Our Buddies, The Social Media Review Hounds

If you have ever used big hashtags for your social media posts, you've probably seen one of these comments before: 

"Awesome! DM me! Let's Talk! :D !!!" 

Something along those lines, usually with butterflies or sparkles or little hearts. And should you choose to follow the glitter, it will usually take you to a small promotional social media page. 

Now, I tend to avoid these like the plague. I get dozens of those little comments, and dozens more of these pages reaching out to me first through my DMs offering their sales pitch. At first, I thought they were just spam bots (which they are), but I didn't understand why I was getting so many or what their purpose was. I did some digging and found that these little bot messages were ways to try and lure you into using their promotional services. 

I will tell you that I DID try a couple of these early in my career, just to see what would happen. After dropping a fair amount of change, the owners of the promotional sites would create fancy images and a base review for your books. And luckily, I didn't get scammed the couple times I did this; the promotional people did go through and post my book. 

The only issue was it didn't do anything. 

They will boast their thousands of followers, and promise that they will get you in front of all those people... but even if a couple thousand people DO see the post, they usually just glance at it and move on. Actually hooking people's attention and making them interested in buying your product online has proven to be one of the hardest things I have ever faced in my career. (But I will save the full in-depth speech about my marketing madness at a later date.)

So far, I have found that the statistics do not change. You can find different promotional social media pages and pay them varying rates; but with little to no interest in your product. For me, it's not worth the investment when I can be using my money on other things; like expenses while I'm out at an in-person event.  

You are more than welcome to try these services for yourself; maybe you will have better luck. But if you do, find one that is reasonable in cost, jussssst in case the post doesn't get the response they claim it will. 

As for me? I'm going to continue on my merry way, deleting their "DM Me!" Spam comments, and try to keep my heels away from the nip of those hounds.