Social media crickets? No problem, but there’s work ahead

[Originally a thread on Bluesky] Going to pull this up to think out loud about it. My social media engagement has dropped from 2022 onwards. Trad media hasn’t been picking up our book recs. (All lists are all trad or prominent indies, barely any other country rep.) I’ve been posting links on 4 platforms, barely any clicks.

But my blog has been active. I didn’t check the stats when I was focusing on my social media presence, but I did notice that it was getting decent traffic when I was wondering why social media became crickets.

So I started updating more often, putting more valuable long-form posts there (here), and paid attention to posts that kept getting into my top 10 viewed despite being years old.

I realized that my books are in senior high school courses here, and the popular blog posts are probably in the reading lists. They’re not updated! I added links to those posts and a welcome message.

I set up a minavesguerra dot com email to focus the comms to the site. (The first time I used it, a student said, “can I use Gmail to send to this?” omg) But I get inquiries and invites through email now, which is awesome.

My other concern was the situation of the internet book community putting us (Filipino authors but it’s many countries’ authors really) in a box again to bring out when it’s a special occasion, and the goal had been to be part of a readers’ list all year. How can we be seen if social media isn’t the way to do it? We went back to in-person events. I accepted invitations to speak. I applied for spots at conferences and delegations to international events. I accepted collabs with literary institutions. I partnered with PH trad pubs to get more of our print books out. All of this from 2022.

Showing up again is leading to more collabs and invites. More RomanceClass authors have gotten book deals and panelist experience. (See announcements that we are making sure to document on independent websites, not just social media.)

I’ve met more young readers and writers, very much feel like I’ve introduced myself to a new generation. If they mention us on social media and make our presence felt there, great. (Bec social media clearly doesn’t want us doing that anymore without charging for the space.)

This is just me saying there’s a path around the crickets and silence on the apps, for books like ours and authors like us. It’s work though (and paperwork ugh). But as long as someone starts and people around you show up too, things can happen.

[Not in the original thread] Now, someone who reads every single post here will know that this is not the only thing I’ve started doing to expand on the opportunities that used to come easily, when social media was better. We have a manager for our film rights. I trademarked “RomanceClass” and my pen name. We’ve been reaching out to Philippine libraries and are now in more indie bookshops (and yay for more indie bookshops opening and reaching out to us!). I met with a distributor, because I want the books to be in non-bookstore retail locations. I’ve proposed audio partnerships (grants?) to institutions. I’m probably forgetting something, but yes books can thrive outside of social media, and being ignored on social media isn’t the end.

It was a great time (that I still mourn), but there are doors we can try to open elsewhere.

The post Social media crickets? No problem, but there’s work ahead first appeared on Mina V. Esguerra.