In North Carolina, it’s common knowledge that if you don’t like the weather, have patience. It’ll change in a day or two. Â After the blizzard of 2016, to which residents of coastal NC were casual observers, we had a couple days of rain and then a warming trend. Today (Sunday) saw a high in the upper 60’s and plenty of sunshine. Â When days come along like this – you have to take advantage of them. Â I grabbed some paper and a pen and headed to the park.

The change of scenery provided me with an escape from the distractions of home. Scenes unfolded and the words came. It was wonderful – so wonderful, I’m thinking that a weekly writing escape might be in order.
And then comes my blog…
I stumbled across a blog post talking about the reasons a blog is a waste of time for a writer and that prompted a lot of thinking on my part. Â Am I a writer who blogs? Am I a blogger who writes? Does it really make a difference?
If you are a writer, I’m sure you can relate to the dilemma so many of us face.
Over and over, we are told:
Build your platform!
Grow your audience!
Blog! Â Tweet! Â Pin!
And we do it or at least we try…
But in doing so, it’s easy to lose sight of the reason we’re doing all of this – because we want to write books – we want to share our stories – and the time we’d spend conjuring those tales is instead spent on creating content for our blogs and being good neighbors over in Twitter-land…
Maybe that’s a necessary evil.
I’m not sure.
What I have learned is this –
Blogging doesn’t equate to selling books.
And neither does tweeting.
Writing more books, however, definitely increases the likelihood of sales.
Not convinced?
On Twitter, I follow boohoos of authors. Â Some do nothing but scream “Buy my book!” I admit it – I ignore those tweets. Â Others share links to their blogs – offering great content – maybe an interesting podcast – and if I find them helpful, I sign up for their emails. On occasion, I might purchase an e-book. Â But the thing is – that’s not an everyday occurrence and just because I find a twitter account informative doesn’t mean I’m going to buy the author’s books. Â The same holds true with blogs.
I don’t think I’m alone in this…
It’s not that I don’t appreciate the author’s efforts. Â I do. Â But my goodness – who has the time or the financial resources to support every writer we come in contact with?
When it comes to my blog-
I try to offer interesting content. My followers/daily traffic is increasing. I know that building a following takes time.  That being said – all the blogging and tweeting really haven’t made a difference in my book sales.  And that’s okay.  I like blogging. I’ve made connections with people from all over the world – friendships that were made possible because of our blogs.
What’s it going to be?
My focus will be on my writing. Â That’s my dream. Â BUT – I’ll continue to blog and if blogging leads to a book sale then great. Â And if blogging continues to open doors to different parts of the world, allowing me to meet new people and share ideas with them, that’s even better!
What about you? Â How do you balance blogging, writing, and all the rest?
Time Saving Tip:
In an effort to maintain my social media presence with a minimal time investment, I’ve turned to Hootsuite. Â If you haven’t tried this scheduling option, I’d encourage you to check it out. Â By scheduling your tweets, etc – you can in effect be in multiple places at one time. Â I may be at work but Hootsuite is sending out my tweets/facebook posts, etc – making me look active. Â Hootsuite also provides links to relevant content (blogs) that you can share on your various accounts. Best of all – it’s free. (There is a paid option available.)