This post is a riff on a rather old post, Do You Know What You Look Like Online. Essentially, the question is, if you were searching for someone (someone just like you, perhaps), what sorts of judgments would you make? What seems off? What’s being suppressed, which should be promoted, and vice versa? Is the picture clear or fuzzy?
The gist of that article is, take control of your information, keep it as a uniform brand and check it every month or so. The corollary to this is one from Shama Hyder Khabani, which is, essentially, don’t spread yourself too thin. Concentrate in only a few places.
My Own Information—What I Look Like Online
Absolutely agreed. When I google my own last name, 77,1600 hits come up. And, fortunately, my own website is on page 1 (Yay, SEO!). My Entrepreneur profile (writing I do for work) comes up on the first page of results. So do my Twitter and LinkedIn profiles.
Also on the first page are my Facebook profile, and my Amazon author page. Get to page 2 and there’s my profile on YouTube.
Another Angle
Putting my last name into quotation marks yields 14,000 hits. All of the same usual suspects come up on Page One of the results. And nothing is too weird or scandalous. Even MuckRack, which essentially just scrapes for your name, doesn’t have anything bad. Hey, Bartleby published me!
How Accurate is the Information?
To my mind, checking and rechecking every single month might just be a bit excessive. Is there a need to keep your profile accurate? Sure. Flattering, or at least not damaging? Yes, particularly if you are looking for work. But to keep it sterile and perfect, as you scramble to make it perfect every moment of every day? Eh, probably not so much.
My own profile is the product of just doing a lot, and it being published. It’s easy to find flattering info on me. What I look like online is competent more than anything else. There’s nothing radical. As for less flattering stuff, well, let’s just say that I am glad the internet wasn’t around when I was in high school.
Yikes.
But…
I would like to think (am I naïve? Perhaps I am) that potential clients and employers will see the occasional typo and will, for the most part, let it slide unless the person is in copyediting. I am not saying that resumes, for example, should not be as get-out perfect as possible. What I am saying, though, is that this kind of obsessive and constant vigilance seems a bit, I don’t know, much.
Will the world end if I accidentally type there instead of their on this blog? And, does it matter oh so much if I don’t catch the accident immediately? Even when you consider that I’m a writer. After all, I should know better, yes?
I mean, with all of this brushing behind ourselves to cover up and/or perfect our tracks, and all of the things we are leaving behind, where’s the time and energy to make fresh, new content and look in front of ourselves?
Clean Up Your Presence
To me, there is little joy in reading a blog post or website that looks like the person who put it together was barely literate. But there is also little joy in reading sterile, obsessively perfect websites and blog posts. A little imperfection, I feel, is a bit of letting the ole personality creep in there. Genuineness – isn’t that what the whole Social Media experience is supposed to be about, anyway?
I refuse to believe – I hope and I pray – that a bit of individuality never cost me potential jobs or the company potential clients. And if it is, then that saddens me, to feel that, perhaps, people are paying a lot of lip service to the genuineness of Social Media but, when the chips are down, it’s just the same ole, same ole.
Genuineness is great. One you can fake that, you’ve got it made? Please, say it ain’t so.
So, a screen name – good idea, or no? Particularly in the age of Facebook and the real names requirement.
I was inspired by this post in Angela Connor‘s blog. If you don’t know Angela Connor, I urge you to check her out; her blog is extremely insightful and is still one of my favorites.
Her ideas make a great deal of sense, and I think some of this is why the Blizzard forum experiment in real names for users was such an immediate and egregious flop.
Masks
The ’net, like it or not, is for many people a place of masks. You pretend to be younger and thinner than you are. Or you pretend to be unmarried. You pretend to be a Klingon. Or you’re a teenager and pretend to be an adult. Or you pretend to be another gender or richer or lovelier or more conservative or whatever.
And the masks can be freeing to many. Perhaps they were freeing when the ancient Greeks donned them while performing Oedipus Rex for the first time. I think there is more of a place for them than perhaps we’d all care to admit. Because there seems to be a value to being able to spread war paint (or lamp black) on one’s face, or wear a Halloween costume.
Screen Name Unreality
And this is not the same as our reality. It is related but not identical. Maybe the librarian who goes out for Halloween dressed as a dance hall girl wants to be known as someone who takes risks (and maybe foolish ones, at that). But when the morning after rolls around, she’s back in the library helping others do research.
A Screen Name Allows for (Somewhat) Anonymous Commenting
This kind of anonymous commenting allows for something like this. Because the sympathetic guy who’s really seething inside gets to call people out. He gets to be a bully and be an all-around racist jerk (I have worse names, but don’t wish to besmirch my blog) behind one screen name.
