There’s a Fine Line Between (Online) Love and Hate
By Guest | June 7, 2015 |
Today’s guests are Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke, authors of Your Perfect Life and, released this month, The Status of All Things. They have been best friends for more than twenty-five years. Liz lives in San Diego with her two children. Lisa, a former talk show producer, lives in Chicago with her husband, daughter and two bonus children.
We’re passionate about the topic of not overexposing yourself online because as authors we run the risk of doing it every day! Plus, our forthcoming novel The Status of All Things delves into the issue of being obsessed with social media.
Connect with Liz and Lisa on their blog, on Facebook, and on Twitter.
There’s a Fine Line Between (Online) Love and Hate
We’re not going to lie. Our road to publishing was hard fought and well-documented, and because of that, we have a lot of people rooting for us. And those same people love that we painstakingly chronicle our journey in posts, pics and emojis. They like, they comment, they share until their fingers fall off.
Until they don’t.
There’s a very fine line between announcing and bragging. Between keeping people in the loop and annoying them. Between trying to get your book off the ground and begging your Facebook friends to buy it. Believe us when we say, we get it. We understand how hard it is to launch a novel. But we’d like to believe it can be done without pissing off our third cousin once removed that we met one time at a family reunion.
Not oversaturating your Facebook feeds has been on our minds as we launch our second book, 
especially because it tackles the issue of the obsession many people have with social media. We each have well over 1k “friends” and sure, we hope that they’ll click on that pre-order link. But how do we tell them we want them to buy it without making them roll their eyes? How do we decide which part of our professional lives to share because our kids’ teachers might not find those selfies we take with the audience at a book event as charming as we do? It’s not that our online friends aren’t happy for us or don’t want us to succeed—they just might not want their feeds full of our self-serving propaganda.
Our solution? Live a double life. Well, kind of.
We separate our personal and private social media profiles. On Facebook, this gives us the ability to separate the types of things we share. Our moms or our children’s caregivers will probably want to see the pictures of our kids at last weekend’s soccer tournament and those who have liked our Liz and Lisa page on Facebook will probably get a lot more out of the InstaQuotes we’ve pulled from our upcoming book.
We also each have an Instagram that is private and we have created a joint profile that is public. This way, just like with Facebook, our friends and family can choose to follow pictures of our writing journey. Now we can indulge in and post as many book tour selfies as we please without worrying that we might be coming across as obnoxious. The people who decided to follow us knew what they were getting into when they clicked that button!
And yes, we know there are downsides. When you have multiple social media profiles, it means you have to make time to manage all of them. But we don’t mind—in fact we (not so) secretly love it. Plus, our friends and followers aren’t expecting any more than we give them. It’s up to us how much to post.
[pullquote]So does this separation of church and state mean we never post “writerly” things to our personal pages? Absolutely not. But when we do, we give the CliffsNotes version of whatever is going on. [/pullquote]We know it’s an uphill battle, especially now that Facebook has gotten so greedy and insists you pay if you want more than three people to see your links and pictures. But if you choose your content thoughtfully and provoke engagement, you can side step it a bit. (There are several articles on Facebook algorithms and how to do this). But also keep in mind that your writing is a business, and you will need to invest in it. Even if that means giving your credit card number to the “evil empire.”
So does this separation of church and state mean we never post “writerly” things to our personal pages? Absolutely not. But when we do, we give the CliffsNotes version of whatever is going on. Book cover reveal? Hell yeah, we posted it! The finished copies of our novel arrived and we took a photo with the UPS guy? #Duh Featured in the June 2015 issue of Cosmopolitan? Of course! But we are very careful to keep these announcements to a minimum because the last thing we want to do is to cause the people who have known us since we wore high-waisted jeans and shoulder pads to grow tired of us.
But this social media tight wire walk is by no means a science. We’re sure that we are still overwhelming some with our meant-to-be-ironic-pouty-selfies and we know some people will think, Okay we get it, you wrote a book, now shut your pie holes. But hopefully, our cheerleading squad (led by both of our moms!) will drown them out.
We all walk a tight wire. How do you walk the line between writerly and personal? Between announcing and bragging? Where’s your line?
Many thanks to today’s guest.
You can read more WU guest posts by visiting this link.
