Working the Socials

Table of Contents

• Welcome Back (00:00)

• Project Updates

  • From Parts Unknown #4 in Prelaunch (02:39)

  • Being Everywhere at Once is Exhausting (03:26)

  • Tier 1 (04:23)

  • Tier 2 (08:30)

  • Tier 3 (10:57)

  • Cutting My Losses (14:49)

  • Pruning the Social Media Tree (15:27)

• Leave a Comment (16:26)

• Coming Up on the Substack (16:34)

• Super Secret Epilogue (17:16)

Welcome Back

I try not to complain about social media often. Everybody knows it’s awful. Sometimes it can be fun and engaging, but more often than not, it’s a time suck.

There are many better ways to spend your time, better ways to learn and there’s certainly better entertainment available out there — but it's so accessible. You can easily reach into your pocket and watch time melt away.

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina 🇺🇦 on Unsplash

Not to mention, I think the term social media is outdated. We use these tools more to broadcast than we do to actually be social. There's fewer and fewer places where we're actually talking to one another, rather than using our personas to scream into the void.

Worse yet, negative behaviour is often encouraged.

You’re more likely to get a response if you say something wrong than if you’re overwhelmingly positive. It promotes the worst of us.

Personally, the mantra of “don't read the comments” is something that I need to take to heart. Sometimes, though, the comments are actually quite wonderful - like here on Substack. It’s worth the risk.

At the end of the day, I'm a businessman at heart. I want people to read my writing, whether it's in comics or novel form, and unless I'm going to stand on the side of the street wearing a sandwich board ringing a bell, there's really no way to get attention without having a decent social media presence.

What I’m lacking is balance. I'm rethinking whether I need to be everywhere at once. Sometimes, there's a benefit to doing one thing really, really well. (This tagline I stole from a local brewery, Steam Whistle.) I'm never the type to do just one thing, but I do think trying to do everything is a problem.

In today’s post, we’ll do a deep dive into all the socials I use. I'll give you my honest assessment of each and a preview into strategies that I'm taking for the future. I’ll also tell you about a big swing I’m taking soon, something that’s too nascent to share with anyone but my paid subscribers.

If you're interested, join us behind the paywall. We're still one of the most affordable and valuable Substacks on the platform.

If you subscribe today, be sure to click this link and not the one provided by Substack to get yourself an extra long trial.

If you choose not to do so, it’s okay. I'll be back on Wednesday with another free post: fulfilling three Kickstarters (nearly) at once.

I'll see all of you then, but before I let you go…

Project Updates

From Parts Unknown #4 is in Prelaunch!

I shared the news on Wednesday that the prelaunch for From Parts Unknown #4 is live and collecting followers. It's still early days but we have a couple more weeks before May 28th to get this prelaunch as high as possible.

My hope is to get this to triple digits before we launch. We're about 1/4 of the way there.

If you haven't yet, help us reach this goal by clicking the Notify button on Kickstarter. It's free to do, and even if you don't intend to back, it does help us with the algorithm as it gets in front of people who may want to back this campaign.

And now, for the paid folks, let's get into the social media hellscape and how I try to survive it without losing my head.