Common Author Questions: What Social Media Do I Need?
Social media can
be an acquired taste. Some people, especially younger, take to it
instantaneously, while others will hate it until something worse comes along.
Writers are told to keep up with social media in order to keep in contact and
personable with their readers, but to those who don’t really like talking to
people in person let alone having them enter into our private lives, it can
just be a pain in the ass.
I see a lot of authors asking if they should start with Instagram, Snapchat, or Pinterest, if they really need a Twitter account, and how many author pages on Facebook they must have. While I highly recommend a website and say everything else is supposed to be fun, there are some unseen benefits of each type of account.
Facebook
A great stand-in
for a real website.
While having
your own domain will make you look more professional, Facebook is easy to
update and reaches your friends and followers directly without them having to
consciously go to your URL. You don’t have to know how to fool with a HTML,
Wordpress, or pay a designer every time you want to put up new information, and
it’s free!
Content
Facebook is the
most flexible of the social media sites, allowing you to distribute images,
lengthy passages, and video. Sharing blogs and webpages is easy because it
automatically selects a picture from the site, and you really don’t have to
learn too much more about computer use to get it to work for you. It’s very
user friendly and with a high amount of traffic, it’s one of the best methods
to getting word out there.
The problem is
Facebook doesn’t want it to be turned into a spammy place and will restrict any
content that… well, is spammy. The algorithms that determine which posts show
up in your feed will automatically restrict a post with a link in it, showing
it to fewer people than had it only been text. Your regular personal page is
supposed to be used, shockingly, as a personal page, and you can’t friend more
than 5,000 people. You can create an official author page in which an unlimited
number of people can like, but pages, tending to be more commercial, don’t show
up as often in people’s feeds as personal pages. Basically meaning that while
one of the better places to market yourself, the best content is going to be
with anecdotal or joking posts rather than straightforward, “Buy my book!”
Twitter
Fast by force,
Twitter allows you to take only a few seconds (and sentences) to interact with
your audience. Keep them updated on your doings in less than 140 characters,
post an image, or link, and go on about your day.
Content
Twitter by
nature only allows you to say a limited amount of words. It is best suited for
a flippant one-liner to remind your readers that you exist. It does successfully
give a generalized idea of who you are, and its low-attention span audience is
more likely to impulse click on links. I find that most of my blog post hits
come from Twitter, and Twitter does not hide your self-promotion.
It’s also an
easy way to make friends because the limitation doesn’t mean you have to be too
thoughtful in your responses.
Instagram
Humans are
visual creatures and Instagram is great for familiarizing people to you without
having to come up with a textual post every day. Upload your photos, make a
comment, and scan through what your friends are doing. I personally don’t have
a lot to put on there, but have enjoyed puzzling out more ways to take photos
and make drawings that people would be interested in.
Instagram does
not allow for links and comments aren’t expected. If you are a photographer,
designer, artist, model, or just have a lot of pictures of your cat, it becomes
a really easy way to connect with people.
Content
Instagram is images
only, though I find that pictures with commentary below tend to receive more
attention. For me it can be somewhat difficult to find things to post because
I’m not as much as a visual person as other people tend to be. It’s good to
show off aspects of your life though, like your work space, the manuscript
you’re editing, cover reveals, etc. If you have a lot of photographs or
drawings anyway, it can be quick and easy to post them to your readers.
Snapchat
Snapchat
primarily focuses on video and images, but unlike the other forms of social
media, what you posts disappears after a certain amount of time. You can choose
to keep something for others to view later on, but the point is it is a way to
connect with people without fearing the typical issues of posting to social
media. However, people can save your images—just keep in mind it will tell you
if you had done so.
Content
I’m not a user
of Snapchat and only considered it at one time because I wanted to connect with
my friends who were active on it. Ultimately I deleted it, but it would be
useful for those who are good in front of a camera and want to quickly update
their fanbase on information without having a page filled with spam.
Pinterest
Pinterest is
similar to Instagram in that it is image based. However, instead of mostly
posting your own pieces, you scavenge the web and their topics to save images
that you like.
Content
While you can
upload your own photos and get attention through the site (which is a lot more
link friendly than Instagram), the intended use of Pinterest is to get ideas
and inspiration. This was one of the sites I once started to stalk people, but
never really got the point of until years later.
Today I use it
to collect images of costumes and locations, as well as different drawing
styles and book covers. One of the greatest things about the site is that it
really identified for me the cohesive tone and atmosphere I was looking for. By
being able to collect all the images that work for me, it’s easier to identify
elements of what I like as well as see the bigger picture I’m going for in my
own work.
Google Plus
The off-brand of
Facebook, Google Plus’s extra benefit is that you can easily share and collect
a wide variety of actions on the internet. It’s more about bonding over
external content, easier to search and explore than what others put into feeds.
Content
It is really
easy to collect content from other sites in one steady place. My Google Plus
account, which I don’t use very much, consists mainly of blog comments and
posts I’ve made. It’s a conglomeration of external content with few
straightforward statuses. The point is the ease in which you can see what you,
or other people are doing, all across the internet.
Linked-In
I don’t know
about other businesses, but for authors Linked-In seems fairly ineffective to
me. It’s basically an online resume allowing people to network and present
themselves in a professional matter. Unfortunately, readers don’t care and
agents and publishers aren’t going to be looking.
Content
Linked-In allows
you to post your resume as well as search for jobs. If you are a freelance
editor or graphic designer, it might be useful to have your credentials there.
Wordpress, Wix, Blogger, Tumblr, or Livejournal
While at one
point people were told every writer should blog, the community has more or less
decided it’s not effective enough to force yourself into doing it if you don’t
enjoy it. The benefit of having a blog—long articles you’ve written about
subjects you’re interested in—is that when you have new content frequently,
people are more likely to come back. An author who otherwise only comes out
with a book once a year is more likely to be forgotten about.
Wordpress is
user friendly for those who aren’t too technically savvy, but it can be
controlling like a mother-in-law. It’s gotten better over the years with its
money grubbing schemes to allow for diversity, but it doesn’t give as much
design flexibility as Blogger. Unlike Blogger though, it is less glitchy, less
room for amateurish styles, and has a larger community.
Blogger, which I
use, is much more willing to work with what you want, just so long as you know
how to work with computers. It still has a community, and my only real
complaint is sometimes it has formatting bugs that are frustrating, liking
adding an extra “return” before my last paragraph.
Wix makes
designing your website free and easy, but is the least flexible of all of the
options. Once you choose a tablet, you’re stuck with it, and you can’t alter
their templates, making most Wix sites immediately obvious.
The benefit of
Tumblr is similar to Wordpress in that it has a great built in community. I
don’t use Tumblr, but personally have found the blogs to be harder to navigate.
It seems preferable for images than long text.
Livejournal is
easy to use and for strict blogging. The sites are usually easy to read and
navigate, look good, but also has a reputation for being a personal “journal”
rather than a professional blog. It has a built in community, but has made me
feel in the past that if you are not part of that community, you shouldn’t be
reading.
Content
People talk in
length about the best sort of content a blog should have, but overall, posts
tend to have more description than, say, Facebook statuses. You have more
flexibility to “waste people’s time,” because they came there to listen to you
instead of other social media accounts where they just happened across your
status.
Blogs are a
fantastic way to get people to know you better, care about you more, and invest
in your career. It’s also a good way to gain trust. I’ve bought several novels
I wouldn’t have otherwise if I didn’t read their blogs.
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