Shanna as person, being dorky in bunny ears.
Shanna as professional, during an author photo shoot.
Food for thought and a question: Earlier today I posted this status update to Facebook, which got some interesting and unexpected responses. All of which got me to thinking about my social media “brand” as a person, as a writer and as a business.
Typically, I treat the people who share my social media network as friends. I comment on things that are interesting to me; talk about my (and my friends’) creative process/goals/failures/successes; share images and dreams and personal hopes; discuss society and culture; ask for advice; and try to initiate conversation and discussion. I don’t have a “personal” page that only my close friends get. I don’t have an author page that’s only for my fans. I don’t use lists to separate my postings. What you get is what you get — and you pretty much get all of me. For a long time, this worked really well for me.
But lately, I find myself frustrated at social media. At the general lack of reading comprehension and inability to adjust responses appropriately based on the context of a specific post. At the pithiness and snarkiness that so often replaces actual interaction. It has begun to outweigh the joy I have at spending online time with people I adore, with sharing this creative space with other people. All of this makes me wonder if I’m misunderstanding the way that most people use (and want to use) social media. It also makes me wonder if I should be using social media differently myself. Coming to social media every day with an open heart and an open mind gets harder and harder for me.
So, here’s my question: As I move forward into the new year, I’m curious to know what draws you to social media? Why are you here? What do you hope to get from it? What frustrates you about it?
And, more specifically, what do you like and dislike about the way that I use social media? Do you want Shanna as a person, who talks about everything from erotica and gaming to cookies and spending time with loved ones? Or is that overkill? Do you want Shanna as a business, who keeps her posts professional and focused on writing and creating? Or is that boring? Do you want something in between, something else that I haven’t thought of?
I’m interested in hearing your thoughts.
Kiss kiss bang bang, s.
I’ll be honest I’m on the fence with social media. On one hand I love being able to keep in touch with friends and family, especially ones that live far from me, and also following my favorite artists updates as well.
One the other hand I absolutely abhor the insanely staggering amount of hoaxes and uninformed or poorly worded posts I see.In this day and age there’s no reason to post something with blatantly false information when it takes maybe 5 minutes to check it on Google.
I enjoy interacting with friends and reading about what is going on in the world from Newsfeeds. I generally only interact with friends but find myself commenting more and more on other stuff. Other stuff includes News articles and pages from professionals like George Takei and Felicia Day. I can only assume they have personal pages. Never looked for them. You I put into the category of friend so respond and post accordingly. If there is something that does not interest me from friends, or any place, I ignore, do not comment and move on. Sometimes I post something about a subject I dislike but that has been mostly in regards to politics. Even then I try to remain civil and back up my point of view with facts, logic and reason. For some those things can be a bit vague but not for me.
I like the way it is now. If you split into multiple pages I would add them all. I would hope that I could remain on the personal one since I do find you incredibly interesting and intelligent to read about and follow.
My employers urged me to be a presence on social media, and all my posts are public — except for messages, but I assume everything on Facebook is public.
That said, I’ve found Facebook (my main social media presence) a marvelous way to share information and meet fascinating people.
I found you on FB through a link with someone I first met at WisCon, and I am immensely pleased to read your work here and on FB. I intend to buy BOUND IN LEATHER when it’s available in print.
As some of those said in responding to your status update, you might be expecting too much from those who respond to you. To me, the folks who post are similar to those who sent letters of comment to fanzines — some thoughtful, some abusive, some far afield from what what was posted.
Status updates are like broadcasts. You don’t know who will pick up the signal and what they’ll make of it.
I hope your experiences won’t diminish your presence on Facebook. Your posts are often the highlight of my day.
And I hope your 2013 is magical.
I look to you as an example of social media best practices. I separated my personal and professional selves on social media and often wished I hadn’t. Maintaining one presence can feel like too much some days, let alone keeping up two identities. I rarely talk about writing on my ‘personal’ page and and not sure how much of my personal self to put into my professional page.
It’s a struggle to figure out how to make my professional presence online feel real and authentic, while balancing what people are actually interested in seeing. I honestly don’t know what either audience would like to see.
I spend so much time as my writer self, I sometimes think my interactions as that persona are actually more authentic.
I look forward to following this discussion and seeing what take other people have on the issue.
I want Shanna as a person, because Shanna the professional is only a part of Shanna the person. I’m greedy; I want it all!
I wish I’d set up separate pages on FB myself, because I’d rather not bombard friends and family with business things they’re not interested in, but more importantly, so I could be more comfortable talking about personal things. I find myself hesitating to mention when we’re traveling, for example, because I don’t want strangers knowing I’m not home. (This comes up more on G+, where I get a lot of friend requests from foreigners who are clearly trolling and friending everyone. Thus my posts on G+ are either professional or random enough that I’m not giving away much personal info.)
