Juiced On Writing

I was recently spurred on to clean up my Facebook profile – it is, unfortunately, still far too full of application widgets, which – with the new Facebook site redesign, now are thankfully more hidden and therefore forgotten on Facebook. But as with other networking groups, Facebook and other social networking sites have some benefits to offer the Writers out there.

A marketer, scrapbooker, and published author, Angie Pedersen, on her Scrappy Marketing Solutions blog has pointed out how some scrapbooking professionals use Facebook to both promote their business and bring in a new audience of social networkers.  I am somewhat confounded to find that writers haven’t as easily grasped the potential of such free promotional sites for their work and books as Facebook, MySpace and even microblogging services such as Twitter and Tumblr offer. (In fact, for the later, see my own Tumbled for Writing microblog attached through this website).

On Facebook, I’ve long been joined up onto hobby groups (in my case, digital scrapbooking) and enjoy the quick messages, wall entries etc which these interest groups put up there from time to time. I’ve also joined up with several writing groups on Facebook, but the group activity is more internal, with simple community threads running, and no general posts out to the members of that group.

After Angie’s choice selection of promotional opportunities for the scrapbooking / crafting professional, along came a blog entry by author, Holly Lisle in July of this year. Holly’s website sells some excellent e-books for the starting writer – most of which I own – and she also writes fiction, so I was interested in her sudden and seemingly accidental discovery of Facebook.

On Holly’s blog , she announced she was finally on Facebook, at the invite of a cousin who needed friends.  On this entry, Holly received around ten comments towards the pros and cons of facebook for a writer. The tenth, from Valarie, points out that in the groups section there are, as Valarie calls it, ‘fan-clubs’ set up for authors. And finally we’re onto the whole point.

Other comments seem to be somewhat anti-applications and yes, Facebook is full of them – I get virtual gifts from potplants to cakes to alchoholic drinks thrown at me by Facebook friends all the time (and occasionally send some out); and of course – there’s all the niggly quizes also sent out. Quizes about your memories of old television programmes or IQ tests similar to found on game stations in the average house nowadays.

But the “wall” allows users to put down quick comments without having to draft up emails, and it’s a nice way to feel connected – something I would think every writer can profit from these days.

Here are the applications and services in Facebook which I think worth a look from a Writer’s perspective -

Gallery / Images.

Set up an album on Facebook, and upload the cover shots of your published fiction. The last photo will appear as a thumbnail on your profile should you wish.

Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging system separate from Facebook, but very popular. The Twitter user inputs a tweet – answering the simple question “What are you doing?” and this answer needs to be in 140 characters. Like Facebook, you can have friends on Twitter (called followers) and you can see what your friends are up to in your friends feed. There are some very good networkers on Twitter.

Coincidentally, just as I write this blog article, I’ve posted a tweet on twitter then gone and logged onto Facebook. And right there on my newsfeed on Facebook is a post by Angie Pedersen entitled, “How to Use Twitter for Business” pointing to a flylite website. For more information on setting up Twitter to help you out, obviously consult this article.

With Facebook, I can forward you on that article if you wish.  Social networks like Twitter and Facebook allow something called Viral Networking. Once you have a group of friends / followers around you, if you provide interesting news and content (like, say, the announcement of your latest novel) then the news can network out, like rippling pools. And Facebook is particularly good at providing multiple methods for announcing that news.

Facebook Applications

Facebook has a Twitter application. Once you have both a Facebook and Twitter profile set up, on Facebook you can click on the Applications right-hand sidebar (on your Home page, not your Profile page). Click on edit, and once you have your applications page showing, choose Browse More Applications. You now have tabs to see the most popular Facebook applications or you can search for Twitter via the Search Applications input box. Do a search simply for Twitter and you’ll be wanting to choose the simple Twitter application.

Choose the Twitter application, and enter your details for your twitter account.  Once you have setup this application, you can feed your Twitter latest onto your Facebook profile page. This is good from a promotional stance – anything you’ve done through Twitter will appear on your Facebook profile.

More Facebook Applications are discussed below…

RSS Feeds

This is the daddy of them all for a writer. Most writers / authors have a blog out there somewhere, used to make announcements of their latest and greatest. If they don’t have a blog, then they have a website, and often that website is setup for announcements at least – doing so with a RSS Newsfeed from it. Most blogs have the feed naturally set up.

Blog RSS Feed Reader application is the one you want here. Use it to input your blog feed URL and any new posts will appear from your blog (website) feed into your Facebook page. You can feed in multiple feeds (if you own more than one blog, or if you’re interested in other blogs also), but as a promotional tool, it may be best to simply contain the feeds onto your Facebook profile from your own writing blog also.

Don’t get this confused with the Mini Feed section on your Facebook profile page. This reads in any activities from applications you have done. You can turn off each application feed into this mini-feed if it gets too much, by editing the application itself. Additionally you will find a Live Feed tab on your home page – this feeds in the activities – of your friends.

Groups for Writers

You may want to join up with a group or two, just as a networking thing. On the right-hand sidebar under Applications (on your Home page) you will find the Groups option, click on this and the Groups page will display. If you have joined groups already, those recently updated will show on the right. If your friends have joined groups recently, these will show on the left. As more writing friends find and join you, you will benefit from seeing which groups they have joined as writers also, so always keep an eye on their activities.