Hi Liz and Lisa, congrats on the new title! I think your most important takeaway here is WHY you are doing these things. We cannot “make” people buy our books, pure and simple. Our friends deserve multiple opportunities to hear about the book (since we can’t control what they see) so they can see if they are attracted to it or not, but we have no control over the rest.
But I’ve heard this oversharing argument before, and always from writer moms with young kids, so I want to share my perspective as an empty nester. I am stealing the spotlight from no one when sharing my excitement about something good happening in my life—and since my life is more and more writing related these days, that something will probably be about writing and its related activities. And if I share these things on my personal page, I expect that 1) my large cache of writing friends will be thrilled, knowing what it must mean to me; 2) my non-writing friends will gain a fascinating look into the trials and joys of being a writer, trusting that once the launch is over their feeds will calm; and 3) disinterested family members can scroll past, thinking, “Oh there’s Kathryn doing her Kathryn thing again.”
If you are sharing to spread excitement that you can no longer contain in your heart, I say the world needs more evidence of such passion. If you are persisting despite the odds, I say the world needs more examples of such drive. (If you are boring everyone with your word count, stop it.) Writers have the chance to enliven feeds with writerly perceptions on a daily basis. And I don’t think it’s bad at all for a mom to share as many accomplishments for herself as she would for a beloved child.
Again, it come down to why you are posting. I am posting in gratitude to the venues and book clubs who hosted me, my friends who support me, and all those who may be interested in the life I lead. I learned long ago not to predetermine who will enjoy what I have to say. I plan to say it anyway and bring along whoever wants to join in on the wild adventure that is my life. It is not a jail sentence. If they unfriend we can always stay in touch at the comfort level they desire by email.
That said, I’m sure there is wisdom in your post that suggests we should temper how much we dump out at once, which is hard to remember during a launch that offers new moments to squee every four hours or so, and I promise that if I have a mass unfollow of 1500 friends tonight, I will reassess. ;)
But truly, I don’t think it’s any more “braggy” to share your accomplishments than it is “trying to pull everyone down” to share your losses. Without these extremes social media would flatline. So show me your pouty selfies any day! You ladies add spunk to my feed and I am happy to see them. xoxo
Kathryn, as part of your cache of of writing friends, I can attest to the fact that you never come off as “braggy.” You raise a good point about assessing the “why” of posting. I really enjoy seeing all of the cover reveals, guest posts, and heartening reviews in my newsfeed. I may not click through to each and every one, but I’m excited because a fellow writer is excited, and succeeding or growing. It’s inspirational.
I think the why of posting is important, and I’ll add that a dose of humility goes a long way. I admire those who are succeeding and yet are humble, or even occasionally humorously self-depreciating, all the more. And that’s what Liz and Lisa have offered here – humility and humor. I think most everyone who reads WU knows better than to fill their feed with blatant “buy my book” posts. So it’s nice to take a closer look at where the line is. My thanks to all three of you.
Thanks, Vaughn!
Hi Kathryn!
Of course, you are correct, the WHY is very important. And we also share plenty of writerly things on our personal page. But our readers our very instagram and Twitter friendly so we post A LOT there while on book tour–pictures of everything under the sun. We spend a lot of time engaging our fans there and to put that content in our personal pages would be overwhelming and possibly turn off the mom we met at school pick up the other day who didn’t sign on for that. Like we mention, it’s such a fine line and as a friend of yours on FB, I think you do a great job!
Liz and Lisa,
Since I’m relatively new (it’s been about three years), I’ve yet to release a book but opened up a Facebook personal account and separate author page about two years ago. I managed a book club and gave away books on occasion and needed a place for rafflecopter. With a free WordPress account, it wouldn’t allow for third-party interaction.
Thing is, I don’t get many followers to my page. Even though I only posted writerly things there, people wanted to follow my personal account — with most of them being writers and only a few from my childhood and family. Eventually, I gave up posting on the page and began posting everything on my personal account. For now, that suffices because even I, as a follower to my page, rarely saw my posts on my feed.
On my personal account, I post both writerly and everyday liferly things, but I don’t post anything I would be embarrassed about as a writer (or at least try not to — thank goodness for the delete option) and I don’t inundate my feed with nonsense.
