Chapter 13

VIRTUAL VIGILANCE

FOR MANY WRITERS, THE WORLD WIDE WEB DOUBLES AS our virtual playground, office park, shopping mall, muse fuse, research library, back office, and school of life. There is so much to do and see and learn in the great wealth of information and opportunity online that it can be absolutely overwhelming — presenting big challenges to (and big opportunities for) a writer’s productivity. This chapter will equip you to use social media and other online technologies to grow your platform and boost your productivity, without blowing your circuits!

DRIVE PLATFORM AND PERFORMANCE WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media are online tools and technologies that let you easily connect with other people and create, then cultivate, the communities that matter to you. Writers have all kinds of reactions to and feelings about “going public” (using social media), from confusion to overwhelmed to distaste to delight. Whatever your personal preferences, the fact of the matter is that unless you are the next J.D. Salinger, you are more than likely going to be the number one person responsible for making yourself visible as a writer and known for your platform expertise.

So I’d suggest that you at least attempt to make nice with social media, with a goal of using it strategically and efficiently, while having fun. Once you are contacted by someone in your network who wants to quote you, hire you, or learn something from you; once you are uplifted, informed, or triggered to take productive action after hearing from or about someone online, you may gain a whole new appreciation for the virtues of online community.

Which Tools to Use, When and Why

A productive relationship with social media doesn’t happen overnight. Like the rest of your productive writing life, it takes root one day at a time as you learn about the online communities and platforms that suit you best, then become increasingly effective at using them to listen, learn, and get your message out. You may want to consider adding at least a few of these communication vehicles to your social media arsenal:

• BLOGS: BE YOUR OWN PUBLISHER. A blog is a simple-to-use website that lets you post new information quickly and easily, whenever you want. Anyone who’s interested can visit at any time, or subscribe. Through the comments function, readers can respond to your posts and dialogue with you as well as other readers. You can even automatically import blog posts to your Facebook page.

• FACEBOOK: GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM YOUR FRIENDS. As I write this, Facebook (www.facebook.com) may be the most popular way that writers sustain community and have fun online. You can share inspiration, news, questions, ideas, updates about your life and work, and connect with people you care about all over the world. Use it to announce events, opportunities, and publications. Some writers use their general Facebook page for this; others create a fan page and/or a group page where people who want to know about their platform or book or project can sign up to do so. Remember that the more pages you have, the more time and energy you’ll spend keeping up with them. I recommend starting simple with one personal page and expanding as you have the time and interest.

• GOODREADS: SHARE YOUR LITERARY LOVE. If you want a forum for giving and receiving book recommendations, GoodReads (www.goodreads.com) is for you. You can also use it to track what you’re planning to read and what you’ve already read, form a book club, or collect favorite quotes.

• LINKEDIN: GROW YOUR PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY. Linked In (www.linkedin.com) allows you to keep in touch with colleagues, stay abreast of news and trends, showcase your expertise, join groups relevant to your interests, announce and learn about new opportunities, endorse the work of others, and receive endorsements. If you do only one thing there, post your résumé and a compelling description of what you do, for whom, and how it benefits them (and make sure to keep it current). You never know who might be seeking what you offer.

• NING: CREATE A COMMUNITY ON YOUR TOPIC. The Ning (www.ning.com) social platform lets you create a community around any topic that matters to you — enabling dialogue around the clock with anyone and everyone who’s interested. You can use it to generate groundswell for your platform topic, collaborate with colleagues, or establish meaningful relationships with like-minded people.

• TWITTER: SHOUT IT OUT IN SOUND BYTES. Twitter (www.twitter.com) allows you to share brief news, ideas, information, and links (in 140 characters or less) with everyone who has chosen to “follow” you. Plus, you can follow everyone offering wisdom you’re seeking on the craft, publishing, and platform-related topics that are most relevant to you. I recommend that you use TweetDeck (www.tweetdeck.com) as your tweeting interface to get a wide-angle view of what matters to you and be more efficient with how you sort, view, and navigate the news of your community.

Please note that this is not a definitive list of what’s available in the realm of social media, nor can I begin to predict where we’re headed. From where I sit, these are the most popular platforms that will give you the greatest opportunities to connect with a like-minded community today.

If you’re using one of these tools already, maybe it’s time to try another. If you’re already engaged with every social media forum that is relevant to you, this is your opportunity to take a step back and consider how you can be even more effective with the time you spend online. (More details about time management on page 128.)

