How to Write Effectively — and Iteratively — with Social Media
Hint: First have a conversation through Twitter, Instagram and other outlets. Then take it to Medium or your blog. Then see where it goes!
What does it mean to write today? As a writer and product manager, I am often putting words to screen in a variety of contexts: emails, texts, tweets, Medium posts, formal essays, product requirements docs, Slack chats. The written word is ascendant in the early 21st century, and it has different meanings in different contexts and with different people.
If digital culture is like oral culture written down, then maybe writing things down can happen iteratively, the same way we might develop thoughts and ideas through multiple conversations. So often, my essays emerge out of conversations with friends over meals, as we bounce concepts off each other, and those concepts then take shape in some written form or another.
Kenyatta Cheese once asked me about what writing/blogging looks like today, which I thought was an interesting question. The question helped me realize that blogging and public writing online has changed substantially with the emergence of social media. So often, that means conversational writing can happen over a few channels, as concepts and phrases build up with different audiences and responses.
Consider a thought I tweeted while I was in Manila and observing the rich oral culture of the Philippines:
These tweets, as you can see by the RT and star counts, resonated amongst a wide variety of people. Surprised by the response, I realized it was an initial signal that suggested the idea was worth exploring further. (Looking back, it was important that I published these as a series of tweets, as they signaled a conversation, not just an isolated thought.)
Then, legal scholar James Grimmelmann cited the tweets in that thread to talk about the implications of understanding digital culture as oral culture when it comes the law:
Social media, however, combine the fixity of the written tradition with the fluidity, immediacy, and interdependence of the oral tradition. As a result, people use them in ways that resemble casual conversations more than carefully crafted compositions–but unlike with the spoken word, the results are preserved and made visible. As Zeynep Tufekci puts it, “Twitter is not a broadcast medium but a medium of conversation.” Misunderstanding results. Observers who expect that social media should have the dignity and gravity of the written word can feel affronted when others use social media more informally…..
Seeing a tweet that unlocks an idea for me, as these did, is a happy experience. It reminds me how much I enjoy participating in oral culture–and in written culture too.
Taking a cue from the strong response to these tweets, I decided to flesh out the ideas a bit more. Although Zeynep Tufekci had (of course!) written about the concept many years prior, it felt like something worth exploring again in light of debates at the time about the value of selfie sticks, narcissism and online activism.
So I drafted up a Medium post for The Civic Beat:
This Medium post sparked a number of sub-conversations through tweets and Medium annotations. Lawyer Hannah Poteat invited me to talk about it during a Copyright & Social Media conference call for the American Bar Association (I gave no legal opinions!), and I developed the concept further for a workshop at RightsCon, to help provide frameworks for the role of online activism and hashtags for advocacy.
And the best part! Bia Granja at YouPIX reached out and asked if they could translate the essay for their site, the largest site for internet culture in Brazil. I said yes, of course, and it was pretty cool to see my words in Portuguese alongside some amazing GIFs:
Tendo crescido em meio a uma série de “culturais orais”, a cultura digital sempre me pareceu muito mais como uma cultura oral só que escrita. Na verdade, muitas das críticas básicas sobre como as pessoas agem no mundo online partem do pressuposto de que elas devem seguir as normas e convenções da cultura escrita.
Será que isso pode nos ajudar a entender o alvoroço em torno do significado dos paus de selfie, das imagens de comidas e outros aspectos aparentemente estranhos/curiosos da cultura digital? Sim, eu diria! Onde alguns veem narcisismo e auto-obsessão, eu vejo uma fusão da cultura impressa com a cultura oral.
Now, this is a particularly effective example of how some early tweets can spark a range of explorations in written form, but it’s not unusual. I follow this process for a number of essays I write, and it reflects the possibilities of this oral digital culture we live with today. Which ideas are timely and relevant in the moment? Which ideas are worth exploring further? Which ideas do people want to engage with? These are tough questions for any cultural thinker and maker.
I’ve found that conversational writing helps substantially, as it combines some of the strengths of the online world — orality, rapid debate, broad reach, quick nonverbal feedback— with the affordances of the written word — nuance and detail, space to explore a concept further. This method is not the be-all end-all, of course; I write many essays that don’t reflect an initial conversation online. But I’m doing this much more frequently now that I’ve identified its effectiveness for my own process.
And in the spirit of orality, I’m curious: if you’re a writer, have you found a process like this to be effective? Leave a comment or reply, and let’s have a conversation!
