The Writer's Block Podcast is a community for Christian women writers. The hosts, Sandy Cooper and Mary Kay Tiller, discuss their writing journeys and the impact of social media on their work. Sandy shares her experience of going viral and the negative effects of social media on her writing. In 2019, she took a one-year hiatus and eventually decided to leave social media for good. Mary Kay was inspired by Sandy's decision and they became friends, discussing the role of social media in their lives. Sandy left social media in 2021, while Mary Kay struggled to make the same decision.
Welcome to the Writer's Block Podcast, a podcast for Christian women writers who want to love God, love words, and love their readers. We know that sharing your words with the world takes courage. You desire to see your work make an eternal impact, but it's not always easy to hit publish. Writing often fills us with self-doubt and fear, and we wonder, who am I to write about this? If you want to build a writing platform without losing heart, you're in the right place.
Welcome to the Writer's Block, a community of writers who gather weekly to grow in the art and heart of writing. I'm Kyra Rae, your host, and you're listening to the Writer's Block Podcast. Excited to welcome Sandy Cooper and Mary Kay Tiller to Writer's Block, you guys. This is so fun. Most of you are probably already familiar with their work, but they are the podcast hosts of the podcast Writing Off Social. One time we talked about that we like names of things with double meaning, right? And Writing Off Social has some double meaning to it, just like the Writer's Block does, too.
We kind of have that in common, and I'm really, really grateful that they have joined our community and they're going to be teaching us on Thursday. So thank you guys again for being here, and I just want to give you all an opportunity to introduce yourselves. Tell us, like, where you live, what you do, what you write about your family, that kind of thing. Oh, sure. So I'm Sandy Cooper. I am a mom to four children.
I have a 17-year-old, a 22-year-old, and a 25-year-old. My oldest son, Noah, passed away when he was nine months old. I've been married to John for over 30 years now, which is weird because I'm only 27, so I don't know. I'm the co-founder of Writing Off Social, as you stated, with my friend Mary Kay Tiller, where we help female Christian writers grow and nurture their audience without social media. I started blogging in 2008, which I'll tell you more about, at The Scoop on Balance.
I am the author of three books. I also have a sub-stack newsletter called Behind the Balance, and for the last five years I have been the podcast host of The Balance Momcast, where I help frazzled moms find peace, and I do all of this from my home office here in Jacksonville, Florida. Oh, wow. So succinct. Thank you. Thank you. Well, it's written. I've got it down, but I also am looking at notes, so don't be too impressed.
We're prone to tangents if we don't write things down, so it's just helpful to us. We won't be reading everything the whole day, but it does help sometimes. Yeah. Even when we're practicing, we're like, hold on, I need to read it, because I'm just like, we'll both go, ah! Completely. Well, I'm Mary Kay, and I live in East Texas, really close to the Shreveport, Louisiana border, and I live there with my husband, TJ. We've been married 14 years, and we have two kids.
Julianne is nine, and Lucas is seven, and we have about 30 head of cattle that are here on our pasture land with us, and I am a speaker and an adjunct professor. I teach two classes at a local university, and I'm also the co-owner and co-founder of a ministry called New Mercies for Moms, and we help remind moms that Jesus is in the midst of motherhood, and we do that through imprint and online and even on-air devotions.
I'll tell you more about that in a little bit. And then, of course, I'm a co-host of Writing Off Social, and I started writing back in 2017. I had a two-year-old and a two-month-old at the time, and that seems like the absolute best time to start a blog. Right. And motherhood, I'm telling you, it does something. It makes you want to start a business. I don't know if it has that effect on everyone, but it did for me.
You didn't have much to do. Yeah, exactly. Didn't have enough going on. But I really, I cut my teeth on freelance writing, so I wrote for several different outlets over the years. They range from small blogs to global nonprofits. And I have self-published two devotional card sets and a set of prayer activity cards for moms and kids through New Mercies for Moms. That's a little bit of what I do. Yeah. So you guys both have, like, separate writing ventures, and then you do this podcast together.
Yes. Yeah. So tell us, too. We heard a little bit about Mary Kay's writing background, and Sandy, could you tell us a little bit about what you write about, where you got your start with writing? Sure. So I started my first blog and opened my first social media account back in 2008. And, you know, those were, like, the heydays of blogging when you could craft, like, this beautifully written post on your free blogger account and then put it up on your Facebook wall, and all of your real-life friends would share it.
Like, it was awesome. And for a writer back then, I started out writing about hearing God's voice, but then around 2012, I shifted to balance because I wanted to write about more than just hearing God's voice. So as far as, like, the social media journey and how Mary Kay and I came together, so back in, like, the early, well, the, like, 2010s, publishers and literary agents, and some of you probably remember this, is that's when they started noticing bloggers were posting on social media, and they started taking note of their growing platforms.
And so their social media numbers started becoming, like, the primary metric that publishers and literary agents would use to measure whether or not they wanted to work with you. And because I was seeking traditional publishing at the time, I, you know, I did what I thought I was supposed to do, and I started posting everything on social media. Well, then in early 2014, on a random Tuesday morning, I wrote this mediocre blog post. It was one of the times, Kara, we were talking before we hit record about Mary Demuth saying she writes when she's angry.
