Thursday, January 13, 2011

Thankful for Social Networking

Over Thanksgiving weekend last year I had an email crash. In the grand scheme of crashes it wasn’t that bad. I only lost a week of email, nothing else. I do have Time Machine backup, which thankfully keeps everything backed up and me less fearful of crashes.

Once my email was back up and running I did three things immediately.

I emailed all my clients to tell them about the crash and ask them to resend anything they had sent during that week that I hadn’t answered.

I did a blog post about the crash, alerting as many people as possible and explaining how lost queries would be handled (since I was closed to queries I simply asked that they requery in January). The other problem was that I had responded to and deleted queries that were now showing up in my in-box, so I did have to rework my response to explain why some people might be getting the same reply twice.

And last, I tweeted multiple times about the situation to spread the word as much as possible.

And it worked. While I’m sure there are plenty who missed the news, plenty more retweeted my announcement and requeried or resent material I had requested based on my tweets.

Social networking can be a truly amazing thing.


Jessica

10 comments:

me said...

I agree. So many advantages to social networking.

Thing I like the most about it: The ability to connect with people I probably would have lost track of if it weren't for email, Twitter and Facebook.

I'm thinking about using Time Machine backup. I just need a better external hard-drive.

ryan field said...

It really is a great way of keeping in touch...and sometimes without the hassles of e-mails.

I'm always terrified of e-mail crashes. I've heard about them but never experienced it. This is why I copy and send everything to my two other e-mail accounts. I figure with three accounts I can't lose much...other than missing incoming mail for a short time.

Kate Douglas said...

LOL...you're not kidding, Jessica. It's my birthday today and I've just responded to hundreds of greetings on Facebook. If I didn't feel old before, I definitely do now!

Obviously, I'm teasing--if not for Facebook and, I hate to admit, Twitter, I would have very little contact with anyone other than my imaginary friends in my stories. I spend most of my days sequestered in my office working. Social networking gives me a life away from writing, and I'm very grateful for the ability it provides those of us who really DON'T get out much, to connect with others.

Brigetta Schwaiger said...

I agree. In so many ways, it just makes life easier. Now, if I could just get off the computer.

BookEnds, A Literary Agency said...

Tivi--Time Machine greatest thing ever. I was using Entourage though and it was messed up for some reason. I hate Microsoft. Have since dumped Entourage. Continuing to use Time Machine. it's fab.

ryan field said...

"I'm very grateful for the ability it provides those of us who really DON'T get out much, to connect with others."

Thank you for stating this. I went from owning an art gallery for ten years and being in constant contact with the public daily, and writing part time, to selling the business and working at home writing full time. It's a shock, not being with people all the time. And can get frustrating, too. Thanks to social networks at least there's some communication.

Scooter Carlyle said...

I love social networking because it has allowed me to meet other authors and learn of many opportunities. I live in Montana, and there aren't that many fantasy fiction authors here for some reason. It makes me feel less isolated.

On a side note, I did know of two other locals that wrote fantasy fiction. Last weekend, I learned that his definition of fantasy involved a dominatrix. Worse yet, that's the kind of stuff he thought I was writing, too! Awkward!

jjdebenedictis said...

Nothing feeds my opposing needs to be a hermit and to be friendly like social networking.

And yes! Sometimes it has practical uses, too.

Bron said...

This is a very timely post for me. I live in Brisbane in the state of Queensland in Australia. We've just had a major flood and social networking provided valuable updates, both from ordinary people and authorities such as the police. We were asked to stay off the phone network so it could be used for people who really needed it, so I sat on Facebook to check on family and friends, and used Twitter to see what was going on in other parts of the city and state.

While TV and online news sites provided valuable updates, I found social networking was usually ahead with breaking news.

Dara said...

I love networking too! I don't always keep up on Twitter but I've been trying :)