The worst thing a writer can do on social media…

Having trouble harnessing your hashtags, keeping your pins sharp or posting things that people will read? Social media seems to be both a blessing and curse for writers – offering a chance to tell more of your story, and yet piling on a bunch of bells, whistles and EXTRA TIME to everything you say and do.

Luckily there’s Peg Fitzpatrick – who makes a living (as a social media marketing pro) out of squeezing the most value out of social media for her clients (and herself). Her most recent book, written with Guy Kawasaki, is called The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users.

Allison Tait interviewed her in episode 50 of our So you want to be a writer podcast, and she shared what she believes is the cardinal sin of writers on social media today:

“Straight up on social media I think that the number one thing that I see that writers do is just only talk about themselves and their books. I mean, it’s too much. You definitely do want to share your book stuff every once in awhile, but you have to mix in other things.

“Writers get so tied into their other creative modes sometimes when they’re on social media — I just see so many people just tweeting stuff about their books all of the time. I, personally, feel like writers can have the absolute best social media because they are creative and they work with words, so a tweet is not a challenge for a writer with a huge vocabulary, right?

“But, in practice, a lot of times you see people just tweeting their books over and over again. It’s like, ‘No, you need to share other things too…!’

You can read a transcript or listen to the full podcast interview with Peg here. And for more information on her book, aimed at all levels of social media users, visit her site.