube for videos, Patreon for patronage relationships and pledges; as well as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Tumblr.

(NB: Google Plus is going to be phased out soon. It’s a very effective tool, so catch it while you can! If you can post 10 to 20 articles a day, and include a substantial proportion of the article in your post, you’d be amazed the good it can do! Maybe set up more than one account as well…)

New outlets include those that offer you the potential to receive financial rewards, such as Minds and Steemit; free speech outlets like Gab and Worldie; alternative video, such as Bitchute. (Worldie has multimedia too. It’s branded as an ‘All-In-One Social Media’ outlet).

The old school social media outlets are great becaues they offer you a vast, vast audience. On the other hand, constant accusations of bias and censorship plague a lot of the traditional social media outlets. Some people even want to boycott them. Ultimately, you can decide what you want to do, and where you want to promote your work; this is just a quick summary of existing debates around these outlets.

The more newfangled social media outlets are less plagued by accusations of bias. The downside is that some of them attract the wrong kind of people. I haven’t conducted an in-depth scientific analysis, but my impression from past experience is that this is a big problem on Gab, but doesn’t really seem to affect Worldie. So I am not trying to say all new outlets are the same. I’m not trying to suggest any of the new outlets are intrinsically bad; I strongly believe there’s a difference between marketing yourself as a bad outlet, and simply attracting the wrong kind of people. It’s human nature that if Holocaust denialists, antisemites, racists, gay-haters, eugenicists and other disreputable figures get driven off mainstream outlets, they are going to look for somewhere else.

That said, perhaps having a frog as a mascot is not ideal. Should Gab get themselves a new avatar, to discourage the huwyte/gnat community from joining?

Ultimately, very few of the newer outlets, if any, are marketed explicitly as being for haters; with the exception of the ill-fated Hatreon, not to be confused with these guys!

But some of them do seem to attract their fair share of haters. Either stick with the free speech social media outlets that don’t seem to have many haters, or join some of the ones which do; but if the latter, be prepared for some ugly company, and some people you wouldn’t particularly relish hanging out with either online or offline.

You just have to use your judgment.

Effective Sharing

‘Less is more’ is a principle that should not be applied in an absolute and rigid manner. However, it is still true that your social media reach can actually improve if you post just right there in that sweet spot between too much and too little.

In order to assist with this, having spare accounts for different purposes or topics can reduce the risk of a spam penalty. E.g. a personal, recreational account, a serious writer’s account, a joint account for projects with friends and colleagues, or whatever.

Also, hashtags can be useful, but moderation in all things; sometimes posting without hashtags is OK, especially because people who use too many hashtags overall, or per post/tweet, or in a short period of time, can all be penalised.

It’s Called SOCIAL Media for a Reason…

You may be considered to be either an automated AI bot or a (more or less!) spammer if too much of your content, or at least too high a proportion of it, is self promotional. You need to share a lot of stuff which isn’t just articles or videos of yours. Also, you need to engage with other people. That doesn’t just mean sharing their posts, although that’s pretty important too. It also means engaging in proper conversations. Not only can this help you gain followers (and please bear in mind that, fortunately, some people have a much lower threshold for following others on social media); in addition, I suspect it may help you get on the right side of the algorithms, as most or all social media outlets are specifically set up to reward behaviour that is genuinely sociable, rather than shallow and narcissistic.

(Oh dear… Well, if that sounds like you, it’s never too late to change!) 😛

Posting periodically throughout the day, instead of going on binges, might help.