Category: Facebook

Blog, Facebook

Fed Up With Facebook

Christina Hollis

I’m fed up with Facebook – or at least, with the enormous number of spam messages I’m receiving on my Author page.

I used to love posting on both my Personal and my Author pages. I was linked with lots of other writers and small business, both in my local area and beyond. Then a while ago, everything changed.

My posts began to attract a huge number of comments, and it wasn’t only the most recent posts. Comments were being made on items that were many years old.

Normally a flood of interest is a great thing, and I love hearing from readers. Sadly, these comments were different. Almost all were almost impossible to understand – as though English was not simply the the poster’s second language, but their fourth or fifth. Of the comments I could understand, many were pornographic. The rest were offering to post a review my work, which they said they loved reading – although they wanted me to tell them what the title of the book was, together with my name!

Fed Up With Facebook

I investigated my settings, and altered them as best I could. I can hardly block the country which generates 90% of the torrent, as some of my genuine readers would be excluded. These rogue accounts are all in different names, so if I blocked each one I would do nothing else for 168 hours per week, every week.

I tried to find a way to complain to Facebook (with no luck). In the end, I altered my out of office message from: I’m away from my desk at the moment. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can to: I have had so much disturbing spam on this account, I no longer check this inbox. If you are a decent person, please contact me through my other online channels. Thank you.

That has cut the flow down to only about a dozen unwanted messages a day–which is an improvement, believe me. I purposely didn’t include my email address or other page links in this new out of office message. That way, only people who are interested enough in me and my work to search out my details will get in contact.

So far, I’ve not had one single person contact me to say I’m emailing you because I saw your message on Facebook.

As I said earlier, I used to love making contact with people on Facebook. Now I rarely visit my personal page, and really have to steel myself to face all the unwanted messages to my Author Page. I really regret the loss of contact.

Have you had a similar problem? If you managed to fix it, please let me know in the comments below!

To Find Out More…

…about me, click here. To buy my latest book, Royal Hostage, click here, and to receive my monthly newsletter, click here.

A Countryside Christmas, Authorsoundrelations, Facebook, non-fiction, Rachel Brimble, Special offer, stress-busting

What’s On In January…

Christina Hollis

Eleven days into the new year, and I’ve just about managed to stick to my resolutions. How are you doing?

This month, I’m working on a non-fiction project that’s very close to my heart. I’m lucky enough to have lived in the countryside nearly all my life, but most people these days live in towns. The disconnect between living and working peacefully at our own pace and the frantic pace of city life is at the heart of a lot of the world’s problems.  The working title of my current Work In Progress, Country Into Town, gives you an idea what it’s about. It’s a year’s worth of  small, stress-busting changes anyone can make to their busy life. I’ve already written a short magazine article called A Countryside Christmas, ready for publication in December this year. How’s that for forward planning?

Today (11th January) I’m blogging for Rachel Brimble, and on 14th January, I’ll be blogging for authorsoundrelations in my usual monthly spot.

For news of a very special offer coming later this month, follow me on Facebook by liking my author page.

3 Top Tips, Facebook, Pinterest, Quality, social networking, Twitter, Wriitng

Writing In Perspective

Christina Hollis


Description English: A Stipula fountain pen lying on a written piece of paper Date 26 May 2011 Source Power_of_Words_by_Antonio_Litterio.jpg Author Power_of_Words_by_Antonio_Litterio.jpg: Antonio Litterio derivative work: InverseHypercube
By Antonio Litterio
Writing is a dream job – most people would kill to spend their days just thinking about stuff, then writing some of it down. The internet offers so many ways to connect with readers and get feedback, it’s tempting to think that the more time you spend in social networking, the better your sales will be. That’s one good way to measure your success, but it’s a pretty narrow one. Broaden your outlook, and you can widen your horizons. Formulate, Focus and Feed to give your self-esteem a boost.


1 – Formulate A Plan
Set yourself long term, intermediate and short term goals. What do you want to achieve 5 years, 1 year, and 6 months ahead? Make these objectives as specific as you can – “Earn (name your own price!) from writing within the next five years”, “Write at least two books within the next twelve months” or “Finish my novel by Christmas”. You may need to readjust your timescale, but don’t alter your dreams. Keep your eyes on the prize. Print these plans out on paper, and pin them up by your writing station. They’ll act as a spur.

