There is an easy solution to that. Schedule the message in advance, so it will post exactly when you want it to post, and you will not have to worry about remembering to post it. There are a number of aggregator programs (like Hootsuite) which can schedule posts for you, but today I want to talk about how to schedule posts directly from your FaceBook page. This functionality is not yet built into personal profiles, but it works on “Pages” on FaceBook. However, you can backdate a post on both a professional page and a personal profile.

Schedule a Post in Advance on a FaceBook Page

1. Log into FaceBook.
2. Go to your “Page”. Please note this does not work for personal profiles.
3. Click in the message box.
4. Type your message in the message box on your profile or page, and add any images, links, videos, etc.
5. Click on the clock icon and select the date and time. You can also use this function to backdate a post on both personal profiles and professional pages.
6. Click Post to schedule your message. Then it will automatically appear on your page on the date and time you selected.

Backdate a Post on a FaceBook Page or Profile

1. Log into FaceBook.
2. Go to your “Page” or profile. Please note this does not work from the Home Page.
3. Click in the message box.
4. Type your message in the message box on your profile or page, and add any images, links, videos, etc.
5. Click on the clock icon and select the date and time. Personal pages will only let you backdate a post. Professional pages will let you backdate a post or schedule it in advance.
6. Click Post to backdate your message and post it.

Please note that as FaceBook evolves, this tutorial may become outdated.

Short Stories and Poetry | Buy my poetry book | Follow me on FaceBook | Social Media Tutorials

Arkansas writer and educator, Darcy Pattison, held an abbreviated version of her manuscript workshop the first afternoon of the conference. I learned just how much I didn’t know about my manuscript and writing in general during her workshop. But that’s a good thing! Attendees brought “shrunken versions” of their manuscripts and marked portions of the text that met or did not meet certain criteria. Then they could clearly see which portions of their manuscripts needed work.

Karl Jones, an editor with an imprint of Penguin, and Dawn Frederick, an agent with Red Sofa Literary, spoke on Saturday. Their presentations were informative, fun, and timely. Karl even introduced the audience to “prancercising” and did a demonstration to accompany his marketing presentation.

The conference also included the chance to pitch manuscripts or get a critique from the editor and agent. I pitched a couple of my picture book manuscripts. There was some interest in them, so I will be emailing those manuscripts to the editor. We’ll see how it goes from there.

Speaking of conferences, I recently updated my list of writing conferences in and around Arkansas. If you have a conference in the area and you’d like to see it on the list, just send me a message.

During the chaos of the conference weekend, I learned I was mentioned in the Paper Trails column in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. They published a blurb about my article that appeared in the Chicken Soup for the Soul: Inspiration for Writers book which was released May 21.

And speaking of books, I will probably postpone the release of my short story ebook for a bit in order to focus on one final polishing of these manuscripts I’m sending to the editor (and to give my artist more time to work on the ebook cover). It will be worth the wait.

In other news, I have booked a speaking engagement this fall with the Saline County Poets. I will do a presentation on tools for poets and writers in the digital age.

I’m off to save the world one word at a time. Happy writing! See you back here next week.

I’ve had friends create friend lists for any number of topics. If you like sports but don’t want to bother your friends with all of the sports-talk during the big game, you can create a list of your friends who will also be interested in the game. Only people in your sports lists will see your sports posts if you use a friend list. This works like “Circles” in Google Plus, but has been around much longer.

How to Create a Friends List

1. Log into FaceBook.
2. Click on Home to make sure you are on the Home page.
3. Find the section called “Friends” in the left column, and hover to the right of it. Click on the word “More” when it appears.
4. This will show you all of your Friend Lists. It should say Friends at the top of the screen. These are different from Groups. If it says Groups at the top of the screen, you are in the wrong place. Groups are something else entirely on FaceBook.
5. Click “Create List” in the top center of the Friends list page.
6. Type the name of the list. Try to keep the name short.
7. Then start entering the names of friends you want on this list. Enter as many or as few names as you want on the list. Then click Create.
8. Now you have a Friends List.