If ever comes the day that I have >5000 people who want to follow me, I’ll see what avenues I need to take to separate personal from professional and adjust then, but for now, it’s working for me.
But…as with everything…brag in moderation! :D
Yes, Mike, we hear you. If you don’t have the followers on your public page, it can be very difficult. We’ve invested a lot of time and money over the years to build our public Facebook page, and it can still be difficult to get engagement, even when you have 7k people there. If you feel as if your personal page has become your public page and everyone knows what content they are going to get there, then it sounds like that works for you! For us, we like to keep our personal pages private–it’s where we post about our children and check-in, etc, and we like to connect with our friends in a different way than our followers. Thanks for the comment!
Liz and Lisa,
Thank you for your piece. It’s helpful in practical ways, as well as letting me know I’m not the only one worried about annoying my friends with too much “me! me! me! book! book! book!” posts.
It is a fine line, but I’m betting that if you are a person who does not tend to be braggy-obnoxious about non-book-related things in your life (e.g. job promotions, kids’ accomplishments), your friends and that third-cousin-once-removed will probably give you the benefit of the doubt and recognize your enthusiasm for what it is — real excitement and authentic, well-deserved pride.
I’ve done the two separate FB accounts, I don’t have the personal bandwith yet to get all Instagram-y, but I’m curious to know if you think that’s a good way to entice and keep readers?
Congratulations on your book journey, and keep posting all the good news!
Hi Laura!
We agree, and we for sure post to our personal page as well, but we are very thoughtful about the amount of content we share there, knowing that many of those same people belong to our public page as well. (That’s a whole other Oprah we didn’t get into–the double posting!)
Instagram is AWESOME. It’s a great way to use pictures to share your writing journey with your readers, and the app makes it easy to instantly upload to your Twitter and Tumblr accounts as well. We think people are starting to get their content there more and more, and we highly recommend using it! Come find us there @lisaandliz!
Dear Liz and Liza,
I love the title of your new book and the cover is great. What a clever and funny story line.
I just finished reading your post and found it so true and so entertaining. I really did laugh out loud, though it was probably intended for my education. I know.
Smile, post, share! The next day… smile, post, share!
Social media really is powerful. But we all already know that.
Here is a crazy example. The cover of my book was posted on Instagram by a reader who loved it. So…. she recommended it to all her followers on her Instagram post. After seeing that post, one of her followers then read my book. SHE posted on HER Instagram the next day or two later. She has 12K followers. Smile.
Two days later, her twin sister saw the post showing the book’s cover and a quick review from her sister. She then read the book too. Guess what? She posted on HER Instagram, with her 10K followers. I’m smiling again now.
Imagine my sales from those two girls I didn’t even know, or follow, or realize were posting about my book. I wasn’t even on Instagram. (Believe me, I am now!) I called it the ‘Power of Two’. Two people, tell two people who tell their 12K or 10K……
Clearly, there are some perks to this crazy Social Media world we live in, along with many, many downfalls. I think we are all walking through mine fields, blindly, trying to figure it out, survive. Thanks so much for your great post and I look so forward to reading your new book. It speaks to our new world and everyone living in it.
Hi Prissy!
Thank you! and how wonderful! I think your story is why social media can be so powerful! Hope it continues to spread! xo
Dear Liz and Lisa,
Thank you for this excellent post on a topic not many people discuss. To answer your questions: How do you walk the line between writerly and personal? Between announcing and bragging? Where’s your line?
It’s tough! I suppose my line comes from gut feeling. If I am typing a post, and it doesn’t feel right, I stop.
I find it so much easier to share good news that someone else has posted about one of my books or an article I’ve written. It’s always better when it’s not me talking about me. :)
Congratulations on your new release, and look forward to reading it.
Hi Valerie!
Yes, we agree, it’s so much easier when someone else brags for you, right?! Can they just do that, so we don’t have to post our amazon ranking again? ha!
There’s always been a fine line between love and hate – whether it’s in person or online. They both involve the same amount of passion and commitment. They also each can siphon the life out of your soul, if you’re not careful.
I’ve always avoided social media (besides Pinterest!), but since I started writing a book I’ve created a Twitter account. I keep to certain guidelines because I consider it my professional face to the world. Thanks for your post.