Put Your Finger on the Virtual Pulse

In addition to putting the people you want to know at your fingertips, technology can be extremely useful in delivering the information you are seeking to your desktop, around the clock.

• TRACK TOPICS AND TRENDS. Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts) is a great, free tool you can use to plug in your platform keywords and get a daily, aggregated list of articles and links where those words or phrases appear. This is a fast and simple way to keep your finger on the pulse of your chosen topic or area of expertise. I also recommend tracking your own name and book titles, so you can easily learn what’s being said about you as soon as it happens.

• ARCHIVE YOUR FAVORITE SITES. Bookmark the websites you visit frequently. Then organize your list by creating a bookmarks toolbar and menu in your browser; you can even create these in Google so you can log into them from any computer you’re using, anywhere.

• SAVE TIME STAYING CURRENT. Google Reader (www.google.com/reader) is a handy tool that lets you cull every blog and site you read regularly, sorted in folders by topic of interest, in one fast and friendly interface. Often you’ll even have the option to tweet about news that you want to share, directly from your Google Reader page. This can significantly streamline the time you spend learning and sharing information online.

Grow your system over time by filing each new Web resource within the appropriate menu library or Google Reader folder as you go. One day at a time, you’ll be charting your own personal media constellation and making it easier and easier to navigate at the speed of light.

SETTING BOUNDARIES AND BEHAVIOR STANDARDS

If you were to partake in all that is available to you online, you wouldn’t have much time left over for actually writing anything. Knowing what you value, what you expect, and what your limits are will help you stay on course so you are using social media to service your productivity, rather than letting it derail you with distraction.

Understand How Social Media Is Serving Your Productivity and Platform

Connect with people who share your interests or expertise

Today it doesn’t matter where you live: If you are trying to quit your marshmallow sandwich habit, it’s quite likely you can find people all around the world in exactly the same predicament, with all kinds of ideas and resources and encouragement to share. As you develop your platform and your craft, you have the opportunity to do so in good company at any time of day or night. Since you’re likely to be at your computer while writing, these people you join forces with are often more accessible than many of the other people in your life. They’re right there at your fingertips, accompanying you as you go.

Exchange support, encouragement, and opportunities

The good people in your online community are the ones who will likely want to interview you on their blogs, announce your good news, offer publication suggestions, and generally share, collaborate, cheer, and kvetch with you through the ups and the downs of your writing adventure — and vice versa. How does this happen? Through reading and commenting on blogs that appeal to you, participating in forums, joining groups related to your topic or genre, responding to tweets and Facebook posts that are aligned with your platform and passions, starting or joining a relevant Ning community, and so on.

Offer and tap wisdom

Having a presence online (through a blog, Facebook, Twitter, or other social media communities discussed in this chapter) gives you a pulpit, a bullhorn, a virtual rooftop from which to shout about all the good news and interesting insights you discover along the way. If you do this well and regularly, it is likely that people will start seeking you out for the wisdom you have to offer on your topic (as well as the unique spirit in which you share it). Over time, you will have the opportunity to establish yourself as a thought leader. Likewise, you can subscribe to have the insights and expertise of any number of thought leaders coming to you directly, every day.

Do it faster

If you could do it online faster and more efficiently, would you? Over the years, I’ve taught in a wide range of contexts, including universities, hospitals, conferences, libraries, and community centers. I love teaching live. But the realities in this chapter of my life are that I can connect with more people, more easily, right from my desk — without having to leave the house, get dressed, find childcare, or take time to travel. Plus, I get to learn with poets all over the world without schlepping a suitcase. Ask yourself if there are any advantages or efficiencies to taking whatever you’re doing “live” online, whether it’s teaching, research, interviews, or community events.

Get inspired

Social media offers a multitude of ways to study productive writers you admire. Learn where they’re publishing, how they communicate with their community and their readers, what types of projects they’re currently fielding, and how they sustain a momentum over time. Some talk frankly about where they’re sending out work, what they’re getting paid, why they think you should try harder in some areas and give up in others. Should you get intimidated along the way, remember that every great writer was at one time unknown and unpublished. Your opportunity here is to get inspired by what others have accomplished and to learn how you can apply the approaches you admire to take your own platform and productivity forward.

