Do Writers Need Social Networks?

So I saw this on a message board just the other day, people, writers/ authors who have self-published a book are asking if they need Twitter? Yep, it is still happening. Others wonder what the benefits of Facebook or Google Plus might be. I was shocked reading this. I want to answer the title question right at the start: YES. Yes you need Twitter. Yes you need Facebook. Yes you need all the social networks you can type your pen name into. Yes, yes, yes. If you have self-published a book you especially certainly without doubt NEED to have as much social network reach as you can possibly get.

That being said it goes without saying that many writers are new to social networks, not only are they unsure of the benefits, they are unsure of how to use them. So you are reading the first in a series of articles on this subject. There are many social networks. They are all different, and they should be used in very different ways. I will talk about each social network and how to use them, and I’ll talk about what the best goals are for each. If you have published a book you will have a different objective than if you are just promoting your writing and you haven’t been published. Right now I want to focus on the benefits of social networks.

Seeing the Benefits of Social Networks

Social networks are the heart of the internet right now. These networks are a big part of why a bunch of self-published books recently made the New York Times Bestsellers List. They are the reason that one author reported selling 80,000 copies of their ebook in 10 days. Social networks let people connect with you. For example: some people think that Twitter is about tweeting your everyday life, “I’m eating ice cream now, and it is good.” That is one thing you can do with Twitter, but it’s not the best way for an author to use it (maybe if your are famous, people will care). The thing that Twitter and all social networks do, and do very well, is let you share your vision of the world with people. It lets you find people who see it your way.

Example (hypothetical don’t send emails)

Remember those 5 guys in high school who played Magic cards and sat at a table transfixed on casting spells? Remember those 5 guys were the only 5 guys in the whole school who even played that game? Those 5 guys were dorks right? (I don’t really think this, so don’t send me email, it’s a hypothetical to prove a point, chill). Those 5 guys were laughed at and made fun of behind their back and blah blah blah. You know the cliché after school special. Now imagine if those 5 guys found 500,000 other people who liked that ridiculous game (again hypothetical). If you only have 5 guys to share your view with, it’s lonely, you’re an outcast, you probably having low self-esteem. One of those 5 guys is never going to write a book for the other 4 guys, but if he had 500,000 people who see the world his way and those 500,000 people want to read a book on that goofy game (again no emails please) the guy who writes the book is a best selling author. That’s what twitter and other social networks are about. It’s about connecting to those people who like your ideas. Writers are all about ideas, right? Well at least we should be. So if you find the people who like your ideas, bing! you’ve just sold your book.

Anyway, I will talk more about how to use each social network in the coming articles. For now, as a step by step guide, the first thing we need to do is find out which social networks to sign up with.

Which Networks should you sign up with?

I will keep this simple at first, and then we can expand on it later. As a rule of thumb you want to join the biggest social networks first. I would say start with 4.

Facebook (approx 1,000,000,000 users)
Twitter (approx 500,000,000 users)
LinkedIn (approx 200,000,000 users)
Google Plus (approx 500,000,000 users)

Your first question might be why not join social networks for writers? Writer’s social networks are for writers by writers. Writers tend to want to sell you work and promote their new poem or short story, and they are not all geared to reading your stuff. Join a writers social network if you want to meet writers. If you want to promote your work, and find people with similar interests, who want to listen to you (and not talk so much about their own ideas) join the 4 networks I listed above. Again as a step by step you should go out and sign up with these networks, BUT before you do that keep these things in mind. Avoid the big mistakes.

Joining Facebook

Facebook is a great tool to find close friends and similar interests. If you don’t like the people that you went to high school with, that’s great. You can show them your new book! They will be so jealous, and they will buy and read your book hoping that you fall flat on your face. It is a great launching tool. It is also ever so important that you eventually start a Facebook page. Why? Facebook has close to a billion users, and some of those users (we hope) will want to know about and read your book. You use Facebook to talk to people you know or knew at a previous points in life, but you ask everyone in the world to like your facebook page (if they have a Facebook account, which they do).

So sign up as yourself! Create your profile about you! The real you, and then create pages for your books. Don’t start an FB profile about your book. I don’t think they allow this, and no one will know to look for it.

Joining Twitter

You can be a little more creative signing up for twitter, but I recommend signing up as YOU or at least as your pen name. Don’t sign up as your book title, or as a character of your book. If you write another book, you have to start all over, and building a Twitter following is hard. You’ll see that in another article.

Joining Google Plus and LinkedIN

For both of these sign up as yourself. You can use a pen name for Google, but for LinkedIn come as you are.

I’m telling you how to sign up for these networks because there are many mistakes to be made. If you sign up as your book title, you are going to double your work load. If you sign up under a goofy name, people won’t be able to find you. If you are shy and worried about  people finding out that you are a writer or that you have ideas, you have to get over this. The days where writers could publish a book and live in a dark room drinking lots of Whiskey hating people are quickly evaporating. If you feel like no one has liked your ideas so far, take comfort in knowing that the world gets much much bigger when you sign up with a social network. A lot of people out there will feel the same way you do.

Presenting yourself

Ok, so this can be very different from person to person, but I would say in your profile should reflect the ideas you intend to present to people. They should be you through your ideas. That doesn’t mean you should act cool, smoking a cigarette in a leather jacket if that’s not what your book is about, but at least be honest about what you like. You know that party you went to and all the guys there were talking about football, you didn’t like football, but you went along and said you did just to fit in. This isn’t the time to do that. Be honest with your ideas.

Profile Pic

Again this can be as different as you like, but just make it professional and about about you. I know I’ll get a lot of comments about this (people telling me I’m crazy cuz it doesn’t matter blah blah blah). It does matter. You don’t’ have to go have head shots made or anything like that, but if you have a picture that you took with a web cam and it’s dark and blurry and makes you look like a serial killer, it’ll turn people off. Just find a nice picture of you, that you like. As a tip, if you want to crop it but don’t have a cropping tool (some people do not) open it in MS paint and cut out the part of the picture you want post. Also, don’t use celebrity pics (it’s illegal) and don’t use pictures of flowers or stars or whatever. Use a picture of who you are. You are looking to connect with people, and people on social networks like to believe they are dealing with a real person.

Next article: How to use Twitter