Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time convincing reluctant writers to jump into social media.
My success rate is pretty good, but I’ve come to realize that a wide demographic swathe of writers didn’t grow up with a computer in their room, thus have limited knowledge about (or sometimes sympathy for) blogging, Twitter, Facebook, etc. — not to mention how perfectly adapted these media are for writers. Last week I put together a page of links and quick-start advice for our Powerful Narrative Workshop. It worked for them so I offer it here.
First, to set the stage, a few pages of general observations on why writers should be flocking around these amazing FREE tools:
GENERAL
Writers Need Social Media…and Social Media Needs Writers from The Creative Penn.
5 Questions for Those Who Don’t Have Time to Market/Promote from Jane Friedman’s There Are No Rules.
12 Social Media Essentials for Writers from Donald Lafferty’s Practical Social Media
Twitter Isn’t Stupid from Publishing Trends
BLOGGING
The leading free “hosts,” where you could start a blog literally 5 minutes from now, are Blogger and WordPress. Both Blogger and WordPress are in wide general use. I recommend WordPress.com, the “hosted” version of WordPress.
Blog guru Darren Rouse’s resource page Blogging for Beginners will help you get started. Darren Rouse also has a blog devoted to Twitter. He’s widely trusted and a good teacher. Follow the links on his page and you’ll have what you need to get going.
TWITTER
You can get started on Twitter in 5 minutes. Here’s a post that will take you through the setup process in simple, clear steps.
Twitter is well worth some trouble if you want to attract attention to a site, a blog, an event. You can build Twitter contacts in your own subject area – microbiology, essay writing, autism, health policy – using Twitter Search. Type your subject into the search window, click, and you’ll see people with your interests represented in the tweets that come up. It takes some newbies a while to warm up to the concept of following and being followed but Twitter support has this page to help with that.
FACEBOOK
Should you have a Facebook account? Again, it’s how “social” and/or promotional you want to be online. Many people who ignored Facebook are joining up now because they realize:
(1) People they call friends are on Facebook, sharing pictures, thoughts, links, quotes, etc. and NOT doing this anymore by regular mail or email;
(2) People they’ve lost touch with and thought they’d never find again are now only a click away, on Facebook ready to be “found;”
(3) Many people in their field or area of interest are already on Facebook, and it’s a simple way to make a first contact or simply to see what they’re posting about and who they’re in touch with.
Here are a couple of “get started” resource pages for Facebook.
Facebook 101
Facebook 25 Tips and Tricks
Note: as with Twitter, if you do sign up, upload that profile pic right away. Some of you have said you already have a Facebook page, you just don’t ever go there. Still, if you haven’t uploaded a profile picture, I strongly advise doing it as soon as possible.
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