I was really angry because my son got bullied at a basketball game, and so I wrote a post about it, and I put it up, and it went viral. And it crashed my little site. Over the course of, you know, just a few weeks, over a million people came over to my site and viewed it. And that initial influx of followers was really exciting, and I tried to, like, keep up that momentum, but I didn't want to write about bullying.
Like, that wasn't really in my heart. And so I ended up just not really being able to keep up with that. I just thought that was, like, my ship coming in. You know what I mean? And it kind of gave me this drug hit of, oh, this is what it could be. Like, this is what... This feels really good. And so by 2016, I had Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, and they were consuming all my days.
Now, I also had three small children. So between, like, serving meals and switching laundry and quizzing math facts and all the things, I was trying to write, post, comment, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. Like, that's... I just felt like I was doing it all the time. And so I started asking myself the question, is this the writing life that I envisioned? And the answer was a resounding no. Like, that is not at all what I wanted my writing life to be.
So on September 11th, 2019, against the advice of everyone I knew in the writing industry, I decided to take a one-year social media hiatus so that I could write and self-publish my second book. And I left for the whole year, came back a little over a year later to promote that book. I really wasn't planning on leaving social media for good. And I came back, and it was the height of the pandemic, and it was right after the 2020 elections.
And I looked around at social media, and I was like, what in the actual heck am I doing? Where else have I landed? And I will tell you, stepping away from social media for that year was by far the best thing I had ever done. And I came back, and I asked the Lord. I was like, I hate it here. Can I leave? And, you know, it wasn't this big thus sayeth the Lord moment, but I definitely felt God say, yes, you can leave.
And I was like, what am I going to do? Like, I'm a writer. And I just felt the Lord say to me, you know what? We can figure that out. Like, you're not ruining this. And so on March 18, 2021, I shut everything down. Wow. Yeah. So then Mary-Kate, so she comes in. So, like, she intersects this story, which is why. Tell us how that happened. Yeah. So in 2019, when Sandy, when she decided to take the one-year hiatus, she went into a writing group that we were both a part of.
We hadn't really interacted. At that point, I joked that she was like the cool upperclassman that I would watch from afar and be like, oh, Sandy Cooper, she always has such good things to say. But I never interacted with her. But she came on in 2019 and posted that she was leaving social media for the sake of writing this book. I just had to know more about how she was doing this. It just resonated so deeply with me.
At that point, I was very aware of my rampant social media addiction, like Sandy had described her situation. Like, I was commenting and responding and posting while bathing my babies and while stirring the pasta. And I just was not giving my kids my best. And I hated who I was becoming. I wanted to be a successful writer, and everyone had told me that to be a successful writer, you had to be on social media. And so to have Sandy get on and say, in the name of writing and publishing a book, I'm leaving social media, I was like, hi, I'm Mary Kay.
Can we be best friends, please? And so I messaged her, and she agreed to talk about it over Voxer. And honestly, we just never stopped talking about it. We're still talking, like today. We're still talking on Voxer. One day we're going to get an ad gig with Voxer for that. We should. But it just, our friendship kind of grew to include every aspect of our lives, but we never stopped coming back to social media and the role that it played in our work and in our lives.
And Sandy, of course, left social media for good in 2021, but I really struggled to pull the trigger for a while longer. Despite my addiction, I just really wanted it to work out. I did not really care much for Facebook, but I loved Instagram. And I felt like I had a knack for designing beautiful graphics. And I really loved the feel of my feed. And of course, I loved the feedback that I would get when people would like and post or comment, rather.
And so around the end of 2021, the beginning of 2022, I decided that I actually wanted to go all in on social media. I was like, I am sick of this incremental growth. I want to double my following. I'm just going to do this thing. Like, I'm going to post all these reels, and I'm going to do continuous stories, and I'm going to post multiple times a week. Like, I'm just going to do it. And I remember telling Sandy that and her being like, have fun.
Like, enjoy. And so I did. I did all of those things. And about a week or not a week, about a month in to 2022, I was just eyeballs deep in content creation. And I was spending hours upon hours writing and designing and filming and editing and scheduling a post that would last mere minutes on a platform that I didn't own. And I knew that I had overstepped just all of my boundaries and was spending way too much time on these apps.
And so I could feel my mind getting really glitchy, and I couldn't focus. And so one Friday afternoon, I was packing up, shutting everything down for the weekend. And I just remember the Lord really quietly impressing the question on me. Like, is this how you want to spend your life? And it still makes me tear up to think about that, because I knew immediately my response to that question was, no, this is not how I want to spend my life.
But I also knew that I was called to be a writer, and it felt like to give up social media meant giving up my writing career. And I didn't know how to do that. And so after some very long conversations with Jesus and with Sandy, I did eventually leave social media for good in January of 2022 and spent the next five to six months just rethinking what platform was and how I was going to connect and grow my audience without social media.
