Comments on: Why Facebook Is The Poet's Best Friend

By: April Unterkunft

April Unterkunft — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:53:09 +0000

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.

By: the poet

the poet — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 03:01:50 +0000

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.

By: Ed Severn

Ed Severn — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 02:05:07 +0000

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.

By: the poet

the poet — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 13:10:19 +0000

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.

By: Ed Severn

Ed Severn — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 03:31:08 +0000

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.

By: the poet

the poet — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:43:19 +0000

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.

By: Paul Squires

Paul Squires — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 03:11:18 +0000

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.