I may be a little young to be a Luddite, but I feel utterly out of my depth regarding things like Twitter, Blogs and Facebook and how I should be using these as a writer.

Fortunately, Liz Fenwick and Kate Johnson’s excellent session helped me understand what these social media are about and the kinds of questions I should be considering when deciding where to spend my time.

Fundamentally, social media is a way to interact with other people.  The “why” is to get your name known, become a part of a community, build readership and contacts, and promote yourself and your work.  When choosing what social media to use (e.g. should you have a website, is it more important to blog, or to be on Twitter, etc.), think about these kinds of questions: Who are you?  (Published, unpublished);  What is your goal?  (To meet people, to gain information, to secure a platform for your work);  What is your market? (e.g, if you write for the YA market, Bebo is more important than Facebook, and Twitter largely irrelevant); and, vitally, how much time are you able to devote to social media activities? (consistency is key; don’t blog every day for a week and then not for 3 months).

Kate and Liz then gave a live demonstration of Twitter and some applications such as Tweetdeck and Klout which can help use social media effectively, and help you understand whether you are achieving what you set out to achieve. 

It’s an enormous topic and Kate and Liz were only able to scrape the surface in the time they had, but I left with a renewed determination to find out more and make the most of the great social media options out there.

Written by Kate Thomson