Dear fellow writers,
I know, it’s a bottomless pit and pandora’s box at the same time, but I’m curious as to whether you are using social media at all and if which of the networks and in which way.
I had a Facebook Account from 2007 until last year, but I never really enjoyed the platform and I don’t think it helped professionally. I always felt like having eaten junk food after visiting the network. I have the feeling, it’s always the same people posting the same sort of stuff, while really interesting colleagues and friends tend to post very little if at all.
I’m now writing my first Young Adult novel, one of the protagonists uses a platform that works a bit like Instagram, so I’ve set up an Instagram account for research purposes. It’s very much like I expected it to be. I don’t see how a writer could benefit from that platform, except for research purposes, but maybe (probably) I’m mistaken.
I also have a Twitter account which I use for my journalistic work, getting information from political parties, organisations etc. in real time when I need them. But I only log in when there’s a solid reason to do so (doing less and less journo work, it’s been almost a year since my last log in) and I never post anything.
I know that it’s almost expected from writers to do some sort of self promotion on social media nowadays, but writer colleagues who kept promoting their own work on Facebook gave me a feeling of desperation and had a very high cringe factor. I’m not sure if I can hop onto that boat.
Privately, I have no desire to post pictures of my food, home, children, bicycle, coffee cup, tourist destinations anywhere on the Internet.
Do you and if how do you use social media as a writer? Maybe I’m getting it all wrong. I keep looking back to the old times, when it was the writer’s job to write books and the publisher’s job to promote and sell them, but it looks like they’re not coming back anytime soon.
Sorry for the long post, it’s pure procrastination, as I just hit a cul de sac in my manuscript …
Best,
js.