How to Use a Friends List

1. If you haven’t logged into FaceBook yet, log in.
2. Click on your name to go to your personal profile.
3. Click in the box to type a new status message, and type a message.
4. The bottom right of the status box will say “Friends” or “Public” or “custom” depending upon the security settings of your account. Click on it and a dropdown box will appear with all of the default security settings and a few of your Friends Lists. If you do not see your new list, click “See All Lists” and they should all appear.
5. Just click on the list you want and click Post to post the message for just the people on that list. Only those people will be able to see the message you just typed. For example, if I create a list of poets and use that list when I post poetry, then only those people would be able to see the poems I post on my FaceBook page. Nice, huh? :)

Of course, you don’t want to use lists to limit everything you post, because the fewer people who see your posts, the fewer people who can respond. However lists are handy for gauging feedback from a small group of people without the hassles of the Group feature on Facebook.

Short Stories and Poetry | Buy my poetry book | Follow me on FaceBook | Social Media Tutorials

My friend Tim Robbins has been working on the cover. He’s posted some samples of outer space backgrounds on his facebook page at www.facebook.com/timrobbinsart. I’m sure you can guess a tiny bit about the story based on that. I don’t want to give away too much about the ebook yet. After all, it is only a short story. :)

Anyway, the thing you’ve all been waiting for – the title of my ebook…is… To Dream Perchance to Live. Look for more details about it on my blog as mid-June approaches.

PS- Some of Tim’s space images make great desktop backgrounds!

Short Stories and Poetry | Buy my poetry book | Follow me on FaceBook | Social Media Tutorials

This summer Unfettered, an epic anthology of scifi and fantasy short stories by over 20 authors will be released. If you haven’t gotten your copy, I think there are a few of the hardback trade editions still available at grimoakpress.com.

Terry Brooks will release his third book within the past year in honor of his 35th anniversary year as a writer. These books include interior illustrations which are unheard of these days!

Joss Whedon returns to tv with S.H.I.E.L.D.

This fall ABC and Once Upon a Time are releasing a new spinoff tv show – Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. It retells the story of Alice in the style of Once Upon a Time.

And I will be releasing a short story as an ebook in mid-June! My good friend, Tim Robbins, is working hard on the cover art – which looks amazing! I can’t wait to show it to everyone! Hmmm… Maybe next week I should share the title…?

This is indeed a good year for scifi and fantasy!

Short Stories and Poetry | Buy my poetry book | Follow me on FaceBook | Social Media Tutorials

People always say, write what you know. But when you write fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy, what you know may have little to do with your story. For example, how relevant is a receptionist in modern dentist’s office to a historical fantasy? Unless that’s your protagonist’s job, it might not provide much fodder for your story, but in the case of a historical fantasy the day-to-day knowledge of the job wouldn’t fit the time period for the story.

The “write what you know” theory goes deeper than what you consciously think you know. It speaks to emotional truths and truths of life. Your entire story may be made-up, but your characters need to feel like real people for your readers to connect to them. In order for them to feel real, you need to share the characters’ vulnerabilities, their flaws, and their emotional truths.

This is one issue I’ve struggled with in my writing. It’s hard to be mean to your characters. It’s hard to give your characters impossible choices where no matter what they choose, there’s no right answer. We all want to give our characters better lives than our own. But the struggle is part of what makes a story interesting.

It’s even more difficult to engrain your characters with the emotions of those conflicts – because people might miss-interpret. Just because I write about a certain topic or emotional state doesn’t mean it relates directly to my own life.

I know a poet who wrote a very emotional piece about a family mourning the son they lost in a war. Several people in the audience at the event assumed the poem was the poet’s own personal story and told him they were sorry for his loss.

It is frightening to let yourself be vulnerable by making your characters show their weaknesses. That is one of the biggest things that holds writers back. But even a New York Times Best-Selling author like Margaret Stohl experiences the same feelings as those of us still struggling to sell our first book.

Short Stories and Poetry | Buy my poetry book | Follow me on FaceBook | Social Media Tutorials

He came strong
The dragon she never thought she’d see again
No longer trapped in a youngling body
His breath searing the brittle landscape
Flames sprang to life and engulfed the land around her
Burning the distance
He came back for her
He came back to do the one thing he hadn’t done before-
To fight.

Short Stories and Poetry | Buy my poetry book | Follow me on FaceBook | Social Media Tutorials

Today I want to discuss the difference between a Facebook Page and a FaceBook Profile. “Aren’t the terms interchangeable?” you ask. Well, yes, people interchange the terms all the time – usually when they are referring to a profile, but they are actually two different things with separate purposes.

