Faith in the Rollercoaster of Social Media Marketing
FYI: I loath rollercoasters. I also hate social media. I don’t think it’s an “age” thing. Plenty of people a lot older than sixty are total social media addicts. But after fourteen years of being the wife of two diplomats, I became hyper protective of my privacy. Therefore, in 2004, when I was already living in America, and first heard about Facebook, I felt no urge to “share” any part of my life on it. Neither, mercifully, did I have to.
I was now officially another green card holding, gray cat in the American darkness, and that’s exactly how I wanted to stay. Soothingly anonymous.
As time went on, and I heard more and more about Facebook, my disdain for it only grew. Rarely is anyone sad on Facebook, and if he/she/they are sad, it’s still a matter of manipulated public display. However, Facebook wasn’t intruding on my life, so what did I care?
Fast forward sixteen years:
If social media had been a moderate monster in 2004, in 2021 it was a giant octopus with far reaching tentacles. The platforms I could remember the names of were few. Instagram, Twitter, but new ones were popping up at the speed of mushrooms, playing havoc on the psychology of the young and the old. Meeting sites, dating sites, chatting sites, hookup sites, utube…and God forbid I should forget the 2020 pandemic isolation, which magnified it all.
But thanks to losing my jobs to the pandemic, I had more time to dedicate to my book, therefore the decision to pull the trigger on publishing.
And that’s when my quiet private existence took a deep sea dive. My younger kid, now on a second master’s program to study publishing, promised me failure unless I took the plunge to engage in social media.
Stubborn as I am, even I could see that if I published on an ether platform like Amazon, somehow I had to exist in the ether for the ether addicts to find my book.
My partner’s sister, a powerhouse, suggested I consult with a marketing strategist. Her dearest friend’s daughter was one, I could try her.
Based on the theory that it’s best to fight fire with fire, I hired this strategist, since social media was the Excalibur of the young, and this girl was in her twenties.
She lost no time to strong-arm me into a website, a business page on Facebook, an Instagram presence, and Twitter.
As if I wasn’t overwhelmed enough with that, I could always count on my younger kid to cheer me up: Being the new expert in publishing town, she took one look at the book cover I had designed, and said, “You’ll definitely fail with that book cover. Go look at Women’s Fiction book covers on the internet, mom. These days marketing is the only God there is. No one cares that you wrote a good book. If your cover doesn’t fit into the genre fold, you’re dooming yourself.”
At that point the donkey in me dug in its heels and came to a complete halt. I absolutely refused to believe that writing a good book played no part in today’s success. Here I was, with basically no choice but to self-publish, if I wanted to publish. Further hogtied into social media submission. My sixteen years of slog to write a good book trashed in one sentence….furthermore being assured that the readers of today were such morons, they only bought and read books based on herd mentality cover art. Book content, along with home-cooked meals, and monogamous love had so gone out of style, I was just a woolly mammoth blundering around on the shores of the 21st century…my “good book” clutched to my chest, as obsolete as the tablets God handed down to Moses.
Thus guaranteed failure by my own flesh and blood, what more did I have to fear? Instead, now free from the vicious cycle of success, I decided to do exactly as I pleased, and just have some fun along the way.
However, as anyone who has read even ten pages of my debut novel, Dragonfly Escaping, quickly realizes, I don’t take defeat well. Nor do I take it lying down. Inside me a slow rage had ignited to prove to my younger kid that I could and would succeed, no matter how mad the world had gone with social media and collective brain damage. That a good book, like organic food, and pure air, still had a place on this planet—and people, even young people, hadn’t taken complete leave of their senses.
Thank God for my older kid, who pointed out: “Since when do you listen to other people, Ma? Yes, you were born with some serious karma payback on your roster, but when has God ever failed you? What have you not achieved what you set out to conquer?
The very essence of the story you’re telling is based in faith, fight, resilience, and reward—so where is your faith? Do you think God made you write for sixteen years just to watch you fail? Why don’t you trust your own gut on your cover art, do whatever you can handle on social media, and leave the rest up to him?”
Adequately reminded not to take any part of this earthly drama too seriously, I programmed my debut novel to be available on Amazon by January 11, 2022, when I’d be done with all the edits.
Almost 99% detached from the outcome of self-publishing Book 1, I continued writing my story in Book 2.
Have you been frightened lately by someone you love, not willing to help you, but definitely kind enough to guarantee you, you will fail?
