When I started Punchboard, social media was relatively easy. You posted to Twitter, Instagram, and maybe Facebook. Posting to each of them was relatively easy too, it took five minutes to do it all manually, or you could use a posting tool like Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule it to do it for you.
Enter Mr Musk and his pointless buyout of Twitter. It was like someone dropping a block of sodium into the calm (but often dirty) water of the toilet bowl of social media.
There was a huge kneejerk reaction which saw a lot of people say “Screw this, I’m off somewhere better”, and many of them headed for Mastodon.
Mastodon, if you’re unaware, is a decentralised social media platform which is part of the Fediverse. It seemed so perfect. No one business owning it, servers dedicated to particular topics - bliss. There was a big problem though. People didn’t understand it. It didn’t work quite the same way as traditional platforms. If your friend wasn’t a part of the same server, talking to them and seeing their posts wasn’t as easy as it is on Twitter.
In short, Mastodon feels too fragmented to replace an all-encompassing service like Twitter. I’ve no idea how many people stayed as regulars on Mastodon, but I wouldn’t mind betting it’s a fraction of those that jumped ship.
Twitter bad. What good?
So we’ve come to see that Elon has no plans for Twitter other than to ruin what was already a far-from-ideal place to socialise. What choice do you have now? Instagram and Facebook are still there, but others have come along to help fill the bird-shaped hole in their social media strategy.
The two biggest that spring to mind are Threads and Bluesky.
Threads
Threads is an odd duck. It’s owned by Meta, just like Instagram and Facebook, but its aim is to drive more conversation than Instagram with an emphasis on text posts. The reality is something different. I don’t really get on with Instagram. As someone who likes to talk about board games and promote his work, it’s too vacuous. My Instagram feed is page after page of people grinning while holding a box up, or jumping on the back of whichever video meme format is the current darling. Threads seems ideal, but you can also post images, videos, and use hashtags. Sooo, what’s the real difference between it and Instagram?
Answers on a postcard please, because I have no idea.
Bluesky
Bluesky is super interesting to me. It’s from the mind of Jack Dorsey, the former Twitter CEO. It is, in all but name, what Twitter was like years ago. It’s been invite-only for a long time now, and it’s only very recently that posts could even be seen without being logged in.
I really like Bluesky so far. It feels like Twitter and it’s easy to work with, but the biggest drawback is the lack of people using it so far
My hope is that with time, and more users, Bluesky will usurp Twitter and take its place. I’m not overly confident that will happen, but I can dream.
Which should I use, and why?
The short version is - I have no idea. If you make videos, podcasts, or write things about board games, you want people to find it. Social media is a big driver for this. It helps you get seen and your work shared. Publishers can share your posts, boosting your potential audience, and it’s a great way to start relationships with people. But choosing where to post, and what kind of thing to post is really hard now.
I’ll give you an example of my current workflow, which I used just yesterday to promote my preview of Explorers of Navoria.
Publish the work
Email the publisher with a link to the work, feedback, that sort of thing. If you don’t already do this, you really should.
Copy the link and head over to Twitter. Twitter has the tightest character constraints, so it’s best for me to author my post there, so I know it’ll fit everywhere else.
Write my post, making sure I tag any relevant publishers, designers and artists.
Head over to Bluesky. Search to see if the publisher/designer/artist is there yet. Paste my post, changing the tags to any that happen to be there.
Head to Threads. Again, check for tags for the relevant people. Interestingly you can tag Instagram users, who then get notified that someone is tagging them in Threads.
Ignore Instagram. This is a personal choice for me. On top of what I see as vapid posts, you can’t include clickable links in normal posts in Instagram. I can’t realistically drive any traffic to my site this way, so what’s the point?
Open Facebook. Switch to my site’s business profile. Once again, paste the post, amend any tags as necessary, and post. I don’t use the Meta business suite any more, as it’s long-winded and I don’t really care about Instagram engagement.
Contrast that with something like Buffer, which I used to use. That was a case of logging in, creating a post, editing any relevant tags for Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, and be done with it.
It takes ages, the levels of engagement aren’t what they used to be, and it’s really difficult to know what’s best to do. I’ll almost certainly be leaving Twitter in the not-too-distant future. I can’t even bring myself to call it X. That’s how bad it’s gotten.
The TL;DR
Twitter is owned by a bag of crazy intent on destroying it.
Facebook is seen as something your parents use.
Instagram is terrible for driving views & reads, and it feels shallow.
Threads is Instagram, but not? I’m still not sure.
Bluesky could be great, but for now has a tiny userbase.
Social media for board games, and I’m sure many other hobbies, is a mess. Let’s see what 2024 brings.