Comments on: The Results of My 100 Day Social Media Blackout

By: The Juggling Writer - Speak Out With Your Geek Out - Juggling

The Juggling Writer - Speak Out With Your Geek Out - Juggling — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:32:06 +0000

[...] Valentinelli is the reason I started a 30-day social media break that became 50 days (and is now 100 days). She’s also one of the minds behind Speak Out With Your Geek Out, an online celebration of [...]

By: The Juggling Writer - The 50 Day Social Media Break

The Juggling Writer - The 50 Day Social Media Break — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 05:56:18 +0000

[...] I read Monica Valentinelli’s Hunting Down the Value of Social Media entry and the followup: The Results of My 100 Day Social Media Blackout, I wondered if I could go without Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ for even a [...]

By: MonicaValentinelli

MonicaValentinelli — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 00:52:05 +0000

Shelly: if you’re just starting out on your website, you want to focus on your content. On the web, the “biggest” always wins. Pointing people to a website with little to no content is like asking people to go into a grocery store and most of the shelves are empty. To drive traffic, you can set up a good syndication network (e.g. Feedburner) to flow into the social media tools. Often, the click-through rate (which is the number of people that see a link and then click through to read) is extraordinarily low compared to those that see and read just the headlines of your posts.

Part of the reason why I was able to assess these results is because I have over six years experience in e-commerce and online marketing. I don’t like to throw my background around a lot, but working as an analyst I knew what to look for in the data. What the data told me, was that having the “feed” set up was just as good as me being online.

Hope that helps!

By: Shelly Immel

Shelly Immel — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 00:33:22 +0000

Thanks for sharing your experiment and results, Monica! As a writer at the beginning of the social media and publishing/marketing learning curve, focusing strictly on writing and my web site sounds LOVELY. But I wonder if your initial investment of time and energy in social media didn’t help drive people to your website and help you become well known enough that the social media didn’t matter much anymore. When you were first getting into social media, did it seem to drive traffic to your website? Thanks again for blogging about your experience.

By: Fantasy Literature's Fantasy Book and Audiobook Reviews

Fantasy Literature's Fantasy Book and Audiobook Reviews — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 16:01:41 +0000

[...] Monica Valentinelli Goes Offline: Monica experiments with going offline from social media for 100 days and has came to some [...]

By: Book Blog Tours and Review Sites with Adrian Phoenix | The Website of Lost Maps and Dreams

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 17:19:25 +0000

[...] referred to a an article on the Science Fiction Writers of America website regarding the author’s 100 day Social Media Blackout and the results of that experiment regarding social media and marketing. The author basically [...]

By: [My Guest Post] More Insight on Social Media Blackout at SFWA.org | MLV Writes

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:14:50 +0000

[...] Wanted to pop in today to mention that, for my July article at SFWA.org, I opted to provide the results of my 100 day social media blackout and give readers additional insights I didn’t write about here. Remember, too, that online marketing and e-commerce both have high learning curves. What you see/read online is often the free version of advice marketers provide to open the door to paying clients. The web changes often and dramatically — social media moreso. One, little change and that entire community you’ve built on Facebook could disappear. This? This is yet another reason why your website is more important than any other tool in your promotional arsenal. — SOURCE: The Results of My 100 Day Social Media Blackout at SFWA.org [...]

By: Monica

Monica — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 23:12:02 +0000

I really appreciate the feedback, Elizabeth. It’s been an interesting road for me, but I’m so happy I can offer a perspective based on my professional experiences to help authors figure out what they want to do in these ever-fluctuating times.

One of the conversations that I had with a reader recently, was that their biggest concern was “discovery.” With online retailers carrying more and more books — self-published and traditional — and brick-and-mortar stores going out of business, they didn’t know where to look to find new, quality authors.

Your comment was really relevant to me, too, because as an author who’s looking to the future, I’m starting to blend different techniques now — while my readership is manageable — before it becomes a problem.

May all your stories reach your readers…

By: EMoon

EMoon — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 22:24:47 +0000

Thanks–this is useful stuff and should be helpful in discussions with my publishers. I enjoyed your previous post very much, too.

I’ve also found that some dedicated readers–the ones who do buy books–do not look online for information on forthcoming books, though they have internet connections. They don’t use social media at all, and they rely on seeing books in a bookstore; all the pre-publication promotion I’d done for the new group missed them completely. I asked those who contacted me in surprise some months after a new book came out what I could have done to let them know and it was basically nothing. These readers will be particularly hard up for information with the demise of brick-and-mortar nearby bookstores.