So then I came back into the picture at this point. So in June of 2022, I released my third self-published book. And after that, I decided to hire a business coach to help me take everything to the next level. I thought, okay, I've been doing this by myself for a long time. I'm not using social media. I need to figure out how to grow. And that business coach really encouraged me to niche down my message because I talked to overwhelmed Christian moms about balance.
And he's like, what if you just really focus on the social media thing? I think the most interesting thing that you're talking about is leaving social media. And I'm like, I am not talking about leaving social media. Other than leaving and writing my exit posts and doing an exit podcast, and I gave everybody a one-year update, I didn't talk about it. Like it wasn't to me a thing that I was telling everyone. I was like, this is just a very personal decision that I chose to make.
And so he said, well, I think that you could be the mom who gets moms off social media. And I was like, okay. And so I didn't feel equipped to do that at all. And so I took this deep dive into, okay, I want to really understand the business of social media. I want to understand what it's doing as a whole to society. Like I just really wanted to, if I'm going to go and try to convince other people to get off, I wanted to understand what I was saying.
And so I read all these books that summer. It was summer of 2022. Read all these books, binged all these podcasts, followed all of these experts, booked all of these people to come on my podcast on the Balance Momcast to talk about social media and created this challenge and went on a podcast tour. Well, Mary Kay and I that summer attended a writer's conference, which was a pivotal point for us because we were sitting in all these, this writer's conference is huge.
It's one you've all heard of. And we were sitting there and we realized there were zero, zero people on the stage talking to people like us who did not want to use social media, who were not using social media. And we had every single session assumed not only we were on social media, but that we actively were trying to grow social media. And we were standing in between these sessions and we were so frustrated. And I looked at her and I'm like, we need to start a podcast.
Like we need to talk about this because where are the people that are helping us? Like where, where are the other writers who are leading the way? And so, you know, foreshadowing, not realizing we were those people. So, so, so I go on, you know, I, in the fall of 2022, I launched this, you know, big podcast tour where I'm spreading the message to be the mom, to help moms get off social media. And like, I don't want to be that mom.
And, and I, I realized even as I'm like on this podcast tour, I still don't want to be that mom. And, and so what I realized though, also on that podcast tour is that on every podcast, I was having these sidebar conversations with the podcast hosts where they're like, okay, no, for real. Like, how are you doing this? Like, what do you mean you're not on social media? Like, what are you doing instead? Like, how are you growing? What do you know? And that, or they would start their confessional of like, oh my gosh, I hate social media.
I can't. And I just was into those conversations. I thought I loved talking to these writers and these podcasters and these people started reaching out to me. And, and the more that I got deeper into that, the more Mary Kay and I were like, huh, maybe, maybe that's what we're supposed to do. Maybe the reason we can't find anybody to lead the way is because we're the ones that are supposed to lead the way. So Writing Off Social was born.
That is the birth story. That is a great story. And I, there's so much in there. And I love how both of your, your, you know, sides of the story were not parallel, but they intersected at just the right times and that the Lord brought you guys together. And that, you know, Mary Kay, you kind of were, you're trying to buck the system a little bit longer so you could make it work and, and how the Lord brought you guys together.
I, I really love that. And so, yeah, so you guys are the ones, you are the voices for this kind of new approach. And I think, I don't know, I can't speak for anyone else here, but a lot of what you guys have said resonates with me. And I've just, since I've come in contact with your content, I've just, I haven't written it off per se, but I've just let it lie. And it's been really, really nice.
And I did have this one interaction with a, a writer on, who's a friend of mine on Instagram, and she's got a massive following. And she sat me down one time and gave me a lesson about my Instagram and about the kind of things I needed to do. And I had just been, like, reposting my graphics for, you know, whatever the graphic was on my header. And I was putting that up. She's like, no, no, no, you can't do that.
Like, that's not, that won't engage and you need to do video. And I was just feeling like, like it was just weighing on me. I was like, how am I supposed to, like, do all that in addition to, like, giving birth to a blog post, which it always feels like to me, like, it's like such a labor of love. And then again, it's not, you're not done. You still have to do more. And you still have to, like, beg people to leave Instagram to come and click.
And when you're not a big name, it's several clicks for them to get into your website to read your words. So it was just, I was just exhausted listening to that. And yeah, so a lot of what you guys have said has just resonated with me personally. So talk just a little bit, like, you guys have both touched on it a little bit, but the fear of moving away and even, even if it's not just purely on the writer side of the work that you're doing, like, there is like, maybe your mom is on social media, your family, like, you do kind of lose that too.
So can you talk a little bit about that? Absolutely. Yeah. So I mentioned when I was speaking earlier that one of my biggest fears of getting off social media was that it was basically committing career suicide and that I could not leave social media and still be a writer. Like, I didn't know how to hold those two things in both hands. And at the time, social media made up about 90 to 95% of how I was communicating with my audience.
I did have an email list. It was considerably smaller than my social media following. I wasn't doing a good job of converting those two things. And so I was like, I don't know. I don't even know how to do this. Like, how do I continue writing if I'm not on social media? And it was one of those experiences where it was almost like, I don't know, a false image. Like, you think you – it's like a mirage.
