Social Media

Social Media

“Social media” is a tag on Megan Publishing Services https://meganthemisconception. com to denote content on social media

Facebook Idiocy

Published by Owen Jones on 14 January 2022

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How not to make friends or influence them!

Facebook Idiocy

I opened a Facebook account shortly after it launched, and after a couple of name changes, I settled for OwenJonesWriter. Pretty succinct, but it described me and my activities very well.

Social Media

I had various spurts of activity, and inactivity, on my Facebook account, but I gradually built up a following of about 3,000 friends, acquaintances and complete unknowns, as one does.

As you probably already know, I am a writer, and writers want to sell books, so I incorporated Facebook into my sales strategy along with Twitter, many social media accounts and my blog.

By using devices such as smarturl.it I was able to see where most of the click-throughs to my books came from. It is impossible to track actual sales in this way, but most of the clicks on my sales links on Amazon came from my blog and Twitter

There was absolutely no doubt about that. Facebook was delivering at most about 5% of those two combined.

Facebook Idiocy

Then, one morning, I turned on my computer to discover that my Facebook account had been blocked or banned or shut down, whatever you want to call it, for ‘spamming’. I have never ever spammed anyone, so I sought clarification, but they would reveal nothing other than (paraphrased) ‘…they had to keep the Facebook community safe, because I had been accused of spamming by several of their members’.

So, it seems to me, that if you want to shut your opposition down, you just have to get a few friends to complain to Facebook about spam.

This is obviously open to abuse, and is madness… it is Facebook Idiocy in the extreme!

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Facebook Friends Part 1

Published by Owen Jones on 22 July 2018

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Facebook Friends

Facebook Friends

Facebook Friends Part 1

I recently ran a campaign to drum up support for for my latest novel, and a large part of that took place on Facebook. However, I only had 1,100 Facebook friends and it soon became apparent that I would need at least double that for a campaign of thirty days. Now, obviously, not everyone you ask to become a friend fancies the idea, so to get, say, 1,500 new Facebook friends in a month, you have to invite at least fifty new Facebook friends a day.

I have had 1,100 Facebook friends for ages, but when I started recruiting in ernest, more and more people asked to become my friend too. It was as if Facebook saw that I was looking for new friends and so promoted me to others via that block on your timeline – People you may know…

However, if it is true that Facebook helped me get new friends, it is also true that they discouraged me from talking to them. In the morning, I would start asking my Facebook friends to check out my book and vote for it if they felt able to, but after about twenty such messages, I invariably received a warning that I was probably violating their TOS.

I was even banned for twenty-four hours once. However, I soon settled into a pattern of waiting for the warning, and then doing ten an hour until I reached my goal of a hundred a day – 3,000 in the month. I fell a bit short because I only had 2,600 Facebook friends, but I will have the shortfall by the time I finish my next novel.

I had 3,220 visitors to my target URL, although KindleScout, the hosts don’t reveal how many voted. My book was deemed HOT for 393 hours out of the maximum of 720, so draw your own conclusions. I think that most people I asked went there, and most of those voted for my book.

Now the fun part. Of my existing Facebook friends, the original 1,100, not many, a few hundred, reported back that they had helped, although that doesn’t mean that the others didn’t. I probably wouldn’t tell a friend that I had helped either. However, well over half of the new Facebook friends told me that they had voted for my book., and I think that I would with a new friend as well.

There were several splinter groups, which are interesting.

There were about fifteen who asked me to return ‘the favour’. When I asked how, they told me to buy their book, read it and write a review for Amazon and Goodreads – about four days’ work, and I would have to but their book, in exchange for their two-minute vote on my cover and blurb! I should coco! Needless to say, they are no longer friends.

Then there were the twenty or so who explained I detail that they were busy professionals with no time for trivial activities. One man wrote me four long emails explaining how little time he had. It would have taken only two minutes to click NOMINATE on the strength of the cover and the 100-word blurb!

There was one man who said that he was very sorry, but he could not access the Internet… he was saying that via Facebook’s Messenger! I don’t know whether he was doolally, or he thought I was.

Then there was a huge group of ‘beautiful women’. This group is the one I found the most interesting. Naturally… but more of them next time 🙂

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Facebook Friends Part 1

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Social Media Friends

Published by Owen Jones on 16 May 2017
Social Media Friends
Social Media Friends

Social Media Friends

Most people in the West and most young people in the World have a number of social media friends. Some people are very selective about whom they befriend or ‘follow’ (I hate that term), and others are less so. This article is more about those users of social media who are less selective, because I have been thinking about how much we can rely on our social media friends.

The main social media for me are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but that won’t come as a surprise to many people who use the Internet. I use the Internet for eight to eighteen hours a day, depending on what stage of a book I am at, and I use social media to promote my books and keep in touch with my friends and readers, some of whom are the same people, although a writer doesn’t always know who his readers are.

Facebook Social Media Friends

I get about four to ten Facebook and three LinkedIn friend requests, and 150 Twitter followers a day on average. I think that that is probably about average for my level of Internet activity. I often join in with on-going discussions or/and start my own. Sometimes, I seek help from my social media friends in a special project, such as a book that I have put up for an award and would like friends to vote for. One thing that I will never ask my social media friends to do, is lie for me. For example, I will not ask someone to say that they have read one of my books when they haven’t.

Twitter

So, with 100,000 Twitter followers, and thousands of Facebook and LinkedIn friends, you would think that I would win something, wouldn’t you?

I haven’t yet 🙂 , but that’s not what I am getting at. Why do some people complain about my request for help? After all, I only ask ‘friends’, all be they social media friends.

Some of the comments I have had are quite unbelievable. I’ll give you two:

“Stop begging and do your own promotion!” and

“I’m fed up with you random people asking me to do things for them!”

Then there are some who have tried to extract payment or favours for helping. One asked me to buy her book and post a review for a three-minute vote!

What I want to know is, what do these people think is the point of becoming social media friends? Is it to gain advantage, or are they just collecting people for their egos?

This is the second time in six months that I have asked my social media friends for help to market a book, and I have winkled out and unfollowed about a dozen each time (not because they didn’t help, but because of their attitude). That’s not bad out of thousands, but it serves to remind me that you cannot trust everyone who purports to be a friend.

You learn a lot when you seek help from friends, whether they be social media friends or more local ones.

If you would like to vote for my book Daisy’s Chain, please click this link and then: the NOMINATE button

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All the best,

Owen

PS: my PLR book The Internet is available from this link: The Internet .

Podcast: Social Media Friends

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