From the Group Search input box, you can simply search for a term like ‘Writing’ or ‘Fiction’ and see what may take your liking. Most Groups allow you to join immediately, but some will have a closed administration, where you may need to be approved entry.

I’ve found groups for creative writing, fiction, and interactive writing groups (more on that later). The most popular groups on your search term will appear at the top of the page.

For finding Creative Writing groups on Facebook, there is actually a group setup simply to list these. Go here, for this index.

The index itself leads a writer to realise that many of the larger writing communities and websites out there, such as Writer’s Digest, Writers’ Cafe etc, have Facebook groups supporting them also. Most business sites nowadays see social networking websites like Facebook as offering some free opportunities in marketing and targeting people with common interests, and many companies use the Facebook features to form another communication channel with their own customers and audience.

Create Your Own Fan-Group

On the groups page you can see an easy button for Creating a Group. Use it. Anyone who joins up has signified an interest in your work, and you can send them (as a group), promotional mails through Facebook. Each group has a discussion board on it’s page, a wall for short comments, and you can invite others to join – as can your members. You can display photos through it, and the group can have a wall.

Fan Pages

Similar to Groups, Pages allow the owner to supply messages out to all of the readers – in this case, “fans” of the page. The Fans Pages aren’t particularly easy to locate on Facebook, as they are not an application.  There are thousands of these created either by a fan or a business. The top, currently, at nearly 2 million fans is the page for Barrack Obama, but you will find pages for everything from the latest Batman movie to fan pages for popular TV personalities – or writers. Once created by a business, Facebook users can make themselves fans or supporters of these pages, and receive notifications of updates via these pages. In fact, pages offer as much functionality as Groups, with walls and discussion boards available also, and are the way to go if you want to offer a writing service away from a personal profile (see my final note below).

Interactive Groups / Applications

Groups and applications have now been written for the networking potential of Interactive Writing. For a list of some of these, another group has been formed, called Interactive Writing – Choose Your Own Adventure Gamebooks and Applications

If you’re into interactive writing, there are several applications built such as Sugarcane, Neverending Story and others. You can choose to watch or join in by writing the next sentence or paragraph. Or start your own. The latest writing can appear in the application box itself on your profile, to keep track of.

One application I particularly like is Just Three Words. I even started off a story myself on this one, and was surprised when I received a rating from somebody. But until someone deigns to write the next 3 words, I won’t get to add to the story. That’s the problem with interactive writing, but also the joy. If you want to be nice to me, please add three words to the story, Urban Frary.

The Interactive Writing link above will also give you some adventure gaming and writing group links.

Other Applications for the Writer

Most writers are very good readers. Discovered recently – accidentally through watching what a friend on Facebook was doing, I found Visual Bookshelf.

Having only recently discovered (and gone overboard) social networking sites like Library Thing, for cataloguing and reviewing my books, I was extremely impressed with the quickness and facilities of Visual Bookshelf within Facebook. You can search for and add all the books you have read, or are reading – and add star-ratings, and reviews to these. Recommendations come up also. The application itself, with thumbnail images of the book covers you are reading can appear on your Facebook profile, and any activity such as adding new books, or providing a review can appear on your profile’s mini feed also.

Scrabulous -Facebook recently pulled the Scrable-like online game of Scrabulous, after receiving a letter from Mattel and Hasbro. However, the creators of Scrabulous are rumoured to be creating an even more feature-rich game, and there are currently several other word-search games, and a Scrabble-Beta game which can form some distractions for the writer online.

Walls - there are several popular wall applications out there, to take over your normal wall on your profile. Funwall, and Superwall are all worth a look. Some allow you to post graphic images onto friends walls (I’ve seen them used for advertising blurbs and graphics) or even videos. Those wall-entries can then be sent around your own friends by a simple selection process, hence the viral marketing opportunities. Send them your new novel cover with links to where they can purchase it. Perhaps even a video of yourself writing, or talking about your next project?

Blog It - this application lets you input a blog-like entry onto Facebook, and update several other blogging applications. From Six Apart, the makers of Typepad, Blog It will work with (obviously) typepad blogs, blogger, vox, twitter, movable type, friendfeed and tumblr or wordpress blog systems. Unfortunately it does not support the common meta-api into other blogging systems (such as  Squarespace) but Blog It can update twitter and friendfeed, and update my status on those, and Facebook itself. I have also setup Blog It to update a blog entry onto my tumblelog microblogging system.

NaNoWriMo Facebook application – if you’re doing the National Novel Writing Month, then you can bring in your statistics directly from the NaNoWriMo official site into Facebook via this application. All you need is your NaNoWriMo id.

Facebook Chat

Facebook now has a chat application – found to the right of your profile. I’ve never actually used this, as none of my friends appear online at the same time as me. However, for a writer holding a fan-group or with some serious writer-friends, the chat application would appear helpful.

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Okay that’s it. I’m sure there must be other helpful applications out there for the writer on Facebook, and new ones developed all the time. If you want to see some of them in action (excuse the mess as I clean up some of my more obscure applications) then take a look at my own profile on Facebook. Become my friend, and at least write me three new words on my interactive story, lol.

Important Note : as a writer on Facebook, you will require a business profile, if you are offering writer’s services or other businesses via Facebook, rather than using a personal profile. Facebook does look for infractions against this policy.

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