Let’s have a little discussion about blogging, making friends, and self-promotion. I use social websites (such as Facebook and Livejournal) for four primary reasons:

  1. Meeting and chatting with other writers. I love you guys, I really do. Not in that way, of course… In the other, non-creepy way.
  2. Blabbing about whatever comes to mind. Nothing like a world-wide audience.
  3. Chronicling my descent into fiction-writing madness. Weeeeeeeee!
  4. Learning about my friends, new and old, as they chronicle their own journeys.

I think most writers in the blogosphere have a similar list of reasons why they blog and use social sites. Now, in reasons 2 and 3, there’s a certain level of self-promotion involved. I post about stories I’ve published, in the hopes that writing fans will seek out those magazines and support their continued existence. I detail my processes and discoveries while writing short stories and novels. My hope is that people will be interested in this stuff and remember my name when they’re in the market for fiction.

But I am dead-set against using social media for a hard sell.

Twice now, I’ve had to disconnect from people I’ve met on social websites out of annoyance at being continuously spammed. In both instances, the perpetrators were other creative people, using these websites for self-promotion. But they crossed the line into hard-sell territory by using private messages and communications to promote their work. Neither contributed to discussions, or blogged about their processes or thoughts on whatever it was they’d created.

I do not use social websites to have my “friends”  bombard me with advertisements. That is a misuse of the platform. It’s rude to spam me with private messages urging me to buy/become a fan of/join a group about your work. I don’t like it when the spam is about penis-enlargement pills or weight-loss programs, so why in the world would I want people who I’ve added to my friends list to do the same?

Facebook and Livejournal are not mailing lists. Don’t treat them as such.