You think you see these problems, and you're like, there's no way I can continue. There's no – if I step out, there's nothing holding me up. And the minute that I did, I realized that there's actually a lot more solid ground than I thought. Like, it looked like I was going to fall, and I didn't. And so – and a lot of that had to do with just having Sandy there to help me kind of untangle over the months of like, what is social media really? And I think for me, the big aha moment was realizing that social media is not the same as platform.
Like, I was using those two terms almost synonymously, and just realizing that that's not the same a variety of things, of ways to amplify your message. Social media is just one of the ways to build your platform. So that was huge. Talking about personal fears, obviously, I struggled with fear of missing out. I worried that I would miss out on career opportunities. I worried that I would miss out on relationships. I mean, the irony of all of this is that Sandy and I met on Facebook, essentially.
And so I would have missed Sandy. What Sandy? What other Sandys am I missing, you know? Important news and, of course, funny memes. Like, I didn't want to miss out on any of those things. Yeah, that's a hard one. Yeah, and so what's amazing is that since leaving, I really have not missed out on anything that I've missed. I mean, I can't name anything that I have later found out I didn't know about that I wish I had.
I still have – my husband is still on social media. My mother-in-law is still on social media. They keep me abreast of all the, you know, goings-on at the school and different things that I need to know in the community. I've found ways to get my news from other sources. And then I've got cousins who have no problem sending me all the funny memes. So I have found ways to keep my – I don't know, my eyes and ears out there.
And so I don't feel like I've – that FOMO has really been an issue in practice. Yeah, that's really encouraging. How about you, Sandy? Yeah, so I will echo all of the fears that Mary Kay said and also add that I think for me, my biggest fear that overshadowed all the others was I was afraid that I was not being a good steward of the platform that God had given me. Like, I had this fear that social media was hard for me because there was something wrong with me and that everybody's job has a part of it that they hate and this is the part of a writer's job that I just hate and just suck it up and do the hard work, Sandy.
And I was afraid that if I stepped off that I would be disappointing God and that other writers and especially, like, people with giant social media platforms are successful writers in my eyes, that they would not respect me. Like, I really wrestled more with, like, the deep philosophical questions of is this wrong? Like, is this wrong for me to leave? And that's why it became more not so much a practical practice for me but a spiritual practice for me to really get close with God and hear from him directly.
Because once I received the okay and the peace from God to shut it down, it didn't matter anymore. Like, the fears went away. I thought it doesn't matter what anybody thinks, whether or not I gain respect or lose respect or if God's pleased with me, that's all that matters. And so I would say that, you know, that's how I faced that fear head on. I will say, as far as leaving personally, you know, I left when I had, you know, like a 21-year-old, maybe a 17-year-old and a middle schooler, you know, the height of my family on social media, kids I need to monitor on social media and so forth.
And so before I shut everything down completely, I went through, like, I left in stages personally from a personal standpoint. So, like, the first thing I did was take that break. And then when I came back, I first, like, when I decided, okay, I'm not going to do this professionally anymore, I went in and manually unfriended over the course of weeks. It took me weeks to do this. Manually unfriended everyone who was following me. And I went, I forced myself to go look at their profile so that I saw people and not numbers.
And because it was, like, a spiritual thing for, like, this was very serious for me. I didn't just, like, shut it down and walk away out of rebellion. Like, I was taking it very seriously. And, like, it makes me emotional because I just went and looked at every one of those people and I was like, okay, do I know you? How do I know you? Do I want to keep in contact with you? Are there other ways? Like, I was, like, writing down names of people I wanted to make sure, like, do I have their email? Do I have their email? Do I have their email? Do I have their email? Do I have their email? Do I have their email? Do I have their email? Do I have their email? Do I have their email? Do I have their email? Do I have their email? Do I have their email? Do I have their email? Do I have their email? Do I have their email? And I could stay in touch with them another way.
And so then it was like, oh, wait, I'm okay. And then, like, Mary Kay, I have people who make sure I know all the things. Like, if you're worried you're not going to know things, trust me. Everyone wants to tell you the things, especially when they know you're not a social media person. Everybody wants you to know. That's kind of a bonus, right? It is. Yeah. And they love you right away, and they're doing some of that heavy lifting.
They do. And I have friends who text me now, and they're like, hey, I posted about this on Facebook, but I know you're not on there. I just wanted you to know that XYZ happened. And then I get to have a real conversation with them about it. That's amazing, yeah. And, you know, be a true friend and not just, like, heart it on Facebook and then move on with my life. So it's been really good. Been good.
Yep. I really loved how you talked about how once you felt that release from the Lord, like, the fears kind of melted away. Yeah. You know, that you were just able. And that you also took very, like, practical steps of, like, before I do this, there are real people here. I want to connect with the real people and make sure that I've set up some back channels to continue those relationships. So. That's right. And that's what social media is supposed to be, right? It is.
Right. I mean, I loved how you were describing it, Sandy, at the beginning, like, how wonderful it was at first. Mm-hmm. For sure. It was really fun. I mean, Facebook was, like, so fun. So fun. And people engaged and it wasn't, like, you know, felt like it was just really vibrant and fun. Yes. I wasn't writing back then, but I wish I had been because that would have been just sweet. Yeah. I mean, many of us feel like, you know, we put our stuff out there and then it's crickets.