I agree with your frustration about snarky/quippy/unhelpful responses. Strangely, I get these from friends, not acquaintences or strangers. Drives me nuts.
I don’t have anything sage to say. I’m astonished by how rapidly the experience of social media can go from delightful to intolerable. I imagine as time goes on we’ll develop filters and etiquette and shock absorbers that will make it less wonderful and less awful. I don’t really look forward to that. But on the other hand I hates it when Shanna haz a sad. xoxo
Depending on the brand, I typically use social media for … well…personal social stuff. FB for Keeping in touch with friends, family and yes interesting authors or game designers such as yourself and Monte. Linked in as a business tool for managing my online resume and business network…since I have written a few things, some authors and game designers appear there for me as well. I try and ignore the snark, hopefully don’t have too many bad days where I deal out snark fu.
I haven’t had the time or inclination to use Twitter or Google+ although each have come up in a corporate sense as a marketing vehicle.
Social media suffers from the same sorts of problems that e-mail and phone conversations do: 1) the social cues (body language, voice tone, and facial expressions) are missing, and 2) the lack of social cues encourages people to turn off their social filters. Also, social media is virtual. In and of itself, having the property of being virtual isn’t a bad thing. But people forget that virtual social interaction is not the same as social interaction.
I laughed at your “someone is choking” example, wherein virtual responses are given to a non-virtual situation. However, to flip it around, if I were choking in real life, I wouldn’t use social media to ask for help. I have experienced, and I read about, difficult family situations because interactions via e-mail escalated to flame-wars; these could all be defused if folks spoke face-to-face (or, less ideally, picked up a phone).
To answer your questions:
1) What draws me?
Habit. I’ve been using e-mail and USENET ever since 1985. Before there was HTML. (Insert obligatory “we used bang-addresses in our e-mail TO: lines and were _grateful_” joke, here.)
Ease of Distribution / Virtual Limelight. Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest and my Blog allow me to share my thoughts, photographs and designs to a wide audience. Also, blogging/FB allows some east coast family to follow what’s been going on here. Before blogs, I used to send out e-mails to distribution lists of my family and friends.
The Virtual Community. For a variety of reasons, I don’t get out a whole lot. Connecting with friends (and to a lesser extent) family allows me to have discussions and interactions with other writers, makers, and geeky folks. For a while I was spending too much time on Second Life with Unitarians — it was an interesting experiment in participating in religion and spirituality via the virtual. My partner is non-religious, and the Neo-Pagan community in Eugene is not a good match for what I’m looking for. So going virtually spiritual for a while was easier than packing up and moving to a larger, more diverse city. (OK, and it was fun building virtual things for people to see.)
Curiosity About Others: Various family (and friends) only communicate through FB or other social media. Peer pressure is included in this sub-category, especially when people are posting their word-counts on Twitter.
Self-presentation: Sometimes when I speak, my brain ranges far ahead of my mouth’s ability to keep up. Sometimes when I am tired, my brain starts working in icon mode instead of lexical mode; the result is usually that I flail around trying to make an icon into an English word, or else I have a “Chaka when the walls fell down” moment (which I recognize after people start shaking their heads as if to clear them). With social media, I can (usually) edit out those communication-fails (or add pictures).
Pretty Pictures: I’m thinking Pinterest and Stumble-Upon, here. When I write, pretty pictures can help to be a good prompt. Also, some images are compelling — how? why? What is it about an image that makes me want to write about it (or reproduce it)?
Emergency Info: The local school district tweets snow days. ODOT tweets road conditions.
2) What do I hope to get from it?
This could probably be summed up by the phrase my husband uses when I’m impressed with my own cleverness: “I’m the funniest person I know.”
Understanding.
Love.
Validation.
I was told in 2007 at WOTF that Authors Must Have A Social Network Site because publishing houses are slashing their promotional departments.
Entertainment / Education / Inspiration.
By forwarding information about markets, I hope to have a shared reminder board.
By forwarding computer security articles via FlipBook to Twitter/FB, I hope to reduce the number of computer support calls from family members / friends.
3) What frustrates me?
The virtual feels real, and the real feels virtual… for example…. The other day, I was conflicted about FB birthday greetings over my last birthday: A) I know that I forget people’s birthday’s unless FB tells me, B) I thought it was telling (I’m not sure of what) that with two exceptions, none of my birthday greetings were from family members, and C) why should virtual cards (or the lack thereof) generated by a mouse-click be such a big deal ?
