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How Poets Can Utilize Social Media

Social media enables us to turn a distant audience into a close-knit community; to engage with others around the world in a way we have never been able to before. When one swims through the frequent tidal waves of politics, religion, and the other issues that divide us, it is also what brings us together. We’re able to come together and share creative works and ideas.

This is an incredible age for artists and writers. No longer are we reliant on big publishing houses, magazines and higher ups to get our work out there. With some good editing and a few clicks, it’s sent out into the world for critique, feedback and love.

In my own virtual travels, the creative community online has to be one of the best. I’m a regular over on Tumblr, where I post some poetry, mostly excerpts from my novel, and share the work of others in support. We whine about the difficulties and challenges of writing and celebrate the victories, big or small. It really reminds me a lot of why Neopoet appeals to so many.

Whether you ever publish a poetry book or simply want to maintain an online presence as a writer without the hassle of publishing, social media has become vital to getting readers. As a self-published author myself, I do all of my own marketing, and a good 75 per cent of it is through social media.

Poetry is different from fiction, though. Fiction gets devoured and absorbed without much problem. In my personal experience, finding readers for poetry books or posts is much more of a challenge. Compare the 252 readers I have for my current fiction novel on Wattpad versus the average of 30 I get on my poetry collections there. Usually, those readers are returning ones who are hardcore about poetry. It attracts a different kind of reader, a different kind of spirit. Poetry books, once published, don’t even tend to sell well; not enough to be profitable, anyway. I lost money publishing poetry books. These days, I publish my poetry on Wattpad, Neopoet, my blog and Tumblr for readers to access. I invest in fiction, in what will sell.

Poetry seems to be the one type of writing that gets hopelessly lost in the oceans of other writing. So, how can us poets get seen? Here are some tips from my own experiences in publishing, book marketing and social media. For the next few weeks, I’ll be exploring the popular social media sites and how us, as poets, can utilize them to obtain more readers.

Let’s start with a general overview of what you can post on basically any social media site:
Share what you learn in the writing process. This is helpful to fellow writers and can be oddly intriguing for readers. They might gain more respect for writing when they know how much goes into a simple poem.
- Post images that inspire you. Just be sure to credit the artist/photographer. They’re artists too, after all.
- Tease readers with snippets of a new poem or an excerpt of your current WIP (work in progress). Link them back to your Neopoet account or personal blog, wherever you consistently post your writing. (Apps like Textgram let you post text over a background image that can be uploaded to various social media sites. It’s a great tool. More in a future blog post).
- Announcements, blog graphics, blog posts, promos, cover reveals, contests, excerpts, all can be done via social media accounts. It’s a wild and wide open world out there.

All of this appeals to readers and writers, as we are essentially in the same community. Here are some other tips for using social media:
- You can connect your various social media accounts. You can create one post with fewer clicks and less hassle.
- An important aspect of social media is to not overwhelm yourself. There are SO many social media sites that one can use. Stick with the ones you are most comfortable with and give you the most readership. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr are my personal favourites, for different reasons. Each site can be used for its own purpose. Especially if you also have a website and blog to maintain, it’s vital to stick with what you know and what works for you, and not to overdo it. Like in real like, one can’t be in all places at once.
- Social media is meant to be social. So visit. Talk to other writers about their work, their processes, and support them. Share/reblog their excerpts and posts. Comment on their stuff. I personally find that by doing this, I get followers in return and more activity from said followers. We are a community and we need to support each other, regardless of the platform we are on. This is why feedback and critique is so important for Neopoet.
- Hashtags are an important aspect to social media. Others can search hashtags and find accounts they would like to follow. The popular hashtags for writers:
#amwriting
#writing
#amreading
#writersofInstagram
#writersofTumblr
Feel free to suggest more if you know of any.
- Keep your writer social media separate from your personal stuff. This doesn’t mean keep all politics and religion away from your writer social media - keep the accounts separate, so you maintain some semblance of privacy. Being a writer is also building a brand, so be cautious as to what you are posting and ensure it’s always respectful of others and professional.

That’s it for this week, folks. Feel free to share any other suggestions, questions, hashtags, or experiences below! This is an open discussion. I love hearing from you all.

Katie

Editing stage: 

Comments

#poetsofinstagram and #poetsofig are both good hashtags for Instagram. Thanks for the info!

And thank you for the hashtag suggestions!

Neopoet Social Media

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started post a poem about every other day on facebook. But ignorant as I an in their tech I have no idea how to tell how many might be reading them

Hi scribbler!

It's always hard to tell who is reading what on Facebook. I think only actual pages show you how many people see and read posts. I know my own writer page does, while my personal profile doesn't. Getting engagements with readers on Facebook can be tough. You tend to get drowned out by all the politics and such people like to banter over on there. Always worth it to keep trying though!

- Katie

Neopoet Social Media

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