*Note: I’m not actually hiring a digital life coach.

There is nothing in the world that I feel more conflicted about than social media. Nothing. The contradictions, the wasted time, the ROI. It all seems too much to think about and a waste of time to even analyze.

That’s why there are social media experts. People now make livings off teaching other people how to manage their digital lives! Digital life coaches! They can help you reach your goals and maybe teach you a few things you didn’t know, but in the end you could technically manage it all yourself with a little attention, human-ness, and balance.

There were some interesting talking points at LitFest’s noon-hour panel on author promotion in the digital age, featuring Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail, Dana DiTomaso, Alexis Kienlen, and Noah Richler, who all use social media as a way to network and to connect with their audiences. Though interestingly enough, my google search doesn’t bring me to a website just for Noah… Anyway, what I learned was simple: social media is a multifaceted tool that people can use in whatever ways they see fit and in whatever ways they are capable of, based on the utmost of all resources: time.

I’m curious about how publishers use (and will use) social media. Publishers conglomerate all their writers, agents, and editors, and present them as a single entity via their page. Does social media for publishers work, or is it best left to the authors? And what happens now that platforms like Facebook might start charging for 100% reach to a page’s ‘likers’ ?(Charging for a service?! That’s ludicrous!).

Do readers (who are not also writers or editors, mind you) know who published their favourite novels? If they do, do they care? And if they don’t (care, that is), is that really a big deal?