Sometimes I forget that, ultimately, social networking over social media is only so many electrons wiggling around — and then I have to remind myself that expecting social media to respond to my needs is at the same level as Praying To The Goddess for Free Parking and Great Sex. It’s nice when it happens, but it’s more likely to happen if you get up out of the computer chair and go do something for yourself. Expecting too much from groups isn’t limited to virtual groups: for example, one shouldn’t expect a critique group to magically fix one’s writing, either.
We are the stories we tell, and it can be frustrating to be the story that no one acknowledged was heard. It can be frustrating when social media amplifies the banal, and frustrating to recognize that I sometimes contribute to social media’s banality.
Yes… there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and I’m using free services now, but it’s irritating to be producing marketing data points.
The time commitment; I’m much more glad it’s become easier to have my blog feed Google+, which feeds Twitter, which feeds FB.
Social media can feel like writing, but it’s not.
4) Why am I here?
Answers 1 and 2 are still stronger than answer 3? It’s still fun?
Um… “All that is visible must grow beyond itself, and extend into the realm of the invisible.” ?
Interacting with people is kind of the things that scares me. Being socially awkward at parties has unfortunately translated to social media. It’s like the thing that scares me as a writer—people.
The only time I find people unprofessional is when they’re having conversations they should be having with their SO (or whoever) on social media. Like, you and your BF deciding to move in together, that’s a private decision, and conversation.
I like it when writers talk about themselves though, whether it’s your excellent articles on video games and writing, or someone talking about how they deal with cyber bullies.
I’m a social media fan! I have my gripes and frustrations, but as a work-at-home freelancer, it’s … well, it’s a huge part of my work-social life, if you know what I mean. Where I go to interact with people that I like, who are friends, but whom I work with in some way.
I have two Facebook pages, one for this pen name and one in my passport name. On both I have discussions about writing and publishing. The passport-name account has had job and travel offers–that’s how people find me, because I don’t have privacy settings set very high. It’s more visible than email, so if someone wants to invite me to present at a conference, for example, that’s how they find me (if we don’t have mutual friends).
The Sharazade account is sometimes more frustrating for me because I’m connected to a lot of authors–which is, after all, a big part of the point–but then it turns into looooongggg lists of works for sale. When I had just a few friends, it was fun to celebrate everyone’s success, but when it’s three pages of new releases every few hours, I just can’t.
I sometimes throw up questions that I think people in my various communities can answer, and that’s been a wonderful resource.
Biggest gripe? Facebook’s recent changes that mean very few people, even those connected to you who WANT to see your content, actually see what you post. Unless you spend $7. I’m sure not there.
I keep trying to use Twitter, but … I don’t know. It hasn’t clicked for me yet. I send out a tweet and then forget I have a Twitter account for a few weeks. Whoops.
As for what I want to see from you, well … whatever you feel like posting. I’m most drawn to posts on writing and publishing and books and language and things like that. Anything that’s not relevant to me I just breeze over.
Dear Shanna,
Social media has brought some amazing people into my life: you for one. I actually “knew” you by way of Cleansheets then Facebook before we met in person. As life would have it, I remain connected to you via social media, as we no longer live in the same city. When we did, you and I spent time in one another’s physical company four, maybe five times, counting our lunch with Desiree. These days, I rarely make time to call you and vice versa. The last time I called, you emailed me back.
You and I rely on social media as our primary mode of communication. Circumstance, mainly. I hate calling people. I loathe small talk. I don’t carry my cell around like most people. Time is precious. I prioritize and am the first to admit my friendships fall to the wayside. I’ve seen Judy three or four times in the last year, and we live in the city, about four miles apart. One day I may regret I didn’t make my social life a priority, but then again, most my friends are introverted writers who prioritize much the same way I do. So there’s that. Maybe you and I would find other ways to remain in touch without social media—if push came to shove—or maybe not.
We have social media and email, and Skype too, so who’s to say? Social media is convenient and quick. In this way, I’m grateful. These days, I’ve not met most my closest friends in person. Only a few have I interacted with via an online chat.
Sad? Maybe. But also more and more commonplace.
As for how you use social media, first and foremost, use it to remain in touch with me. Likewise, use it to further your personal and professional ambitions—however you see fit. I’ve never become confused by your multi-dimensional presence in cyberspace: professional, private, otherwise. It’s courageous, the way you refuse to compartmentalize yourself. I feel turned off, even suspect, when people separate personal from professional. Pen names make me nervous too. Blah-blah-blah. That being said, a person like you must remain tactful in your presentation since you’re dealing with both friends and collleagues in cyberspace, and I can’t think of anyone who does it better than you. Seriously. You’re a class act regardless, always.
Thank you.
XO.
A