2 – Think Quality as well as Quantity
Spend as much time as you can writing. That sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s amazing how much time gets eaten up by promotion and, let’s be honest, surfing the net while you’re on line typing up or researching.  Every self-publishing site will tell you the best way to drive sales is by publishing another book (incidentally, notice how this nugget of helpful advice is most often pushed by people who then offer to edit/format or illustrate that next book for you – at a price). While frequent releases keep your name in front of your readers, don’t sacrifice quality for the sake of quantity. Work towards both.  Once your work is out in the public domain, it’s there forever. Spend time and care perfecting your work, and only release your very best work.

3 – Feed Your Friends
Not literally, although chocolate cake (real or virtual) always goes down well! Think beyond the boundaries when promoting. Don’t just flog your book: too much of that is an instant turn-off. Market yourself, your whole canon of work and maybe even the genre in which you write. Interact with your real, face-to-face friends as well as your Facebook friends, Twitter followers and other online contacts. Make sure you can be easily found online: if you don’t feel confident setting up your own website, contact your local college. They may run courses, or have students who would relish the challenge of developing a page for you (when was the last time you tried getting a teenager away from a keyboard?). 
Create a Pinterest Board for your book, offer to guest blog, maybe even as one of your characters! Comment on other sites, and join in wherever you can. Be enthusiastic, be helpful and be open to every opportunity.

Above all, write – all the time. Using your skills will hone and improve them, day by day.
Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, marketing, Pomodoro Technique, Twitter, Writing

A Writer’s Life: Twitter, Amazon, LinkedIn ….

Christina Hollis
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMetamodel_Linkedin.jpgFile URL: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Metamodel_Linkedin.jpgAttribution: By Jean-Marie Favre, LIG, University of Grenoble (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
By Jean-Marie Favre
…and Uncle Tom Cobley and all.
If you’ve dropped by my blog before, you’ll already know technology means nothing to me. My main aim in life is to tell stories. To my mind, settling down with a notebook and pencil or my Neo  is sheer luxury, but these days that’s just the start of the process. If your aim is publication, putting words on a page is only part of a writer’s life. You have to market yourself and your work, which takes time – time I’d rather use for writing.  
Getting your name out there and becoming “searchable”is seen as a vital career move  – but what happens then? As well as  blogs, websites, accounts with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,  author pages on Amazon (.com and .co.uk) and publisher’s sites are practically mandatory. All these pages need to be kept up to date, and that’s a continual work-in-progress. The net’s thirst for information is unquenchable, and the sea of snippets is immense. I love keeping up with gossip, so I Tweet regularly as  @ChristinaBooks. Once on-line for that, I find it hard to leave. The quick look at one site I’d intended soon stretches into half a hour of surfing far and wide. I now ration my time on line, so I can concentrate on writing. It’s difficult to break the habit of dipping in and out, so I set a target for the amount of work I’ll get done before I can have a session of idling on the net. This is where the Pomodoro (TM) technique mentioned in my last blog comes in useful. I work intensively for short bursts, then reward myself with a spot of site-hopping.
I’m still trying to find out exactly what LinkedIn is for, by the way. It seems to be full of interesting and like-minded people, but I’m not entirely sure why. Obviously there’s an employment-exchange element, but if someone endorsed my copy-typing skills I think I’d be more likely to refer them to an optician, rather than  offer them a job! 
How do you use LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and the other social networking sites, and what’s the best thing your surfing has done for you?
Christina Hollis, Facebook, Twitter

Address Book Burgling

Christina Hollis

WARNING: If a message gets posted on your Facebook page containing a survey allegedly from me, please mail me direct at christinahollis@hotmaildotcom (replacing word ‘dot’ with an actual dot) to check before continuing. I’ve heard of a couple of instances lately when questions have been posted asking people ‘Do you think Christina Hollis is smart?’ or ‘Do you think Christina Hollis will make a good parent?’ These are clearly spam and have absolutely nothing to do with me. It’s this kind of thing that is rapidly putting me off Facebook. I suspect these messages are automatically generated in response to requests for access to on-line address books, so the system can trawl for other ‘friends’ to contact.

I don’t like to think of questions being generated in my name like this. It might seem a minor gripe, but Facebook is so widely used the opportunities for bullying are immense. Imagine an insecure young person seeing their name attached to a question such as ‘Do you think so-and so is pretty/fat/smart?’. Social network has revolutionised life for millions of people, and when used for good it’s great fun and a vital link between people who would otherwise never meet, but it has its down side.

Have you come across any problems like this? Do you find the benefits of Facebook, Twitter etc outweigh the problems?