Sean the Blogonaut follows up last week’s post with:
Making technology work for you
I mentioned in my previous post that while you should maintain a web presence, incorporating social media that your writing needs to come first. Thankfully we live in the future and there are technical solutions to this quandary.
This post concentrates on Twitter and Paper.li and how you can bend social media to your service as a writer.
My personal approach:
I have been using twitter since Jan 15, 2008, both as a socialising tool and to promote my blogging. It’s still the highest source of referrals on my blog. Once you get beyond a couple of hundred followers though, it becomes nigh on impossible to read every tweet in your stream. It quickly looses its usefulness or becomes a huge time sink.
I quickly abandoned the default twitter web page in favour of third party software that allowed me to filter and break into columns, the various groups of people/interests I followed.
My personal preference was Tweetdeck, but there are others out their including Hootsuite and Seismic. Once you have understood the basics of twitter I’d advise checking out one of these services to streamline your twitter experience – some even incorporate posting to Facebook.
Enter Paper.li
Even with the use of Tweetdeck, I found that I was missing out on a large chunk of news and information, which for a commenter on the state of Speculative fiction was a problem. Enter Paper.li
For those of you who are not aware Paper.li is a service that allows a user to collate tweets with links and automatically generates a “newspaper styled” web page each day (there are twice daily and weekly publication options), featuring these links.
There are thousands of these electronic news papers, covering all the things that people tweet about. Readers can subscribe to individual papers; they don’t even have to be on twitter. The feature list for the service continues to grow and the last few months have seen them release add-ons that allow greater control for curators.
And it’s free.
What prompted me to start a paper?
Initially, I just wanted a central location of the most tweeted information for that day so that I could quickly scan the news and blog on articles that interested me. I formed The Book Bloggers Daily – a paper that collates links from the people on my book blogger list and others who use various keywords associated with book blogging.
Aside from this rather selfish notion of collecting information for me, it soon became apparent what a great tool it could be for promoting authors and their posting or tweeting. Book Blogging was a fairly broad focus though so I stated a second paper focusing purely on Australian Speculative Fiction.
This then expanded to cover both New Zealand and English Speaking South East Asia (largely inspired by the efforts of Charles Tan). The Austral-Asian Spec-Fic Daily is its current form. The Daily is a collection of author and bloggers, tweeting on Speculative fiction and sometimes other interests as well.
I envisaged it being a great way to promote a selection of writers who are disadvantaged because of their location. Australian writers are beginning to reap rewards of exposure at various international conventions, but the American market is still elusive. English speaking South East Asian authors by contrast are almost invisible.
It’s my hope that by curating the daily it might in some way help to raise profiles. For me it creates a central location for authors to promote their work and others, without them actually doing anything but tweeting their interests.
Increased exposure without the legwork.
Should I start my own?
It’s entirely up to you. The service is free and takes almost no technical know-how. I tend to think it’s better to focus or pool resources, so if you can identify a paper that already covers your genre it’s probably worth approaching the person that collates it and asking to have your twitter handle added to their list.
On the other hand you could just construct it as a private (in the sense that you don’t promote it on twitter) paper.
Join me up, Sean!
If tweeting Speculative Fiction authors want to be added to the list they can tweet me at @seandblogonaut . If you are just interested in subscribing there’s a subscription button on the website.
I hope the article has been useful. If you’d like me to expand on any points, I’ll be lurking below in the comments.
Here’s me signing in to lurk.
Here’s me waving at the lurker!
Here’s me still moiling in the foothills just with a couple of blogs. Seems llike everytime I get, as in clue into it, some aspect of the technology challenge, the scene moves on.
I haven’t started on Twitter yet. I worried what I would/could possibly say. I’m enjoying reading your newsletter, Sean, also for learning that tweeting can be a way to point to a blog
Rita, I find a lot of interesting articles etc through twitter. I’m following people as diverse, as writers, photographers and political activists.
Twitter for me is about 10% promotion of me, 20% promotion of Australian Speculative fiction and 70% procrastination/conversation. I live rurally and find it helps me meet the need for discussions that interest me. I say jump in and learn by doing.
OK, that sounds like a Christmas project
I find that I am, increasing, a bit of a Luddite — which is odd for an ex-Information Science student. It’s not that technology leaves me behind, or that I find it confusing, but increasingly I think that technology isn’t enhancing our lives, but distracting us from it. In other words, gadgets become fascinating in themselves, as a toy rather than as a tool for living.
I’ve never felt that it was any different with using technology to read or write books, or with using the internet to promote books and authors (either as an author or a reviewer). Technology does not result in writers producing better books, nor does it greatly enhance the pleasure of reading (rather the opposite, in fact — in my case at least). What technology does do is enhance the book’s value as a commodity to be consumed, which is rather missing the point, IMO.
Nigel, I don’t know if its becoming a Luddite. I have certainly become more discerning when it comes to technology. In a general sense, apart from my online activity I live a fairly low technology life, in 120 year old house, rarely watch television and I tend to buy technology that does what I need it to do rather than buying something for what it might be able to do.
I would tend to disagree with you on technology enhancing the pleasure of reading – my second hand sony ereader has been invaluable – it produces less eye strain than reading paper, gives me access to classics. When I eventually upgrade it will be to get something that allows me to make notes. But then this is a dedicated ereader. I have deliberately stayed away from iPads/Tablets because they don’t suite my purposes and seem to be constantly pushing the envelope.
But then I guess that’s what I as getting at with making technology work for you. Ensuring that it does add value to your life. Twitter in particular has resulted in my finding and contacting authors that I would not have have had access to in any other way.
I can’ help but think Technology might be too general a term to be using in this discussion. On you last point in regards to enhance books as a commodity to be consumed I am not so sure. With a number of eBooks selling for less than a coffee I think in some instances it may have devalued it as a commodity but perhaps I am misunderstanding your point.
Essentially though we are largely in agreement.