Class: Creating A Powerful Presence Online (2019) | RWW Residency

From Week 1 of Residency

With RWW's summer residency in full swing, by noon I had climbed 36 flights of stairs on the first day of my "Online Presence" class.

Since last year, Hannah Comerford and I updated our series to both clarify and expand on key issues facing professional writers online. In the end, we doubled our lecture time and divided the lectures into two parts.

The first part was devoted to establishing a professional website presence—the dos, don'ts, and hows. This covered authentic branding, design choices, hosting platforms, page content, and photography, and everything in between.

The second half was devoted to the world of social media, focusing on authentic engagement and self-marketing on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads, and exploring how to have both an effective and healthy life online.

The intro slide to our Online Presence class.

While I'm passionate about good web design, this time around I was most excited about Part 2: social media. For the last couple of years, I've been extensively reading the psychological literature on human behavior, particularly as it relates to group dynamics, social signalling, moral instincts, and cognitive biases. Social media is notoriously a negative place, prone to polarization, loud voices, and antisocial behaviors, but that doesn't need to be our experience. Embedded in human nature is the unique potential for community, kindness, and enrichment: through intentionally and intelligently traversing the terrain as many have done (avoiding common pitfalls), we can foster an environment that is good for others and good for ourselves.

If you attended our class, or were unable to attend, you can view the slides to our class here.