But then he surfs to a different site where he can chat up the ladies with his sensitive New Age guy demeanor, all behind another screen name. And then when the time to log off comes, he goes home and kisses his wife and plays with his children. And this is all one guy.
Facebook and Screen Names
To comment openly through a full, correct name (usually) medium like Facebook would be to cut off the dance hall girl. And it would stifle the racist jerk, the ladies’ man, and any number of other secret selves in favor of a drab and ordinary world. Even on a news site, which is pretty much the definition of drab unless there’s some sort of a hot story, the jerk, the dancer and the Romeo all want to be free.
Still, Facebook has been a runaway success. But some of that is still screen names. A person with Au at the end of their name is identifying to all and sundry that they are on the autism spectrum. I have seen last names like Lionchaser and Orange and Juneberry. The chances are extremely good that none or most of these are real.
But does that actually matter, in the grand scheme of things?
Who’s Real?
But we shouldn’t take their opinions as seriously as the real people. Because, even though those personae live in real people’s skins, it’s the real people who vote, marry, pay taxes, work, make the news and are members of our real society.
The trouble is telling them apart and knowing which one is real.
Can you always tell? I bet you can’t. Not always.
ChatGPT Adds to the Confusion on Screen Names and More
Beyond whether the name is real, are the posts real these days? A friend who runs a writing contest just had to jettison a few entries because they were written by AI.
AI is only going to get better and better—and more unnerving—as time marches on.
We may very well look back on questions about screen names as being a quaint little hiccup. You know, right before the Apocalypse.
No one will know about your awesome writer website if you don’t start to pay attention to writer SEO.
And without all the connections on your website you could be making, guess what happens? You miss will out on sales. And you may also miss out on places where you can appear and promote your book. Or libraries where you can have your book.
Note: this is an overview and not the details of any form of SEO, even writer SEO. That would take up a few hundred blog posts at least.
Why Does Writer SEO Matter?
Have you ever wondered how and why the results you get in a search are in the order they’re in? Yes, some of this has to do with paid advertising. But budgets are not infinite. Or, at least, they aren’t for most of us.
But SEO is, in a way, a form of free advertising. Optimizing for search means your post gets placed further up on search results. And that’s good. But is it good enough?
So, while positive changes in position are nothing to sneeze at, they do not truly matter unless you’re on page 1 of results.
If that seems unfair, odd, and maybe even a reason why the human race is doomed, well, I’m with ya on that.
Yet our preferences do not matter.
Ads Are Outta Control!
But… there’s one problem with writer SEO or really any kind of SEO. We’re all gunning for page 1. And that means that the competition is fierce.
There’s you, me, and large corporations with insanely big budgets. There are people who’ve been doing SEO since before it had a name (or at least it feels that way). So, how do you compete?
I Got an Itch for a Niche
Exxon is enormous! Their annual ad budget may very well be more than everything I have ever made in my life. And probably ever will.
But they’re not competing in the writing space. Even if their CEO decided to write a book, they would not be my competition. And they might not even really be my competition if their CEO decides to try their hand at writing something in the exact same genre as me.
Is James Patterson my competition? Well, not exactly. Yes, we are both writers. But that’s where the comparison stops. Now, Patterson does write science fiction. But are we really in direct competition? For one thing, a lot of his sci fi stuff is aimed at teens. Mine … is not.
So, maybe I don’t have to worry about him, or at least not too much. Same with JK Rowling and Stephen King, particularly as they don’t really write in my genre.
I’ve Got a Niche to Scratch
Amazon is great about having separate categories which match a ton of niches. Consider horror. Even if vampires, werewolves, wendigos, mummies, and serial killers were all in the same novel or film, so what? They all still have their own sub-niches (if you will) within horror.
Science fiction has a number of well-known niches:
Space opera – this is like Star Trek. My novel The Enigman Cave fits this niche, as it’s also following people on a spaceship.
Dystopian – this is like Ready Player One. My novels Mettle and Untrustworthy both fit this niche, even though they’re set in different places.
Science fiction noir – this is like Blade Runner or I, Robot, where cops and science fiction mix. My Obolonk and Time Addicts trilogies both fit. This is not a large genre and Amazon does not have it as a filter. But the good news is that there might not be a lot of competition…
Time travel – this is like the old TV show, The Time Tunnel. Time Addicts fits this niche.
Historical science fiction – now, this one’s tricky.
