Yesterday I was time-wasting on Twitter and saw a post by a ‘social media expert’ on how to start a Facebook group to promote your ‘brand.’ She included writers among those ‘businesspeople’ who should use that technique. Not one word was said mentioning that people get banned from Facebook all the time— even Gays against Groomers got permabanned. I’m locked out of my old account for not bowing down to the great god Facebook Protect and handing them my phone number.
There are groups on some of the alternative social media. The two I know about are MeWe and Gab, and both have groups.
Groups, said the social media guru, should be about something related to your ‘niche.’ If you are a writer, you could found a group, not for writers, but for book lovers, perhaps book lovers in your genre. (The group will promptly become filled with desperate writers wanting to fill your group with book promos.)
Bloggers should make a group about their blogging niche. If you blog about travel, start a travel blog, if you blog about science fiction, start a science fiction blog.
The difference between MeWe groups and Gab groups is that when you post to a Gab group, your post automatically goes to your timeline, unless you do some privacy setting thing I don’t know how to do. The advantage of this is that even when you are in a small group, all of your followers see your post from your timeline, and they know what group you posted in. So you can grow the value of your personal Gab account and grow your value as a group member with the same post, without doing anything about it.
MeWe is different. IF you keep your privacy setting to ‘public,’ you can share your posts from the group back to your timeline, but you have to make the effort to do it. If your group post was shared from another source into the group, attempts to share it will only share that original post, without the tag that it came from your group or any comment you wrote about the post.
Both MeWe and Gab are smaller communities than Facebook or Twitter, but the members are more loyal to one another, at least when there are no big differences of opinion. You may need to work on your main account— post your blog posts, book links and interesting or pithy words of wisdom there, before going off and starting your own group.
Before you start your own group on your alt social medium, join a few groups of interest on various topics. When you find a few you really like, ‘adopt’ a couple groups. Post regularly in those groups. Comment on other people’s posts. Be friendly and encouraging. Pretend like you are assisting the admin/group founder. I had a pair of groups of my own on Facebook for years. I learned a lot about what to do to encourage groups along. It’s hard work.
Think through what sort of group you want while you are participating in other people’s groups. If there is a group out there that is just right for what you would want to do with a group of your own, and you are allowed to post things that you would like to post there, you may decide to delay starting your own group.
On MeWe, all groups might have group ‘chats.’ I personally don’t like chat, and in an Esperanto-language group I was in on MeWe, a lady in the prostitution industry used the chat to promote her business— in English! You can disable group chat, and when your group has grown enough for you to recruit a few moderators, you can add it back if group members want to. As leader of your group, you should check in on the chat daily— answer some questions as well as check for abuse of the chat by prostitutes.
The purpose behind starting or participating in a social media group is the same behind using social media generally— it is to gather a group of people who like your perspective on things, how you write in short doses, your ‘you’ in general. These people are your prospective tribe members. The ones who actually buy your books or read your blog posts, especially if they do it more than once, are your tribe. Be true to your tribe! Cherish them. Put up with their eccentricities as they put up with yours.
Follow me!
MeWe (Primary Social Medium): https://mewe.com/i/nissaannakindt
Gab (free speech alternative): https://gab.com/nissalovescats
Twitter (for now): https://twitter.com/nissalovescats
Defend Trad Marriage group: https://mewe.com/group/5bca1f9c73a3f14e7c8572e5
BOOKS: Where the Opium Cactus Grows (Poetry) : https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0557939135
Getting More Blog Traffic: Steps Towards a Happier Blogging Life: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086H4FQ4M
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