Hi, everyone. We're glad you're here. This is the Three Lesbians and a Pen podcast. Get ready to have your world rocked. As we dive into the wild and sometimes wacky world of self-publishing. We are three fabulous bestselling authors. I'm your host, Kimberly Todd with my best friends.

K. C. Luck

and Jamey Moody. 

Join us as we discuss the joys of writing, challenges of self-publishing, and anything else that tickles our fancy. 

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 29 of the Three Lesbians and a Pen podcast. I'm Kimberly Todd, and I'm here with my fabulous friends, KC Luck and Jamey Moody. Today we're talking about Using Social Media, but before we start, how was everyone's week, KC?

I had a good week. I managed to get back from Sun River, the resort here in Oregon, where they had a record amount of snow. So I did broadcast from there last week, if you remember. And then I had to get home and they had 18 inches of snow while we were there, so that. Yeah, it was funny. We like trudged down to the brewery and to the grocery store there in the village and they're like, I've never seen snow, this much on one day.

I'm like, great! 

And there you were, living it. 

Yeah, so we chained up and unburied the car and headed down the hill. And amazingly you get about, 30 minutes away and there's not a bit of snow. So, it's just this little vortex of snowness. It's like crazy. 

But on, other news, I am prepping for a book to come out. So, I have been doing social media on that, posting pictures of my cat with my cover, to get everybody to like my stuff and pre-order is available. It's called, “In the Twilight Hours” and it comes out on Thursday.

Ooh, this Thursday. Good for you. Let's see. I've been paying attention to the NCAA March Madness Basketball games and things. The team I really liked, Texas A & M, disappointed me, Saturday because they didn't play very well in the second half and lost, but, you know, that's the way it goes. My brackets are still intact 'cause my final four there, if you play the games and everything, it's just kind of fun to, try to guess who's gonna win. And then I went to Dallas to watch more rugby. Let me tell you, man, that is a rough sport.

Mm-hmm.

I don't think you realize it until you see it in person. It is rough.

Yeah.

And it's girl's rugby, right?

Yeah. my niece. It was crazy. But I met up with, several cousins and we had a great time. That's, my weekend. How about you, Kimberly?

My wife and I made it through yet another movie where we watched the entire thing. We went to see, Alto Knights with Robert De Niro. And it's cool because he plays two different characters in the movie. 

I can't believe the makeup that they used, how he looked different. You really did believe it was two different actors. 

 What was the name of it?

Alto Knights, K-N-I-G-H-T-S. We really enjoyed it, and then we went out for a date night dinner and that was fabulous. And that's pretty much it for us. Not too exciting over here.

Sounds exciting to me.

Okay, so do we have any texts this week, KC? 

We did get a couple of texts from our regular texters, and I always appreciate them very much. Cheryl says she uses Facebook when time allows. She has a lot going on in her life with her job and her wife. So we appreciate that she follows us on the podcast and also CeeJay says Facebook has the most reach, but also has the most scammers, which I agree. There's lots of weirdos on Facebook. And this is the quote I liked, “Her block list is as long as a drive through Texas.”

And let me tell you, that's a long ass way.

Yeah, I've done it. 

Cheryl also emailed me as well. And said that she, loves connecting with us on the podcast and does Facebook. I had a longtime reader, Jean that also reached out and thanked us for explaining a little bit about the Amazon boycott because she reads like 300 books a year on KU. Can you imagine?

I know that must be awesome. Anyway, so KU is a big deal for her. She'd said though, that at one time she was afraid that by using KU, it kind of was shorting the authors as far as our, royalties go. But, now she knows that it's a good way to read our books. So, Kimberly, anything on Insta?

Nope. Instagram was quiet this week, so we're just gonna jump right into the episode and that is Using Social Media. So KC, you wanna kick it off?

Yeah, so social media, as an author, you need to kind of pick one. I picked Facebook and it is literally what launched my career as an author. At first, I had started under my real name and realized that I wanted to have more of a barrier between my personal life and my professional author life.