It's like we're doing all this work to build these numbers. And then Amy said in the chat, like, the numbers don't convert necessarily, right? Like, the numbers don't actually turn into subscribers. And we all know by now, like, own your list, right? You don't own your list on social media. So it's really about that email list. And so it's really fun. It's really hard to put out more and more energy and see less and less returns on your investment.
For sure. Definitely. Yeah. Well, so when you guys think about social media in terms of just this niche, this genre of writing. Like, what do you guys think about social media? What do you guys think about writing? What do you guys think about social media? What do you guys think about writing? What do you guys think about social media? What do you guys think about writing? What do you guys think about social media? Yeah. I think it's a really good question.
I think it's a really good question in terms of writing. Like, I see social media working really well for people who have a more visual product to sell. You know? Sometimes it's like an artist or a musician or a coach or somebody who's got, you know, something. They can dance. You know? Whatever the case may be. But there's, like, something that's visually more engaging. I think writing appeals to people who are ready to slow down, to think.
Social media is quick and it's a flip of the thumb kind of thing. Do you guys think it's specifically not good for writers? Like, is the deck stacked against us, so to speak, because of the kind of work that we all produce? I think that's a really good question. I think that's a really good question. I think that's a really good question. I think that's a really good question. I think that's a really good question. I think that's a really good question.
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Currently, I know Mary Kay and I have talked about this on our podcast, but it feels like everyone is trying to be TikTok right now. Unless you're really good at creating video, and that's really something that plays to your strengths in addition to your writing, it's just not going to work for you right now. That hasn't always been true. Social media, it just continues to change at a rapid pace. What's working right now wasn't what worked in 2018.
What worked in 2018 isn't what was working in 2014, and so on. It just continues to evolve. It just continues to evolve. We make it a practice to not, we're not really there to convince anyone to leave social media. That's not really what our job or our mission is, I should say. We don't try to convince people to leave because we think writing on social media is a very personal decision. The people who tend to come to us are the people who, like Mary Kay said, are either people who have never used social media and she may have said this before we hit record, but they're either people who have never used social media and they're relieved that they don't have to, or they are people who are just struggling so hard to get that traction and so they are looking like they're receiving the affirmation that they've been praying for.
What we like to do when we're working with writers is really help them try to dissect how they were trying to use social media to begin with, and we break it down into, and we'll again talk about more on Thursday, but we break it down into four writing goals. Growth, nurturing, community, and sales is usually how people are trying to use social media. They might not even have realized that that's what they were doing. They might have just been throwing stuff up there because that's what they were told.
I'm just trying to grow my platform and not even really realizing what they were doing strategically. Help them try to break that down and then look at, was social media working for you with growth? Was social media working for you with sales? Was social media working for you to build community, reader to reader, or you with other peers in the industry? Was social media working for you to nurture your audience? Sorry, I lost. When I say I'm out of order, one always drops off.
To your question, Kara, I like to look at it like, does social media work for growth? Well, it used to, but it doesn't anymore. I would say unless you're already established on social media, already have a giant following, you aren't going to grow anymore. It just isn't working like that anymore. Does it work for nurturing? Kind of, a little. You can kind of reach your people, especially if you pay. If you do paid posts, then you're going to reach your people.
It doesn't work as well as it used to. Does it work for community between people? Yeah, probably a little bit. You're able to message people. You find other writers, other podcasters. You can be in a Facebook group, sure. Sales? Terrible for sales. Used to work great for sales. Terrible. Generate's terrible. What's the other one, Mary Kay? I don't know. I think you hit them all. Growth, nurturing, creative sales. I guess it's not, I don't like to look at it as, does it work worse for writers than other creators? I'm kind of like breaking it down even more like, does it work at all for creators? Is it working at all? It's not so much that it's targeted.
I used to feel that way. I just used to really feel like, I'm a Christian and I'm a writer and so I'm at the bottom of the algorithm. It just does not want to work for me. I hear what you're saying. It's bigger than that and it's got all of these different facets of what it can and should do but often fails to deliver. Right. You've mentioned it a couple times. You've talked a little bit about this idea of platform and that we've maybe had a little bit too myopic of a view of platform, like platform equals social media following.
If you listen to these ladies and they're writing off social podcasts, they're talking to insiders all the time about how the publishing industry is just terribly educated and out of date and not in step with what really works for writers and platform building. Maybe you could tell us a little bit, how do you think of platform, especially if social media is not in the mix? Well, your platform is really how you are growing and reaching your audience.
Are you reaching your ideal reader? It can be through something like social media, but as we have established, it's not working very well anymore, which is why we're here. It can also be in a number of other ways. One of the things that Mary Kay and I talk about a lot when we're coaching people is like, let's look at who is your ideal reader and let's figure out where she hangs out in real life because it turns out she's doing a lot of other things.
