My Relationship with Social Media by Nikki E Salt

Sometimes I like social media and sometimes I hate it but I haven’t yet learned to love it. I’m not quite committed to it. Someone unfriended me in Twitter today because I didn’t friend them back. I thought nothing of it until I wondered if I’d really offended them. The truth is, on occasion, I’m too busy to notice new followers and other times (I’m being brutally honest here – please don’t hate me) I have a quick look at their posts and think I really can’t be bothered to be plagued by their wittering and I’ve never heard of them, anyway. (I’ve never thought that about ANY of my ACW readers!) I guess I assumed people would do the same with me. I’m not one of those social media users that minds too much about numbers of followers, retweets, likes, etc. Which is probably why I only have 165 followers. Gulp! Only 165! Oops, perhaps I do mind. A bit.

Maybe I’m not clear on why I’m using social media – is it to purely to promote myself and my writing? Is it to make new friends that share my interests? Is it a little of both? I like to think that I have a small, quality gathering that follows me and I’m pretty sure I have followed everyone back, now. I love hearing about your successes, I empathise with you when you’re down and sympathise when you’re disappointed. I try to uplift and encourage as I find this easier than sharing my own experiences. I’m not very good at promoting myself or my writing which, I know, comes down to confidence and realise that social media is the perfect place for me to take a risk and paddle further out from the shallows. Perhaps I need to TRULY believe my writing benefits people. I like to think it does.

I’ll share something with you. Once I’ve written a blog post I tend to leave it, runaway and hope for the best. Then having read Georgie’s post about disappointments with social media (18 Nov on the More than Writers blog) it slapped me – goodness what if people have been commenting on my blog post and I haven’t responded to them!! What if someone has asked me a question or needs advice and I’ve left them hanging in the ether? Are they irritated that I haven’t taken the time to respond to their writing when they have with mine? Now, that does make me feel bad so I’ll just toddle off to make amends. Sorry peeps for not thinking about you.

So, I’m still learning. My relationship with social media is obviously still at the flirtation stage but perhaps I’m ready to make a commitment! The world of writing is huge and it does give me a tingle of pleasure when I imagine the potential we have to share. People are interesting, baffling, different and enormously gifted in their own way whether it’s words, humour or whatever. Everyone has something to give.