So I created a profile just for KC Luck. And then I started posting on it regularly and got into groups. So that is the one I use, now. I, also have Instagram and I have Blue Sky, but those are far, second and thirds to how much I use Facebook and how much of a following I have there. So that is my, social media of choice. How about you, Jamey? What is your favorite?

You know, I'm not sure I have a favorite. I will say I am mostly on Facebook, Instagram and Threads at this point. I rarely post on Twitter. We post information about the podcast occasionally because there are still listeners on Twitter and, I'm on Blue Sky and just kind of started dabbling with it.

But I kind of have a love, hate, relationship with social media. I think it's great, but I just don't think my life is interesting enough, compared to a lot of other people who post on social media. I get the most likes on, posts that I make with Leo in them.

Yeah. 

I mean, I can't help it. I am what I am and live how I live. But, I don't know. I think it's interesting what is considered, "postable", is that a word or did we just make up a word?

It is a word now, I like that. 

What's postable and what's not. You know, so...

One thing that I do try to do is if I post something, especially about my books on Facebook, I tried to do a different post on the other social media outlets because you don't want 'em to be exactly the same because a lot of our readers do all of them too. And if I post on Instagram, it is gonna be the same on threads because it will post there for me. So, I kind of like that feature because then I only have to go to one spot to post.

And then I post on Facebook. And like I said, I'm just kind of starting with Blue Sky. I'm not on TikTok. I have a profile on TikTok and I did, dabble with it a little bit. But if your, life is not interesting enough to post on Facebook or Instagram or threads, how in the world can I make a boring video and put it out there? Really?

Three times day.

Yeah. I've been dabbling with reels and things like that, and I enjoy creating those, so those could go on there.

I think you need to choose one or two and stick with it. It's hard to spread yourself over all the social media outlets.

Mm-hmm.

Kimberly, what about you? 

Yeah, I struggle with social media, everyone knows it. I'm not really a big fan of it. I mean, I think it's great for marketing. I think you definitely need to be out there and you need to create these accounts and do all of the author-ee things, but it is hard to think of stuff to post. And I think you hear a lot of authors saying that, but some people are fabulous at it. They just have great ideas. And every time I sit, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna spend two hours today and I'm gonna make up five to 10 posts and I just can't think of anything. I don't know what it is. I think maybe I'm just too boring too. I have no idea.

And let's face it, you have a dog and I have a freaking orchid. So, okay, so three months of watching the little tentacle thing grow out for the flower to eventually bloom is probably not interesting to people. Here it is. It's another two millimeters longer. Look how green the leaves are. Yay.

Oh, you'd be surprised.

Sorry, I'm not gonna put my steak dinner. No offense to people that do that, but I'm just like, I don't even know why you'd wanna see the steak dinner. I mean, if I was a chef and I was doing a food blog or something, or maybe you went on vacation, you were excited to show a dinner. But other than that, I really don't know. Like, oh, here's where we went to dinner in New Jersey on Friday night. You know, I like, I just don't think people would enjoy that. So as far as writing, one of my fun things that I like to do is I'll take my book pretty much everywhere I go, and I love to photograph it. 

Mm-hmm 

Especially if it relates to the book in any way, that's even cooler. We went to a vampire museum and I brought my vampire book and stuff like that. But I just find it so difficult. So yeah, your advice to take one I think is true and smart, and then you can expand. And for me, believe it or not, I loved Twitter. That was my favorite. I'm gonna switch to Blue Sky. I have a pretty good following already there. I haven't done much, but that's gonna be my new thing. Blue Sky and Instagram. 

Mm-hmm.

In the beginning I liked Twitter better too, but yeah, it's kind of a shit show now. Maybe we need to ask our listeners, what do you like to see? Would a boring meal be interesting to you? Would an orchid be interesting to you? Would looking yesterday at my new refrigerator that wasn't working correctly and Googling everything in the world to try to get it to work correctly.

