Community

I often hear people say that there is no sense of community any more and that social media sites are killing interaction and are the source of all evil. Or something like that. It is very easy to be swept along into thinking that as we each live our lives with our own families and group of friends and see all the negativity in the press.

I think that we are breeding generations who are addicted to the internet and struggle to interact in ‘real life’ and I think this is a problem that needs to be addressed but then are those people the ones who would have stayed at home anyway and been more reclusive in nature. Maybe social media is providing them with a form of interaction that they previously wouldn’t have had.

I have a lovely example of people in the internet pulling together in support and that support was for me. I entered my new book in a competition ‘Author’s Cover Wars’ and right out of the starting post I was in the lead. The competition lasts for a week and you can vote every 24 hours. As the week wore on I slipped into second place and by Saturday morning I was 39 votes behind the leader, 41 – 80. My first reaction was I can’t do this, I’ve lost but then my fighting spirit jumped up and listening to advice to someone close to me I decided to try to win. I tagged everyone I was comfortable to tag, family, friends, fellow authors who I have had a fair level of interaction and asked them for help. It was a long shot but I’m used to the odds being stacked against me. I posted in groups on Facebook cheekily hoping I wasn’t breaking any of their rules (not the ones who are rigid on no promotion). I kept this up through the day and night and when I work up this morning the other author was still in front but by 6 votes only, 90 – 96.

Again my initial response was I’ve given it my best shot and that’s all I can do now. Err no, cue determined bitch. I tagged more people and posted in more groups and by the end of the competition 8am EST/1pm GMT I had won by an outstanding 15 votes 117 -102. That is to me a prime example of community spirit happening over social media.

I would like to thank everyone who helped me this week and all the amazing authors and bloggers who rally round to support each other. This is community, just a little bit different from the chatting over the garden fence, curtain twitching kind.