Should this letter writer give her friend unsolicited feedback about her social media posts?
Dear Nina,
I have a friend who is promoting her writing on social media in a very poor way. Every day she posts lines from her current book or even teasers from her next book. Every day! And I don’t think these lines are really that impressive. So do I say something or just smile and click ‘like’ now and then?
This is no different than any friend posting about any kind of business. If their posts are possibly hurting their sales or reputation, or at the very least doing nothing to help sales, is it my duty as a good friend to bring it up?
Signed, Not sure which route is most helpful
Dear Not sure which route is most helpful,
This is a good question for our modern times! I’m not sure what the best path is here for ALL business situations, but I have some thoughts about your situation.
If you tell her . . .
Hopefully the desire to give your friend this feedback is coming from a good place. You want her to succeed and you feel she’s turning off readers or even possibly embarrassing herself. Right?
I will tell you that I have occasionally received harsh critiques of things (rather innocuous things, in my opinion) I put on Facebook. One person criticized me for having posts about the creative writing classes I teach. I’m not sure how, without Facebook, anyone would know about those classes since they’re not in a course catalogue of any kind. But, whatever. See! I’m STILL defensive about it. I think the incident occurred four years ago.
There have been other moments of “helpful advice,” which were much more cutting than the example about my class. Your friend may not appreciate your good intentions or see them as “good” at all. Also, perhaps you’re not her intended audience for her posts or for her books.
For what it’s worth, I get why her posts feel cringe-worthy to you. As a writer, an avid reader, and a former “Twitter guru,” I would not recommend posting daily with lines from her book. However, I don’t think it’s worth telling her and adding any awkwardness to your friendship . . .
UNLESS SHE ASKS.
If she asks . . .
If she asks, tell her the truth, noting that it’s just your opinion. Certainly don’t tell her you think the writing is unimpressive. Keep the feedback focused on the frequency of the posts, which I agree is a problem. Suggest mixing it up with posts about other writers’ books so that her feed isn’t entirely about her own work.
Bottom line: Let her ask for the feedback. And yes, in the meantime, you can ‘like’ posts here and there. You don’t need to press like on every one of them, and you’re under no obligation to share her posts on your own feed.
I hope that’s helpful! Nina
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