Is that interesting? 

Yes! 

I guess I could post a picture of the ice dispenser because that's what was not working correctly, which is now everybody can relax. It's working now, but I guess I could have put a picture and said, still waiting...  

You could have. 

For the ice, I guess. Yeah. So, listeners, readers, what's interesting for you to see about your favorite authors on social media?

I really kinda wanna know. I just wonder if social media is as great of a marketing tool as we think. I know it helps some of my readers to notice that when a book comes out, but I think your newsletter is much more beneficial, your subscribers, because you talk to them with all the news, and you're not hitting them every day like you have to on social media. You're sending it occasionally, but I think that's where if you as a listener or reader will join an author's newsletter, you're gonna know everything.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So actually, I'm huge into metrics and KPIs. I love to track stuff and so on. My releases in the past, not so much now 'cause I've seen the trend, but let's say like for Everybody Needs a Hero. I tracked, when I sent out the first email about my pre-order, how many pre-orders did I get, and then how many pre-orders did I get when I posted on my Facebook page and how many, when I posted in Facebook groups? On a different day, I did it on Instagram and then I did it on Twitter back in the time. And on the book release, I sent an email to all my, newsletter subscribers and I tracked how many of those were opened and how many of those resulted in sales. So, I was able to see the tale and I can tell you that is a huge drop between your newsletter subscribers list, who buy, and then Facebook profile, and then groups, and it just goes right down like it's a cliff, just straight down, like you're a plane coming in for a landing or a crash, however you wanna look at it.

 So the newsletter is your...Oh it is it... Bang for your buck.

Oh yeah. 

Yeah. It's like 10 to one easily. So, yeah, all the social media in the world is not gonna help you if you don't have a newsletter. You have to have that.

But if we had wild and exciting lives, I wonder if that would help when we post on social media, but I don't think it does.

It might get you a lot of followers, like maybe you'll have, I don't know, 10,000 followers on your Instagram, but it doesn't mean that they're going to buy so you don't know. You could look cool, but you might not be making any sales. 

Right. I actually asked on my Facebook profile one time, I said, how many of you actually read my books and how many of you are following, just because you find me an interesting character? And it was like 50/50. It was really interesting. I only had like 300 responses, but still, that's a pretty decent sampling you know, 4,000 or so followers on Facebook. And I was just like, wow, there's so many people here. Who don't read my books, which is so sad. 

Yeah. Really. 

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't make a social media account people. 

That's right. You still gotta be out there. You still have to have followers because half of them are gonna read your book. So…

You could always show orchid pictures.

Yeah. Or cat pictures. 

And go to the ones that you like to look at things on. That's the one you need to concentrate on because if that's what you enjoy, then that's where you're gonna enjoy posting more. 

I go on Facebook a lot because I love the community. So, in the groups, you can see what's happening in the author world or if there's new tech that you need to know about or if there's some kind of weird thing going on. And also, it's just nice to see what other people are publishing, in the author world.

And then also with readers. I follow a lot of the readers to see what they, like and don't like. And like if they make a comment of someone else's book, I don't take that on as something negative. But I do listen to them. So if they say, oh, I hate when it's so slow at the beginning, or whatever their comment is, I keep that in mind when I'm writing to make sure readers will like it.

Mm-hmm.

I think something else to consider too is if I'm gonna try to connect with my readers other than my newsletter, I think they're on Facebook because they are of a certain age. I'm not saying there aren't younger people that read my books, but I think there are older people on Facebook and that's where they are. And certainly not many of them want to learn a new, social media outlet. I know, I don't. So I think you need to think of that too. Of course, you want all the age groups to read your books, but they don't necessarily. But as an author, you need to look at where your readers are and then where they're probably gonna be on social media.