As an author, artist, musician, or other creative person, it’s possible and often likely you have two portals on FaceBook. The first one would be your personal profile. This is what most people use. A profile is a personal page where you can “friend” your friends. They tend to be more personal and have more security options for limiting who can see content you post.

Then there are FaceBook Pages. Pages tend to be more professional. The easiest way to know if you are looking at a Profile or a Page is you can friend a Profile, but you can only “Like” a Page.

Why should you create a FaceBook Page for your business or professional persona when it’s easier to have everyone on your personal Profile?

Well, there are a number of reason. First of all, to create a professional environment, you want to filter out unprofessional personal posts and chatter that may hinder your appearance as a professional. While that is now possible to do with a FaceBook Profile, it is a lot easier to have your own professional FaceBook Page and only post relevant content on the Page. Then you can post anything you want on your personal Profile for your close friends without a strenuous filtering process.

Also, there is a limit to the number of friends you can connect with on a personal Profile. The new “Subscribe” button is a step towards turning a personal Profile into a professional page, because it essentially eliminates the issue of having a limited number of friends. Honestly, the friend limit shouldn’t be an issue on a Profile unless you are 1) famous or 2) using your personal profile for both personal and professional purposes. FaceBook Pages, however, have no limit. They don’t have friends, but followers. You can have as many followers on your FaceBook Page as you can convince to follow you. :)

The biggest reason you should use a FaceBook Profile for your professional activities is the analytics. FaceBook Pages come equipped with analytics tools which tell you how well each post is received. One a FaceBook Profile you have no idea how many people see your post unless they actually comment of like the post. With a Page, you are given charts showing you the number of people who actually saw the post and the number of viral hits the post got. (That’s friends of friends who saw the post because a person who liked your page commented or liked the post and one of their friends saw it.) Viral hits are the chocolate of the internet world. Everyone wants them, but they aren’t easy to acquire. Ideally, you would turn those viral hits into new “Likes” for your page and then their friends would be your new viral audience.

On a Page, you can also see demographics about who likes your page. You can see the age range and location of your audience. This can help you customize your posts to target the type of people who you want to interact with your Page.

Although it’s possible to use a FaceBook Profile as a professional page, I would recommend using a FaceBook Page for that because it really does have a lot more built-in tools designed for a professional environment that the Profile lacks.

Come back in two weeks for the next installment in my Social Media Tutorial Blog Series. If you have any particular social media topics, send me a message or leave me a comment here and I will try to get to them.

Short Stories and Poetry | Buy my poetry book | Follow me on FaceBook | Social Media Tutorials

One of the most well-known events in the online poetry world is the annual Writer’s Digest April Poem-A-Day Challenge on the Poetic Asides Blog. Robert Lee Brewer provides a new poetry prompt each day in April. There is also a contest at the end where Robert picks his favorite poems. It’s another great excuse to write poetry this month.

I, however, have other projects I am working on this month. But here is a poems I wrote a while back. Happy Poeming!

Road of Life
By Robin A. Burrows

on a three-seater bus
hand in hand in hand
faces interchange
left and right
all loved
deeds done
never forgotten
goodbye and hello
faces change
on the road of life

Short Stories and Poetry | Buy my poetry book | Follow me on FaceBook | Social Media Tutorials

Lists are wonderful because they allow you to filter through the tweets and see only what you want to see. For example, if you have one Twitter account for both your personal and professional self, you can set up a list to just show you tweets by your real life friends and a separate list for tweets from your clients.

For lists you create, you can choose whether they are public lists that anyone can see and follow, or if they are private lists that only you can see.

In addition, you can also follow other people’s lists.For example, if your publishing company has 8 reps, one person could create a list of those 8 people, and you could follow their list instead of making your own.

Go to a person’s profile on Twitter and click on lists to see all of the public lists they created and follow. You can follow any of the lists you see because you will not be able to see someone’s private lists.

There are some really creative uses for lists. One person created accounts for Star Wars characters and then added all of the characters to a list and the characters tweeted out the Star Wars story. By following the list (or visiting the list page) you could read all of the posts by the characters all in one place without having to friend them all!

Short Stories and Poetry | Buy my poetry book | Follow me on FaceBook | Social Media Tutorials