This answer is pulled from our big breakdown of our marketing plan.
Why are we not active on social media?
Currently, our work with social media is focused on supporting our authors.
Eventually, we will have a social media presence for readers, but not for a while, given the low value of these channels for a website like ours (as we are very different from an author). We want to focus our finite resources on the highest-impact work, and that is with channels like search marketing and email marketing.
Social media has repeatedly screwed everyone who uses it (especially Facebook), and we won't invest in it until we have maxed out the higher-value channels. Social media does things like not showing your posts to but a small percentage of your followers and doing everything they can to force you to buy ads or boost posts.
Why is email and search a higher-value channel for Shepherd?
Readers using search to find a new book have a much higher value than readers browsing random stuff on social media. When someone searches for "books about space" or signs up to get book recommendations every two weeks, that strongly indicates they are looking to buy a book. Thus that traffic is far more valuable than the random person who sees something about books on their Facebook feed.
Similarly, if we have an email relationship with a reader and they already trust our recommendations and brand, that is also a much easier sell for a new book.
As we progress, I will share concrete plans as we get time to test more and figure out the highest impact features to move forward on. We don't have the resources to take on a lot of different marketing channels, so I have to focus very carefully and make sure it has the highest ROI for the website.
When will you start looking at social media channels?
Toward the end of 2025 I will see how we are doing when it comes to email and if it makes sense to rollout some tests to social media.
P.S. Do you want to help us build new features and grow faster?
I launched a membership program for founding members at the urging of authors and readers. 100% of the money goes toward developing new features and my goal of hiring a full-time developer in 2024 (currently, we only have one part-time developer).
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