We're going to talk about that again on Thursday. I don't want to give it all away, but basically she's going to church. She's listening to podcasts. She's Googling her problems. She is a member of a club. She might be going to community events. She might be going to women's conferences. Who knows? It really depends on who your reader is. Once you establish where she is, then we figure out a plan of like, okay, how do we reach her there and grow your readership that way? Things that publishers are still looking at are email list, email list, email list, email list, and also podcast download numbers, very good way to, yes, very compelling to a publisher, literary agent.
Also, if you have an active speaking calendar and you can say, look, I'm speaking to 500 people a month. I'm in front of them month after month, that kind of thing, also very compelling. There's just other real life, tangible, heartier ways that give you a much bigger return on your investment that actually convert to sales, which is what if you're looking to publish a book and sell books are just much more robust and valuable. Would you add anything to that? I feel like I jumped all over you.
No, you didn't. I think for us, we have been building, writing off social entirely without social media, as we should. It would be weird if we didn't. It would be weird. Even though I, in my mind, knew that it would work, it has been really fun to watch it grow and to see what it is that is working for us. I think what we've discovered is podcast tours are very effective in growing your audience. Podcasts themselves, asking people.
You'll hear us every episode. We ask you to share the episode with a friend. That's because that's one of the most effective ways to grow your podcast audience. It works. We're seeing it work. Even just for me, with New Mercies for Moms, one of our best tools is public speaking. We do in-person live events. We go to MOPs because our readers are mothers of preschoolers. We go to women's conferences at churches. It is just like what Sandy was saying.
The key is understanding who your reader is, figuring out where she is in real life, and then finding ways to meet her there. If you can do that, then you can grow your audience without social media. It's just a matter of getting a little more creative about it, I think. What you're describing is way more personal. You're actually face-to-face with a lot of these people if you're in churches and doing speaking events and that kind of thing.
You might actually make some friends along the way, which is kind of the whole idea of social media in the first place, right? Or at least it was supposed to be that way. I just want to ask you a couple more questions, and then I want to give... There's been a few questions in the chat, and I want to make sure we leave a few minutes for that. You kind of alluded to it, Mary Kay. What have you all noticed, for better or for worse, in terms of leaving social media? Have you seen, especially, I mean, your podcast is part of that platform.
You're gaining downloads for that, I'm sure. Are you seeing better engagement with what you're doing? Better, worse? Kind of slow? Kind of fast? Can you give us an idea of what that's been like for you? Did you want to start? I'll answer quickly. I'll say, as you stated at the beginning, we both kind of have our separate thing, and then we have writing off social together. We're looking at both of those things. When I left social media, when I took that first one-year break, I had started my podcast, The Balanced Momcast, six months before that.
I had decided that on my social media break, I was going to go all-in on the Balanced Momcast. What was really cool is I got traction right away on The Balanced Momcast. I made the new and noteworthy list and made a top 10 moms for podcast magazine. It was way better than I expected. Once I experienced that, I thought, oh, this is so much better. It's so much more life-giving than using social media. I thought, well, I don't need to go back to social media if I have this other thing that's working better.
That was something that was actually way better than I expected. I'm really, as Mary Kay said, I'm really thrilled with how well podcast guesting works, again, because I already have a podcast. It's really great to just be able to go pitch myself to other podcasters, be able to go and have conversations like this. You gain podcast listeners because podcast listeners become podcast listeners. Also, a lot of podcast listeners are book buyers, which is really cool. An unexpected change for me was that I have, because people go all the way back to the beginning of my podcast and listen, and I pitch at least one of my books in every one of my episodes, I just have consistent book sales because people are listening back to episodes that I created five years ago.
My book sales are just constant. Every month, I'm selling all my books. I don't even have to try anymore. I mean, I'm still trying. Obviously, I'm still trying. I'm working hard, yes. I'm working hard, but I'm not actively going out and trying all the time to talk about my book, which is very natural because it's the content that I'm also sharing. I think, of course, the birth of writing off social has been something that neither of us saw coming.
That has been way better than expected. It's just been really life-giving. Again, it isn't that it's any easier work for us. Working on social media was a hard work. Working off of social media is also hard work, but it doesn't suck my soul. There's a whole different feel. It's so fun. I mentioned this before we started but it's so rewarding to be able to help a fellow writer who feels like she's drowning or feels like she's trapped and offer her a lifeline and say, no, no, no, there's a better way and offer people freedom all the time.
So rewarding. It's such a different kind of work. As far as worse than expected, well, I don't really have any... No, it's not worse. It's all rainbows. Everybody. I don't want to say it like that, but I just don't have any regrets. You know what I mean? Let me say this regarding expectations. We all go into things with expectations, but this is something that I constantly have to come back to. I don't want to measure my...
I don't want to measure anything against my expectations. I want to crucify my expectations at the altar of whatever God is asking me to do. And so I want to surrender that to him and say, Lord, I am just going to show up and be faithful to whatever you're telling me to do today, and I'm going to leave all the results up to you. And when you do that, then it doesn't really matter anymore, because we can't measure everything that is actually happening in the kingdom.