Right. I totally agree. I think that, predominantly our readers are in a certain age range and 40 plus, and they are on Facebook. But if you want to try to get out to the younger ones, you are gonna have to learn TikTok, which leads me to videos. So how many of you ever do live videos? Because when I first started, I did live videos almost every single day for like the first year, and it was amazing the response people, you know, made to those. But I can't imagine doing it now. I would go crazy.

When I first started on TikTok, this makes me laugh now. I was reading, excerpts from my books just a little bit, you know, and I'd say, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And, then I would post that and my niece said, you know, ­Aunt Jamey, I love the stuff you do, but you need to stop doing that. I was like, it's OK.

I don't wanna do it anyway.

Isn't that great, man? I may have asked her, I may have said, what do you think? She's like, eh, no, I think you could do other things. So that's my thing with TikTok. So I then I started making videos and putting them on there without me on them or Leo on them. 

It's tough to figure out what people wanna see.

But I mean, come on. If you want somebody to read your book and you're giving them some of the best lines of it, why wouldn't that entice them? You'd think, but no, not the way I was delivering them.

I'm never gonna read, ever anywhere, and definitely not camera.

Oh gosh. So, there you go. Listeners. We're not gonna read our books to ya. 

So, okay, so, but some rules for authors who wanna get on social media. There are some things that I would recommend that you, don't do, and that is called drive-bys. I don't know if you guys have seen those, but they are, when people go to a group an author goes to a group and all they do is post a link to their book and then no comment or anything else, and then they leave the group and go onto something else and they don't even reply to your comments. So that sucks. 

Well, I must say that I do sometimes do drive-bys. I don't do them much anymore, but it's because I'm not interesting. The interesting thing about me is I publish books.

Ohh... So what else am I gonna do if I drive by there?

I'm gonna say, Hey, you read my book yet? 

No. You're not quite the same as people that just drop a link to their book and nothing else.

Oh, no, I'm gonna tell you about it and do it more than once. It's like when my book releases, or maybe, every now and then I wanna put a thing about, hey, have you read this book? You know it's a little older, but boy is it good, you know, or something like that. Because every time you talk about drive-bys, I feel like I'm doing it, so I'm huh? 

No, no, no..., 

Oh, thank you. I feel better about myself now. Okay, listeners. I've gotta say Kimberly just yawned for the second or third time during this podcast. So, what the hell are we boring you? You gotta leave this part in too. Kimberly does the editing. So, this better make the podcast. What the hell friend?

Yeah. It's only what Jamey's talking.

Oh, oh, ouch. Ouch.

It's just the whole topic of social media. I just, I just... Oh boy. 

OK. Blame on that.

Oh my goodness.

Nothing to do with my pod pals. I love them both dearly. 

Okay. think you need to post somebody yawning and say, this is me on social media.

There you go.

That's what they probably think anyway, so it's okay

Dang.

About myself, I mean.

Let's move this right along. So, another thing don't do, is don't hire a virtual assistant or a bot to do your posting. That one is another one that I think people fall into the trap of thinking they can do, but it is not personalized. It can be off the topic, and it is just not cool. If you don't have time to do it, then don't do it.

Now, what makes you think that? What are you talking about? Because I saw a thing the other day, about authors hiring virtual assistants and they were pretty good. So, when I saw this little bullet on our comments, I wondered about it.

I'm not saying don't get a virtual assistant. Hell yeah. I'd have one in a second to help me with all the little tiny details, but don't have 'em. Just go and do a drive-by. 

Oh, okay. Okay. I just wanted to be clear on that because, you use Canva. Kimberly and I use book brush and they've got some virtual assistants that are very helpful on posting the things that you don't like to do, which is social media because we're boring. That would be great for me and Kimberly to have somebody that would make great content for social media and post it for us.

If you find a good person, yes. Just don't use a bot. 

If I could hire someone to do all of my social media, that was a person that I could say, they'd say, these are the posts we're thinking of doing, or we're gonna post four times a week. We just need you to do this, this, and this. I would be thrilled because I just struggle with it. Like I said.

