Just ran across a wonderful post about why reintroducing yourself on your various social media is IMPORTANT. It isn’t about starting over, but about defining where you are now. If you have been on any app, or just plugging along on your own blog for decades, every now and again you need to say “hi” to the people you interact with. Let them know about changes, tell them how what you do on this social media works NOW (not the original intent), let them know if your life has changed, touch base with the people who haven’t been there since the beginning and let the people who haven’t been around in a while know what is happening.
Look at “What a Reintroduction Really Is (an Why It Matters More Than You Think) by Jon Marie Pearson (direct link is: https://www.genealogyandthesocialsphere.com/post/what-a-reintroduction-really-is-and-why-it-matters-more-than-you-think ) normally what she writes about is genealogy, but this particular post is very relevant to content creators: artists, writers, actors, etc. If you are on the world-wide-web, touch base here and then touch base with the people who follow you.
WRITING EXERCISE: On each of the platforms where you are active (or semi-active or mean to be reactive again), do a reintroduction post.
READING EXERCISE: If you follow creators on various platforms, cull your list to those that are still creating what you want to follow. If they have gone off the path you want to follow, choose new people to follow.
My attempt:
Well, let’s start with the blog. I’ve been blogging since November 11, 2012. The original blog was on a wordpress site – we all start there, don’t we? I activated erinpenn.com (Erin Penn’s Second Base – because, get it, it is my second attempt at a blog and at the time I was mostly interested in romance) sometime in late 2016 or early 2017 and moved everything over that was still relevant. Wow, over 8 year on this site and over 13 years overall.
Originally a little flashes and a little ranting, the blog as grown to a three-times-a-week posting in three groups of topics:
- Original Storytelling – These are a mix of Visual flashes (inspired by a picture), Text flashes (inspired by something read or heard), expansion on previous flashes, and flat out something I am writing.
- Book Reviews and Interacting with Books (A) Book reviews twice a month, one a solo book and one a series, curated from the 120 or so books I read annually. (If you want them ALL, befriend me over on on GoodReads (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4918831.Erin_Penn) or StoryGraph (https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/erin_penn). (B) Bookquotes inspired by books I read that I have created and put on my TikTok account (https://www.tiktok.com/@erinpennbooks). (C) And the big thing particular to me, Editing Rants. I edit books, which is heavily interactive, and there are…problems…with books in the process of becoming published.
- Learning stuff and crawling around on the web: (A) Writing Exercises, (B) Other Cool Blogs, (C) Geeking Science, (D) Cool pictures I have found on the web.
- On fifth weeks of Tuesday-Thursday I talk about the blog or art or encourage people to vote.
My social media footprint also includes the previously mentioned GoodRead and StoryGraph, plus TikTok. Also YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@erinpenn7745) which right now is reprints of the TikTok, but might eventually hold other topics. It had started out with some editing rants and I would like to return to them. On Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/ErinPenn1/meme-created-by-erin-penn-i-made-these/), I post memes I have created – these are both bookquotes and writing encouragement. My Facebook author page (https://www.facebook.com/ErinPennBooks/) is just posts letting people know when I drop stuff on the blog.
I’m thinking hard about adding a Substack, which will mostly be reposts from the blog. I tried Pateron but that didn’t work well for me.
Anyway, welcome. Glad you are here!