Writing Diary: April

You must have a social media presence. Publishers expect it, readers expect it.

So they say.

But what exactly is it for?

It is so you get noticed? Who is going to notice you on Twitter or Instagram unless you find yourself a niche as the amusing dog-owner or the person who always posts pictures of fabulous libraries? Does anyone actually want to know what I think about anything? Do I want them to know? Can I be bothered to figure out what Tiktok is and whether it would be any use to me?

Is it so people can find out about you? I suppose… I’ve heard people swear they’ve got writing or editing jobs through Twitter or LinkedIn but I find it hard to imagine how that comes about.

But nonetheless, everyone tells you it's necessary. All the writers I know use social media in some form or another. Most have a website. As for me, I blog reasonably regularly. I try to stick to things I think might be useful to other writers or things that I think are interesting about my work. I share my blogs on social media and a handful of people read them, some of them my family. I use Instagram, mostly to share whatever I’m reading and sometimes things I see on my walks. Facebook is for what I’m reading. I don’t really know what to do with LinkedIn but I’m on there too.

The thing that’s been nagging at me for a long time now is a website. It seemed complicated and possibly expensive. What would I put on it? What would people want to know? Who would search for me? I looked at a lot of other writers’ websites. Hmm. I could do this. A lot of the pages weren’t that different from this blog.

Some pictures.
A list of everything I’ve done.
A link to this blog.
A list of workshops and events I could provide.
A contact page.

I started to play around.

And then I stopped. The free trial was over. Was I going for this – in which case please pay – or was I just going to let it drop (again)?

And then, right then, you know what happened?

I did an event through a friend of a friend and someone said to me, “I searched for you on the internet but I couldn’t find you.” Well, they hadn’t looked very hard. I have a very common name, it’s true, but if you google me my Twitter account comes up on the first page and if you look up ‘Claire Watts writer’ pretty much the whole page is me. So presumably that means I am doing something right.

However.

What this person actually wanted to find wasn’t they little bits and pieces you find on Goodreads or my Amazon author page. They didn’t want to read what I’d said on Twitter or look at what I’d been reading on Instagram. They wanted a website dedicated to information all about me.

So I paid the money and published the website. I have no idea how to get the website onto that first search page, but it’s easily findable through all my other socials. Perhaps someone will find it and give me some work or book an event. Or perhaps someone will just decide to look me up and find out more about me.

Have a look. You'll find it here: https://www.clairejwatts.com

 

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