Issues with Historical Science Fiction
Science fiction isn’t normally set too far in the past. Even Stranger Things just goes back to the 1980s.
Without getting into Steampunk, one of the only examples I can think of are the films Time After Time (where HG Wells himself has to chase Jack the Ripper in the modern era) and Somewhere in Time (1970s playwright Richard Collier goes to the turn of the 20th century via hypnosis and falls in love with actress Elise McKenna).
In both stories, someone in the present is writing about the past. It makes sense that it would be a vehicle for a time travel story.
My Real Hub of the Universe trilogy fits this niche of a niche, which is so small that Amazon doesn’t list it as a genre (although at least GoodReads does!). And looking it up often means you find science fiction books written earlier in history, such as The Island of Dr. Moreau.
As a result, when you put that kind of work onto Amazon or the like, your tags and keywords had better be pitch-perfect and utterly on point.
Your Writer Website and Your Niche(s)
I’m not the only author who writes in more than one niche. In fact, many authors who do so will use a pen name or even several pen names.
So, for someone like me, writer SEO means looking at competition in all of these niches. And it means looking at the keywords which the more successful posts (the ones at the top of search, which don’t necessarily belong to bestselling authors) are using.
Keyword Research for Writer SEO
People who do SEO for a living are researching keywords pretty much all the time. It’s a fancy way of trying to determine what people are looking for. If you can give it to them, then you want them to be able to find you. The closer what’s on your website matches their search, the higher up (usually) your content will be in search engine results.
Google’s mission is to match seeker and website owner as closely as possible. Because if a person has a good experience with Google, they’re more likely to use Google than, say, Bing. As a result, Google can charge more for its advertising (and yes, unfortunately, paid ads are dominating the first page of search results. So page 2 can get some love after all—but never settle for anything lower).
Synonyms and Intent
To use an example a different form of art, consider film. Or cinema. AKA movies. Or pictures. AKA Hollywood or Bollywood or the Oscars or BAFTA awards, etc.
What is the difference in intent between these two searches:
movie for kids not Disney
classic cinema for children
Now, they both pull up lists of movies for the younger set. But the first is more likely to pull up articles about The Land Before Time, whereas the latter might pull up blog posts about The Red Balloon. Between the two searches, the first is more likely to pull up animation, too.
Now consider your books. I’ll use the Time Addicts trilogy as an example.
time travel with robots
science fiction noir in the far future
Both searches would fit this trilogy. The first gets a lot more hits. But the latter pulls up much more closely-related stuff. And if I change the first one to time travel with aliens (which would also fit Time Addicts), it gets me TV programs about ancient aliens.
What’s a better set of keyword phrases (kwps) to target? Probably some mix of these:
science fiction noir
sci fi noir
science fiction set in the far future
time travel noir (although currently there are two kinds of returns on this search which are coming up a lot)
Writer SEO, Searches, and Your Buyer Persona
Who’s your ideal reader? Your ideal customer? You have got to market directly to them. And you will need to write your blog and pages, etc. with that person in mind. If your ideal reader didn’t finish high school, then a term like movies is more likely to work than cinema. And if your ideal reader is female, you may want to toss in terms like feminism or strong female character.
If your ideal reader is a member of the LGBTQ+ community, then you will need to use terms which will apply—but I would caution you to be careful here. Terms evolve quickly. What was acceptable in 1999 is not necessarily going to fly in 2023. And for God’s sake, don’t try to reclaim a slur unless you would be a subject of said slur.
Writer SEO: Takeaways
Like I said above, this barely scratches the surface. Try tools like Keywordtool.io, answerthepublic.com, and MarketMuse (or Surfer SEO, Ubersuggest, or AhRefs) for more advanced ways to better target your ideal reader.
Want More of Writer Website Development?
If my post on website speed resonates with you, then be sure to check out my other articles about how to create a writer website.
I have been managing Able2know for over twenty years.
It is a generalized Q & A website and the members are all volunteers. I have learned a few things about handling yourself online during this time.
Chill the F*** Out
There are few emergencies online. Take your time. I have found, if I am in a hot hurry to respond, itching to answer, it usually means I am getting obsessive.
When it’s really nutty, step away from the keyboard. I suppose this is a corollary to the first one. Furthermore, I pull back when it gets too crazy-making, or try to figure out what else may be bothering me, e. g. I haven’t worked out yet, something at home is annoying me, etc.
Being online, and being annoyed, does not equal that something online caused the annoyance.
Be Clear
All we have are words (emoticons do nearly nothing).I like to make my words count, and actually mean exactly, 100%, what I write, but not everyone hits that degree of precision in their communications. I’ve learned to cut about a 10% degree of slack.
