Control Your Social Media

By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin

In recent years, I've gained a large social media following with over 200,000 on Twitter, over 4,900 Facebook friends and over 12,000 connections on LinkedIn. In other articles, I've provided details about what I am doing and how I am doing it. Today I want to talk about a different aspect of social media: control.

All of these social posts are something I personally do. I don't have an assistant or someone else doing it. I realize several things:

--consistency is important

--people are reading this information and at times responding to it

--the information will be online FOREVER (yes I understand that all CAPS is shouting but I want to make sure you see these posts are around for a very long time)

The words matter. I begin each day with an inspirational quotation and an image of this person. Today on one of these social networks, someone added a comment about the person I quoted and flamed this person because of other actions they have taken. The comment was inappropriate and very public—and I've watched these types of things escalate on social media to move in a strange direction. I immediately deleted the comment. Then I took further action: I blocked this person from this network so they can never again make such a comment on my posts. I'm in control of my own social media so I took immediate action. Yes I believe in free speech but I also understand that I can control my own social media.

When you read something you don't agree with, you can post a comment or you can move on in silence or you can write the person directly (not public). Each of us have choices in this area. The person who puts out the social media post has a choice and the person who responds (or doesn't) also has a choice.

Several points in this area:

1. Take control of your social media

2. Monitor the comments so you can respond and engage with it. Engagement is a huge reason for being active in social media and the more your audience is engaging, the better in my view.

3. Use tools like Hootsuite and others to help you easily monitor the responses to your social posts. For example, people try to send me direct messages often on Twitter and I don't read those on Twitter because of the time involved (mine is limited for social media because of other things I do throughout the day—a choice). Instead I read these messages and at times respond through Hootsuite. Find your own way to handle this aspect of social media.

4. Always look for ways to expand your readership and grow your social networks. I'm not talking about doing it artificially where you buy Twitter followers but organically where you connect with more and more people. As you increase your reach, you will increase your interest from editors and literary agents and others in the publishing community.

OK, that's my view on the necessity for us to take control of our social media. Do you agree or not? Let me know in the comments below.

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