Most importantly, if you want to use social media, find what’s fun, interesting, and surprising in it for you, so you’ll keep on doing it. And evaluate along the way if and how it is serving your writing life.

Make a Social Media Game Plan

You’ll get the most benefit from your relationship with social media if you know and respect your limits. Every writer’s needs and requirements for social media will be unique, depending on temperament; available time; promotional, platform-development and community-building priorities; and the amount of pleasure it gives you.

When you are ready to take the reigns in your relationship with social media, spend at least a few weeks getting a sense of your current rhythms, tendencies, and habits. Notice what seems to be serving you well, where you waste time, and where you’re getting the most value from the time you spend. Then create a social media game plan to set some standards for yourself.

Don’t worry if your plan isn’t perfect at first; know that you’ll be refining it over time as you know more and more about what you want and need from your relationship with social media as your productivity and your platform evolve.

Check out an example of a social media game plan at WritersDigest.com/article/productive-writer-downloads.

REIGNING YOURSELF IN

Okay, so you’ve set some online performance standards for yourself. Now it’s time to enforce them.

Break the Link

While writing this book, our home computer network went down. Which meant that my laptop could no longer go online without physically plugging it in. I encouraged my husband — our family tech expert — not to fix it. And when the book woke me at 4:30 in the morning, as it did on most mornings, I’d stay in bed with the computer and write and write and write without having to manage my feverishly insistent desire to jump online. It simply wasn’t an option. Cafés that require a payment to tap into their online network serve a similar purpose. I don’t pay and enjoy a blessed writing session free of virtual noise. Sometimes the best way to enforce a boundary is to eliminate all choice. How can you break the link between you and things you do online to distract and interrupt your writing?

Drive Your Performance With Your Media Habit

Let’s say you love Facebook. Set that up as your carrot to get you over a hurdle you’ve been circling instead of jumping. Give yourself a clear limit, and promise yourself a reward on the other side. For example, I will commit to two hours of writing, and then allow myself a look-see (with a time limit) online. The imagined reward keeps me in my seat and ensures that I’ll delay gratification long enough to actually accomplish something. What are you willing to wait for in the name of productivity?

Do What Moves You From Moment to Moment

The paradox of setting strict guidelines about how and what you’re going to do online is that some days, it just won’t work. Every now and then, the most productive thing you can do is surf the Web for an hour, or however long it takes, to ground yourself and get the wander-lust out of your system. If you force yourself to do what you’re really not ready to do, sometimes that just leads to rebellion, and rebellion is not productive.

Letting yourself off the hook of structured expectation just may be the most direct route to actually accomplishing writing on the other side. Think of this option as your bathroom hall pass, and watch yourself carefully. If you’re excusing yourself every few hours for days at a time, then it’s time to tap into one of this book’s other strategies to get your groove back.

Understand That Everything You Say Online Is “On the Record”

With the advent of social media, gone are the days of one-dimensional identities in the various compartments of our lives. In places like Facebook and Twitter, we are sharing who we are; maybe not all of who we are, but certainly more than was once typically communicated on the job or in each aspect of the many roles we play in life. We can see the old prom photos and latest family photos of the people we may have otherwise only seen in business suits. We learn that they tap dance and design greeting cards in addition to running a publishing house or editing that magazine we’re dying to crack. We witness what’s troubling them and what they’re curious about.

A Productive Writer is clear about what types of information she is willing to share and how. Consider carefully that any complaint you make about anyone online will eventually reach them. Any “secret” thing you publish is just a link away from going viral. And any detail you reveal about your personal life that you wish you didn’t will be retrievable to anyone and everyone forever after. So be extra careful about what you say online and the spirit in which you say it. Everything you express should be a reflection of the standard you set for yourself in your writing life. Be on your best behavior (unless you are growing a “bad behavior” platform, of course), be respectful, and understand that everything you say online will be on the record — forever.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

We writers are entering a brave, new publishing frontier full of many unknowns and possibilities. The proliferation of content delivery media is leveling the playing field and putting publishing and platform development opportunities in our hands like never before. As e-books (via Kindle and other such technologies), iPad applications, and the concept of content as product take root in the zeitgeist, we need to pay attention, listen, learn, and remain as nimble as we can. Why? So we can understand the opportunities as they approach, get a handle on the technologies and what they offer, and decide how to harness the appropriate ones in service to our productivity, visibility, and success.