Not everyone gets you. You might be hysterically funny in person, but bomb online, Netizen. Or you might feel you’re a gifted writer, but you write to the wrong audience.
You may be hip for your crowd, but hopelessly out of it in another. This is not, really, a personal thing.
You can either waste your time trying to get everyone to love you or you can recognize that you didn’t convert one person and move on from there. Choose the latter; it’ll save your sanity every time.
Keep Chilling Out, Fellow Netizen
Be Zen. E. g. I’ve found the old, “oh, you go first” kind of thing smooths the way a lot. I am not saying to not have your say and let everyone else win all the time. It’s just, ya kinda pick the hill you wanna die on, e. g. what’s really important. Stick to those guns.
The others, not so much. E. g. getting into a shouting match and kicked off a site due to your hatred of the Designated Hitter Rule – even on a sports or baseball site – falls in the category of you’re probably overreacting and being really, really silly.
I doubt that that is a hill most people would try want to die on. But defending your beliefs, fighting prejudice, etc.? Those are probably better hills.
And the corollary to #5: controversial topics are controversial for a reason. They get under people’s skin and make them squirm. Be nice; don’t do that all the time.
So try to engage people in other ways, Netizen. There are plenty of people on Able2know who argue a lot about politics. I am not a fan of arguing politics.
But we also get together and play Fantasy Baseball (talk about your Designated Hitter Rule). Or we swap recipes, or pet stories, or the like.
But then, when a forum member gets sick or becomes bereaved, people who just argued till they were blue in the face turn around. And they virtually hug and offer tributes, prayers (or positive, healing thoughts) and words of comfort.
And this user multidimensionality warms the heart. So, over the years, people have gotten better at it. If someone’s really bothering you, it’s possible that, in other contexts, you’d get along. You might want to see if you can find some common ground, and other contexts.
Sing Along with Elsa and Let. It. Go.
Know when to stop, or even let others have the last word.When I am really angry, I usually just withdraw. However, this isn’t a surrender. Instead, I’m tired and life’s too short.You do not become a smaller, or less worthwhile person, and you haven’t lost (whatever that really means, particularly on the Internet, fer chrissakes) if you walk away and wash your hands of things. Netizen, you are entitled to call it quits on an argument or discussion.
Finally, I hope you learn from my insanity and my mistakes. Life’s too short to let it get to you too much!
A Look at Online Personas and Cyber Infidelity—Oh My!
Cyber Infidelity? Yep, it sure exists.
Years ago, author Sophie Hannah did some research for a book she was writing. And so, she conducted a survey of Twitter, OKCupid and other sites, in conjunction with just plain out and out asking people – is online infidelity worse than in-person infidelity?
Results
Her results were mixed.
Some of the respondents saw less harm in a relationship where the parties never actually, physically, meet. Others saw it as being more or less the same as a physical affair, or at least an emotional one.
Hannah did this research for her book, The Telling Error. She says,
“The thing about Twitter is that everything is on there, so whatever you’re interested in is there.But it is capable of being incredibly nasty. I noticed that whenever somebody either does something wrong or offends somebody, Twitter will form a kind of aggressive, vindictive mob and start slagging off that person. Almost always, the punishment is worse than the crime.”
Cyber Infidelity: Some Takeaways
For bored and isolated people, social media can often serve as a godsend. Yet with worries such as this, spouses might do well to be cautious. Not necessary jealous, but at least to be wondering a bit, if someone spends seemingly forever online. It does not help that a lot of online behaviors encourage an almost addictive obsession. Because we crave the latest tweets.
We can’t wait to read the next gem from the Huffington Post, or take the latest meaningless quiz from Buzz Feed, or try to prank our friends with the most recent fake news from The Onion. And do not get me started on Candy Crush.
In fact, many of these algorithms and reward systems are designed for, you guessed it, keeping us on the edge of our seats and fully engaged.
Hence the opportunities are all too ample for vulnerable, lonely people to end up typing a little too much with someone else, and for it to turn into sexting and worse.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Making friends online is truly fun and, for a lot of people, the only thing that truly keeps them sane. Consider the shut-in, the 24/7 caregiver, or the spouse of someone on deployment. Or the person crippled by anxiety. They probably aren’t getting a lot of opportunities to talk to people within spitting distance of their age group.
And of course there are people who have a significant other who does not share their fandom. Or just plain bored people.
Every single one of these folks is vulnerable, in some way, to this kind of cheating.