Yeah, I think that's what these are, that BookBrush was talking about too. They're virtual assistants, but I think they do the posting for you. 

Mmmhmmm

That would be awesome. 

I'd have to see it and be impressed because you have to have good graphics, you have to have good content, and they need to be somewhat personalized. You can't just, pull something outta your, ear and have it be posted. And one more thing, I'm gonna say this because of Jae has had this happen to her, I'm gonna put this out there for her especially, is don't use people's stuff without asking ahead of time. Right. 

Yes, that is not cool. So don't repost something as your own. If it's actually from someone else, that's not very nice.

Oh yeah, for sure. Okay, what else about social media, friends?

Okay. So, I think KC brought up, strange people. I have had a few, weird interactions with some people where I've actually had to block them. I just think you gotta be careful who you're talking to, 'cause at first, they seemed to me to be just, you know, fun, normal readers. And then it got a little bit too explicit for me, so I blocked them and it made me feel uncomfortable. And I told my wife about it and she's like, just don't interact with those people anymore. So I don't, you know, I just stopped doing it and it went away. I mean, 'cause they were blocked. It was only a couple people, but... 

You know, I'm just a writer sitting here, making a book. All that crazy stuff is just foreign to me, so... 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But when they read the book, they start to think they know you and they start to think thoughts about you, and then you get the weirdos. So yeah, it's a block. Block. Block, yes. Just like, CeeJay was saying, you know, their list of people you've blocked is as long as a drive through Texas. So yeah. 

There's a lot more nice people that respond to my, newsletter. And I get a lot of people that, DM me on Instagram and they're really nice. They just wanna know or have a little chat or whatever and they're very cool. And I love that. 

Yes, It's a fine line. there's unfortunately, one bad apple every once in a while, but there's a lot of good interactions I have with so I love that. Don't stop you emailing me. 

Yeah, because it's nice for us to get to know our readers a little better. You wanna know your authors a little better? Well, we like to know our readers a little better too, so it can be beneficial.

Okay. But there's one, be very selective when you tag me. I dunno about you guys, but I get tagged in the weirdest, weirdest posts that have nothing to do with books. 

I do occasionally get tagged in things. 

I don't mind being tagged if someone says, I read your book and I loved it, and here's a tag. Or I tag a bunch of authors that I love or whatever. I love that. So just don't tag me if you have a lost dog in your neighborhood, because I don't live in your neighborhood, so you know.

Okay.

My tags go to a holding area.

Oh, do they? That's a good idea. Yeah. I should probably look into that. Really? Interesting. 

Yep. Not that I don't love dogs. Don't get me wrong. Lost dog is important to find. I don't wanna get hate mail for that.

That's right. 

Uh oh.

Uh oh. Gonna get a nasty text.

Everyone knows KC. We've seen how you react to Leo jumping around back there, so we know you love dogs.

You should have seen him as we were getting ready to record, I had to put his squeaker toys away 'cause he was ready to see y'all, I guess, man. Nuts-O. 

I guess that's it for this week. For next week, we're gonna be talking about, How to Plan for Writing Full-Time. 

I wonder why we're gonna do that. Let me just jump in here. Let's ask KC, how long till you retire?

Yeah. So, by the time this comes out, it'll be under 10 days. Yes. I'm so excited. This is gonna be awesome. I can't wait to be a full-time author. 

The question of the week is for those authors out there, how many of you are full-time and how many want to be full-time and have a plan to get there?

Well, that's it for this week. Thanks for listening.

Thank you everybody. See you next week.

Have a great week. Bye. 

Thanks for listening. If you'd like to reach out to us, you can contact us by email at contact@threelesbiansandapen.com with the number three spelled out or on Instagram, Facebook and X at Three Lesbians and a Pen using the number three. And finally on our website, at threelesbiansandapen.com, we look forward to hearing from you, see you next week.