I am learning more and more that Facebook is as good a friend as any poet can have online. I decided to experiment a little with Facebook pages and am pleasantly surprised. After creating one page just a day ago I’ve already seen results.
First, if you aren’t familiar with Facebook, you should get familiar with it. It’s what is called a social networking tool and it allows you to network with other people who have similar interests no matter where they live. There is quite a community of poets already using Facebook and every day I bump into more. The tools available to poets for promoting their books, chapbooks, individual publishing successes, blogs, newsletters and e-zines, poetry journals, etc. are fabulous and expanding every day.
I’d like to highlight a few people who I believe have done very well at using Facebook to promote themselves and other poets. This is not an exhaustive list, but these are observations based on my own use of Facebook and the networking that I’ve been able to do. I’m only sorry that I haven’t done more through Facebook until now or I’d have more to share. You can bet that I’ll be using it more in the future.
Belinda Subraman on Facebook
Belinda Subraman is the host of a podcast that promotes poetry and independent music artists. Her show is called Belinda Subraman Presents / Gypsy Art Show. She frequently sends out calls for interview subjects and poetry MP3s, which she then plays on her show. I responded to one of those calls and Belinda interviewed me. After her weekly show, Belinda then sends out a Facebook notice to all of her fans and friends to let them know the latest podcast is ready for listening. It’s very effective and I’m sure that Belinda Subraman’s weekly poetry podcast is very popular. I know I like it.
You can connect with Belinda Subraman on Facebook here.
Robert Lee Brewer
Robert Lee Brewer is the editor of Writer’s Market. He also writes the daily blog Poetic Asides. Robert is one of the many poets on Facebook who use the feed feature of Facebook to promote their blogs. Robert’s feed is very effective because he writes to his blog every day and every time he updates his blog an automatic notice is sent to all of his friends and fans to let them know they can read the latest update on Poetic Asides. I like this feature of Facebook because it means that I don’t have to subscribe to every RSS feed in the world to read great writing. I can be notified through Facebook that a blog is updated and click a link to read the posts that I want to read.
Connect with Robert Lee Brewer on Facebook here.
Didi Menendez
The real test to how effective you are at networking is how much you can get other people to do your promoting for you. Didi Menendez needs no help in promoting herself, but she has it. As the publisher of Oranges & Sardines and MIPOesias Magazine, Didi is well known in the world of poetics. But that doesn’t stop Grace Cavalieri from promoting O & S through a Facebook page.
I believe Facebook pages are one of the best ways to promote yourself online, and Grace’s page promoting Didi’s journal is a great example of a Facebook page.
Connect with Didi Menendez on Facebook here.
Connect with Grace Cavalieri on Facebook here.
What You Can Do With Facebook Pages
As stated earlier, this is not an exhaustive list of poets on Facebook doing great things. But I like what these people are doing. Facebook pages are powerful promotional tools because they are so flexible and much more accessible than Facebook profiles. A Facebook user can hide their private information so that others can’t see it without permission – even if the profile comes up on a Google search. But the information provided in a Facebook page can be viewed by anyone without permission and the pages can be found through search just like a normal web page. That makes a Facebook page a very accessible marketing tool for any creative person from poet to movie star.
There are many other great things you can do with a Facebook page, however. You can upload photos and videos, aggregate blog RSS feeds, promote events, publications, and upcoming readings and book signings. Virtually anything you can promote through a website can be promoted through a Facebook page – and you don’t have to have a lot of technical skill to be able to use it effectively.
And Facebook pages have the same interactive features that Facebook profiles have – that is, people can become fans, leave comments on your wall, start and enter discussions, and even upload their own photos and videos. That’s one powerful interactive marketing tool.
The World Class Poetry Toolbar Facebook Page
I’m always looking for new ways to promote the things that I believe in. That’s why I decided to write a Facebook page for the World Class Poetry Toolbar. Just one day after adding that page and promoting it to my Facebook friends I had a few more downloads. Of course, I get a few downloads every month, but to receive the number of downloads that I received the day after writing the page is pretty good. I’ll definitely be writing more Facebook pages and improving this one as well.
If you haven’t downloaded the WCP Toolbar, I’d encourage you to do so. You’ll have access to more than 30 poetry blogs, nearly as many online poetry journals, poetry podcasts and radio shows, including Belinda Subraman Presents / Gypsy Art Show. And that’s just the beginning.
If you are a Facebook user and you haven’t connected with me yet then I invite you to add me as your friend. I’m looking forward to doing more networking through Facebook.
This kind of thing worries me a lot. Soon the only poets being read will be those who are “effective at networking”. Many of the best poets I know are terrible at social networking and hate doing it. It’s part of the reclusive nature of the poet. Many of the great social networkers are not very good poets. It makes me sad that this kind of thing has become necesary to be read and all the great poets who are not particularly social, being shy retiring types will continue to go unnoticed while noisy but horrible poets build readerships through schmoozing. Oh well, it is the way of the world, I suppose. Even in poetry now people are famous for being famous rather than for the quality of the work they produce.
Paul Squiress last blog post..The Nietsche Beardsley Homer Homer Simpson Riff. I wanna call it but people will think I’m an idiot.
Paul, even “shy reclusive” poets can be effective networkers. What’s so wrong with building relationships with people with like interests? That’s what networking is.
Marketing has always been an essential ingredient to promoting literature – quality or not. If you don’t send manuscripts out to publishers then you won’t get published. That’s networking, isn’t it? I notice that you have a blog; isn’t that networking?
Rejecting an effective promotional tool because low-quality producers are good at it is like refusing to breathe because scuba divers wear oxygen tanks.
I met someone in a bookstore the other day, and he gave me the same advice about Facebook: “Search for groups, ask the admin for permission to post poems or excerpts from your books, etc.” He had had great success with this approach.
So I sent messages to three admins, asking if I could post book excerpts, and I got a popup from Facebook warning me that I might get blocked from sending messages since I appear to be a spammer.
I sent a fourth message to another admin on a different topic, namely for permission to post a poem that is relevant to that group, and then I immediately got blocked.
I don’t mean this as a contradiction of WCP’s advice, but only as an anecdote about my first bumbling attempts to use Facebook.
Ed, thanks for the comment. You may have been blocked if you did not first try to engage the communities with some conversation. If people don’t know who you are then they aren’t going to be friendly toward you posting self-serving links and content. You have to build their trust and you do that by joining conversations and allowing people to “warm up to you”. Just like in real life.
Well, I had merely sent messages to the admins, asking of I could post onto their group.
And the blocking was done automatically and immediately by Facebook itself.
Anyway, one of them did respond and I posted a link to my poem.
Maybe I just need to space out my admin-messages to one per day.
Ed, I’m not sure why Facebook would automatically block you unless it had something to do with the way you worded your messages. Akismet for WordPress flags anything as spam if it contains two links or more. Facebook may have a similar set up. Generally speaking, it’s bad form to make such requests until you’ve developed a relationship with group admins. Most social media users would consider that spam even if there was no automatic blocking.
I agree with you that Facebook is poet’s bestfriend. My cousin is into poetry and she’s using Facebook most of the time.
I think Facebook is really nice because we get to connect with great people in our network…people who have the same interests like ours.
You may not know my cousin but I will tell her to add you as her friend in Facebook. I hope you guys could get to know each other and share the same love for poetry.