Check Out Some Older Demographics for Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest and Some New Demographics
Demographics change over time. Hence the specific numeric percentages could be off, but the gist of these measurements remains on target. Part of this has to do with crowds. If a platform already caters to your demographic, you are probably going to be more interested in it than in a platform that does not.
At Agile Impact, Hilary Heino compiled some impressive statistics about who really uses these image-based social media platforms.
Tumblr
First of all, Tumblr reportedly has loyal users highly dedicated to the site. But Tumblr demographics have changed.
2013
In 2013, two-thirds of all users are under the age of 35. In addition, nearly forty percent have not yet seen 25 summers.
Finally, there are about 300 million monthly unique users; the site grew by 74 percent in 2013.
2022
Currently, over 32 million Tumblr bloggers live in the US. The demographics of Tumblr have changed a bit, in that now the number of users under the age of 35 is 2 out of 5 (or, 40%). Its audience is 40% Gen Z and 30% Millennials.
Tumblr’s traffic fell off dramatically in late 2018 when the platform banned adult content. The site still has not recovered. According to Finances Online, Tumblr has 16.74 million monthly users. Reddit, in contrast, has about 3 times as many monthly users. But some of that may be due to it being blocked in China, Iran, and Kazakhstan.
Genders are split nearly 50-50. The site’s usership has continued to decline, and they failed to capitalize on so many people being home at the start of Covid-19. Will Tumblr go the way of MySpace? Or will someone buy it?
Demographics for Pinterest
Let’s look at 2013 and 2022 Pinterest demographics side by side.
2013
First of all, as of July of 2013, there were 46.9 million unique monthly users. And women continue to dominate the platform; around a third of all women online have Pinterest accounts. In addition, two-thirds of all Pinterest users are over the age of 35, making it a near opposite to Tumblr.
Furthermore, a good three-quarters of its traffic comes through mobile apps. Hence if you post to Pinterest, make sure that your content is visible, clear, and comprehensible on smart phones. Finally, 80 percent of total Pinterest pins are repins. It’s probably the sign of a strong community. In addition, the site boasts 2.5 billion monthly pageviews.
2022
According to Omnicore,a good half of all Pinterest users are outside the United States. Just over 77% of all users are female. There are over 478 million monthly users—a ten times as many as in the older demographics of Pinterest, above.
Per 2021 info from Statista, 38% of persons between the ages of 50 and 64 are Pinterest users, making them the most represented cohort. But that number drops dramatically, to 18% for persons aged 65 and up. However, that’s probably explainable, due to generational differences and people just plain getting sicker and otherwise not having time for social media.
Instagram Demographics
Let’s compare Instagram demographics 2013 to 2022. How have things changed in the last 10 or so years?
2013
So with 150 million active users, Instagram reports 1.2 billion daily likes.
And 18% of smartphone users in the 30 – 49 demographic report using it. However, the majority of users are teens and young adults.
Furthermore, the site ties with Facebook as being the second-most popular site for teens. Yet Twitter is the first for that age demographic.
2024
Again, according to Omnicore, Instagram has nearly 2 billion daily users. The ages are now skewing differently.
Just under 2/3 of all users are between the ages of 18 and 34. In the US alone, 22.5% of users are 25 to 24 years old. Also in the US, 73% of teens say Instagram is the best way to reach them about brands or products.
Men slightly outnumber women, 51.6% to 48.4%.
Now let’s add TikTok, which wasn’t around in 2013.
TikTok
Per HubSpot, this platform is dominated by Gen Z in the US. But around the world, the demographics for TikTok skew more millennial. And globally, only about 14% of all persons aged 50 to 64. About 1/4 of Americans aged 12 to 34 have used it. Contrast with only about 3% of American adults over 35 years old.
TikTok users are more engaged and more likely to buy when they are on the platform. There are over 14 million daily users on the Android version of the app, and almost 30 million using the iOS version. About 88% report that sound is vital to their enjoyment.
Social Media Platform Demographics: Takeaways
Savvy social media marketers (and book marketers) will do well to consider the demographics of their ideal customer/buyer persona before starting an account on any of these platforms. Marketing to women over the age of 50? Then Pinterest is important—and you can probably safely ignore TikTok and Tumblr. You may or may not be able to ignore Instagram.
If you’re marketing to teenaged boys, then TikTok is right up your alley, but you shouldn’t ignore Instagram. Pinterest would be a nonstarter for you. As for Tumblr, it may or may not be worth your time.
Since time and energy are finite, focusing like a laser on demographics will save both.
So, know your image-based social platforms. Because they are not the same!
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