Social media platforms used by Charlotte Wood’s interviewees in ‘The Writer’s Room’
I’m currently learning about how to build a social media platform through a course I’m taking with Australian Writers’ Centre. Along the way, I decided it might be interesting to see how twelve well-known Australian and New Zealand writers who figure in Charlotte Wood’s “The Writer’s Room” are currently using social media. To keep my search within manageable bounds, I looked to see if each author, plus Charlotte Wood herself, has:
- A website
- A Facebook author page or profile, or
- Twitter account
The table below summarises my findings at 2 February 2020 — although I must point out I don’t have a lot of experience in searching for Facebook pages or Twitter accounts, so it’s possible this table contains some false negatives.
| Author | Website | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Tegan Bennett Daylight | https://teganbennettdaylight.com/ | No | No |
| James Bradley | https://cityoftongues.com/ | https://www.facebook.com/jamesbradleyauthor/ | @cityoftongues |
| Lloyd Jones | No | No | No |
| Malcolm Knox | No | No | No |
| Margo Lanagan | Blog at http://amongamidwhile.blogspot.com/ appears to end in 2015. | No | @margolanagan |
| Amanda Lohrey | No | No | No |
| Joan London | No | No | No |
| Wayne Macauley | https://waynemacauley.com/ | No | No |
| Emily Perkins | https://emilyperkinsauthor.com/ | No | No |
| Kim Scott | http://kimscottauthor.com/ | No | No |
| Craig Sherborne | No | No | No |
| Christos Tsiolkas | http://christostsiolkas.com.au/ | No | No |
| Charlotte Wood | https://www.charlottewood.com.au/ | https://www.facebook.com/charlottewoodau | No |
To sum up the findings here, it would appear that:
- Seven out of the listed authors currently have a dedicated author website
- Only two are using Facebook
- Only two are using Twitter
I was expecting rather more social media engagement from this set of authors. Off the top of my head, I can think of three possible explanations:
- A strong social media presence for authors, particularly on Facebook and Twitter, is not as important as it’s sometimes cracked up to be
- A strong social media presence, particularly on Facebook, Twitter and other newer channels, IS important for writers seeking to establish themselves, but not so important for writers who have already built strong reputations
- I’ve simply failed to find the Facebook and Twitter accounts for many of these writers
Do you have any thoughts on this? Which explanation do you think is the most likely — or are the results above near to what you would have expected anyway?
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