Why is Shepherd not active on social media yet?

This answer is pulled from our big breakdown on our marketing plan. 

Why are we not active on social media?

Currently, our work with social media is focused on supporting our authors and their social media audiences.

One day we will have more of a social media presence, but not for a while, given the low value of these channels. We want to focus our finite resources on the highest impact work, and that is with channels we control, like our newsletter, SEO, or content 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?

Because the people using those are looking to buy a book rather than just 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. 

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 are lean and resource-limited, so I try to make sure what we are doing has the highest return for authors and readers. 

When will you start looking at social media?

Toward 2024 after the email channel is added. I've started some tests in 2023 to see what works as I think we will approach it with individual channels on social media that target big reader groups like science fiction, fantasy, and so on. 

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 2023 (currently, we only have one part-time developer).