And if you set out to build the kingdom in your work, then there is... It doesn't matter what my expectations are. I just don't even want to... I have to humble myself every day to God and just say, I'm just going to leave it up to you. Yeah, that's so good. I love that. Somebody write that down. Put it in the chat. We'll post it on social media. And we'll tag you. Tag nothing. Mary Kay, what would you add to that? Well, I shared a lot of what I found unexpected.
I will just say with New Mercies for Moms, I have not... I have two partners in New Mercies for Moms, and I have not been able to convince them to leave social media entirely. But I am in charge of social media, and I haven't posted anything in a long time. Nobody has noticed. Yeah, it was a terrible job for me. It worked when I was on social media. Now I'm not. But anyway, I think for us, what has been so fun and unexpected is that we have gotten...
We've had a lot more conversations around, well, where is our listener? How do we find her? And one of the most unexpected ways is we got on the radio. We write devotions, the 250-word devotions for moms, and I was listening in my car one day to our local Christian radio station and realized that their listener is our reader. Like, their listener is that young, busy Christian mom with small kids who's always in the car going to t-ball and dance and school and whatnot.
And my partners and I were able to get a meeting with the executives at the local radio station. We pitched our idea and we said, we would love to take our devotions and turn them into an audio feature that you play every day while moms are sitting in the car line so they can be encouraged. And they were like, we love that idea. We were like, really? That's an amazing idea. It was God. Because I don't normally come up with that crazy of ideas.
So it was all him. So cool. So now, for the last year, our devotions have been playing on air and I know that doesn't fit everyone. Not everyone can make that kind of thing happen. But I think the point is once you rule out social media as an option, the opportunities are just endless. Suddenly the whole world opens up and it's like, well, then what else can we do? There's so much else out there. And so it's really an unexpected kind of adventure that opens up.
Oh, I love that so much. I love thinking outside the box. I think we've gotten too narrowly focused that this is the only way. I use YouVersion Bible app. Yes, I forgot about that. And it is amazing. You guys, there are I think it's 650 million worldwide downloads on YouVersion. And I was like, people read it. And they're consuming content all the time. That's another great platform. Okay, I'm going to skip my last question and just kind of let people unmute.
I think that would be the best use of time and let you guys ask a few questions. Cheryl, I'm going to lob it to you first, though, because I remember seeing your question about Substack. Yeah, I listened to you guys for a while and I really, really love your podcast. Thank you. And I remember you talking about Pinterest. Is that social media? Is it not social media? And I think you agree that it is still social media, correct? Okay.
Okay, okay. What would you say about Substack? Because I know that that is a huge popular thing that's exploding, especially for writers who want to write long form. But to me, I dabbled in it with a little bit, played with it. I know other people here have, too. And I kind of get the same feel of social media with the notes and the, you know, liking and sharing and all of that. And right now, I think it's ad-free.
She's a little frozen. But, yeah. I can answer. Do you mind, Mary Kate? Go right ahead. So, I currently, sorry, you froze. I don't know if you just want to make sure that I'm not talking over you. So, I started a Substack newsletter back in October. I'm experimenting there currently. Let me tell you the reasons why we would not consider Substack social media. First of all, you own your email list. So, unlike Instagram, you cannot download those followers and upload them to ConvertKit, okay? You can absolutely, you own your email list on Substack.
You can use it as your email service provider. So, if you decide you don't like Substack, you can just take it off. You own all those people that follow you there, and you can take them someplace else. You will never have ads on Substack because that's not the business model. The business model is that they want writers to get paid directly for their writing. It is a platform made by writers for writers to help writers. It's kind of the answer to social media.
It's what everything that social media isn't for us. If you ever listen to Hamish McKenzie, who started Substack, I encourage you to go listen, like search him. Go listen to his heart behind why he created Substack, and I think you might feel a little bit better about it as a writer. Now, I don't know if he's always going to be that way, but the business model is that you get subscribers to your newsletter, and they take a portion of that payment.
They get paid a different way. They're never going to do ads. The other reason it's not, we wouldn't consider it social media, is because you only see what you signed up. You only see what you follow. Now, there is a feature where they can offer you, based on what you read, you might like this newsletter, but they're not going to stick things in your feed that you did not ask for, and you can turn that feature off if you don't want suggestions, and I personally have found that they're really good at suggestions, and I follow a lot more newsletters than I probably should.
For a lot of reasons, it doesn't have the addictive technology. It doesn't have, again, the ads. They're not collecting your data. You own your email list. It's kind of like the way social media used to be, without all the bad stuff, currently. It's always changing, though. Technology is always changing. We'll try to stay on top of it, with our recommendations, at least. Sarah, would you add anything? All I would say is, yes, we are finding that things change rapidly.
Right now, we're saying, Substack, we enjoy, we like it, and we're going to keep you updated on that. Pinterest, without saying that we loved it. Then we got to spend more time and see some updates that they were doing, and it became more and more like TikTok. We were like, no, this is really becoming more social media, less search engine, and we don't recommend it anymore. Things are always changing. Yeah. Faith asked, can you explain what a podcast tour is? Yes, Andy.
