Today I have been pondering the vagaries of Twitter, Facebook and social media in general.

I have come to the conclusion that targeted advertising can be a very good thing if it is targeted well. We receive so much information on a daily basis. I for one receive a huge number of requests and suggestions about what to read. I would love to read everything but I have to be honest here and say that I am very unlikely to read most of it. Heck, I’m a writer. I haven’t even managed to read all my own work.

So, why do we writers advertise to other writers? Why do we collect them?

 The answer to that question is that “Bird’s of a feather flock together” we really do. We like to see how things are going in the writing world. We like to glean ideas and to be able to judge ourselves against some imagined chart of success. We are nosy. We also want to feel part of a gang. That is a perfectly normal and wonderful thing and balm to the soul when you are sitting in a darkened room with your fifth coffee and another first draft. We simply need to remember that these are our people and not our audience. Of course we are all pretty happy to bump up each others Twitter “followship” that goes without saying.

Successful PR is targeted PR. Every so often we should check our strategy to see whether we are putting our work in front of the right people; the people before you who will buy and not just the people behind you, who will back you all the way.