You do it more often. It's quite simple. It's really where you go, you look for podcasts that will speak to your ideal reader. You have to do some vetting. It takes some work up on the front end. Then you pitch to be a guest on their show. Then you line them up. It's like an old-fashioned book tour, but you don't have to leave your house or talk to people in real life or dress from the waist down if you don't want to.
I always dress from the waist down, FYI. In case you're wondering. Thank you. Would you add anything to that, Mary Kay? No. When you say pitch, I'm just going to define that. It's usually just a very simple email where you explain who you are, what you talk about, and why you're the right person to talk about that. That takes a little bit of research on your part. It's actually a lot. It takes a lot of work.
To find those like-minded podcasts that are existing and have platforms already that you can borrow off of, that's good. It really is a great way to get in front of other people's audiences. The key to growth is to get in front of more people who can be your reader. Podcast tour is a great way to get in front of people's audiences. It's a very effective way. Plus, then you make friends with other podcast hosts. It's working really well right now.
Again, it's working well right now. We're going to qualify everything. If you're watching this and the year is 2030 and you're like, podcast? It's going to sound like MySpace track or something. That's great. Other questions? Questions or comments for these ladies? I have a question. I missed part of the meeting, but did you both were on social media and got a very large following in the beginning? Not a very large following. No, I actually had very small.
Mine was media action. Mine was missed. Sandy, when you did the post about the bully, that was not on social media? That was somewhere else? It was on social media, but all those people came over to my website. It was before... A lot of people followed me, yes. I probably got 5,000 out of that. There was this tool of using social media to begin with, but then you didn't need it anymore. That's a great question. What happened? We didn't actually use social media to start writing off social.
How we launched writing off social was through podcast tours. Our email list at this point came out of the podcast tours that Sandy originally did back in the fall before we started writing off social. We've not had anyone from social media come over to writing off social. We just haven't done that. Like New Mercies for Moms, we did start out on social media, and that is how we got started. We were entirely online at the time.
Did you ever post for Balanced Momcast on social media? No, because I started the Balanced Momcast in March of 2019, and I took my first one-year social media break in September of that same year. Maybe a little bit at the beginning, but podcast listeners, social media followers don't convert to podcast listeners because they don't want to click over, and they're there for the short. They don't want to go listen to a 30-minute podcast. They want a five-second something.
Even if I was, everything's been shut down. I've been shut down almost completely for five years. There's nothing coming over from social media. I think your question that you posted in the chat was really good. How would you start something if you didn't have social media as a launch place? I think for that, I would say if you were just to wake up today and be like, I want to start writing, I think the way that I would recommend you do that is I might consider Substack.
I think that I would consider some podcast tours. I think I would encourage you to start a blog. I would want you to think about your lead magnet and who your reader is and how you could get that in front of... Use people who are speaking to your reader and offer them your lead magnet to get them on your email list and then start to write that way. I think that's a great question of if you don't have social media as a launching pad, then how do you get started? How do you do that? Let me add because I'm thinking, how did I start my podcast? Because it was a long time ago.
I will say that the thing that started, that launched my podcast, that got me on the new and noteworthy list of iTunes and got me a spot on the top 10 Christian... Whatever. I don't even know what it was. Hot Moms. Anyways. I knew my ideal listener in real life. I knew all these overwhelmed Christian moms and I literally texted everyone I knew and I said, hey, and I linked to my podcast. I'm like, hey, I started a podcast.
Will you please go listen to this and leave me a review? Make it five stars, please, and if it's not five stars don't leave me a review. That's right. Between you and Jesus. If I were starting something from scratch, I would do something very similar. I would go to the people I know and I would say, I'm starting a thing. I'm starting a blog. I'm starting a newsletter. I'm starting a podcast. I'm starting something. Will you read this and will you share it? Because those people already love you and I'm guessing that you probably already have a community of readers that you're thinking of.
You already know who you're writing for. I would go to them and say, help me. I would email them individually and say, I'm trying to build this thing. Will you read my email? Will you subscribe to this? It starts like that. I've experienced that, too, when I first started my blog. I went through Facebook Messenger and I went through my whole friends list. It could be a good address book if you're still on Facebook to be like, who do I know in real life? I got overwhelmingly positive feedback because when you ask somebody specifically and personally, they take it more seriously than if it's a big blast to everyone you know.
That's a great tip. Ladies, we're over the hour. I want to respect everyone's time here. I think you all have gotten a little taste of what they're going to talk about on Thursday. Stay tuned. This is all about practical steps to write off social. Ladies, is there anything else you'd want to add to that for Thursday's teaching? Nope. We're going to talk about leaving social media without regret. We're going to give you very practical, the steps that we actually took and the steps that we, when we're coaching people, these are the steps we take them through.
You're going to get that. That's awesome. Thank you, ladies, so much. This has been really fun and great discussion. Thank you all for coming. We'll see you guys Thursday. Bye, everybody. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Writer's Block podcast. We hope you've been encouraged in both the art and heart of writing. Did you know there's a Writer's Block community where we share even more teaching, encouragement, and support with one another? You can learn more at MyWritersBlock.com.
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