Engaged, but Off Topic: An Analysis of Author John Green's Online Presence and Publicity - Essay Example

Prof’s Engaged, but Off Topic: an Analysis John Green’s Online Presence and Publi In the past people often expected celebrities to be distant figures, people who you could only know through the snippets you hear from a film or television or the occasional interview in a magazine. Today, however, things have changed drastically. Now, through the internet, celebrities often have direct contact with their fans – this contact is not always two ways, but the celebrities can usually voice their opinions much better to many fans who have an interest in them.

Some have done this very poorly: Kanye is famous, for instance, for tweets that make him seem out of touch. Others have been much more successful, however. One such success story is John Green, author of New York Times best selling young adult fiction such as Looking for Alaska. He has a multifaceted media platform that engages fans and others in a variety of ways, which are often on topics other than his writing, but nonetheless forge deeper connections with his fans and allow him to be a more successful and better selling author.

The center of Green’s media platform is his website, JohnGreenBooks.com. This website gives information on a huge variety of things about the author: it has his biography, contact information, as well as twitter and other social media information. The thing he updates most often is his twitter account, @RealJohnGreen, on which he does everything from share links to various interesting stories to his opinions on a wide variety of subjects. Beyond this, Green has a variety of other web platforms that are not about him per se, but are still methods of interaction.

One, for instance, is the brotherhood 2.0 project (brotherhood2.0.com). In this project, Green and his brother eschewed textual communication for a year, instead only communicating via video blog. He also has this project as a channel on youtube (youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers). He also has another website, Nerd Fighters, which serves as a central hub for books, movies, news and so on that self described “nerds” might be interested in (nerdfighters.ning.com). This often links to youtube videos that Green has produced.

Finally, Green has youtube channels that do not exist in any other venue, such as “Truth or Fail” a project where the user must select the correct answer from two possible answers to a question, or “fail” (youtube.com/user/truthorfail). From these, I learned that while John Green has a massive web presence, very little of it directly relates to his writing – much of it consists of side projects. On the other hand, however, most of these are things that would probably appeal to his target audience for his books.

They are often things that young people would enjoy, and have a twist to them that can be described in no other way than nerdy. So very plausibly they would either further engage people who are already fans of his, or reach out to people who would probably enjoy his writing. Thus, the eclectic nature of his online presence does not necessarily mean it would not be good advertising or cross promotion for his books. I believe that John Green is very good at engaging his audience on the internet.

Firstly, he updates frequently: his youtube channels, websites, twitter feed and so on are constantly popping up new links, articles and so on. This allows his readers to feel that they have an intimate connection with him, because they know his thoughts on such a wide variety of subjects. Secondly, his projects are carefully curated, as mentioned previously, to be things that would also interest his fan base from his book series. They target youth to a significant degree, and have a strongly nerdy vibe.

All of this leads to him seeming to be a very accessible author: but it is something of an illusion, because he is actually fairly one sided in his communication, telling others what he thinks but failing to engage with things that happen in response. The best example of this problem is probably email: he indicates on his website that he reads every email, but will never respond to an email that he receives nor will he respond to snail mail. Fans now demand much more interaction with their favorite people than they did in the past.

John Green does an excellent job keeping his fans engaged through a constant stream of new output much of which is intended to create the feeling of a close relationship with the author. Works Cited “John Green’s Biography.” Johngreenbooks.com. n.d. Web. 16 June 2012. “Goodbye Brotherhood 2.0.” Brotherhood2.com. n.d. Web. 16 June 2012. “Flinching in the Shower.” Nerdfingers.ning.com. n.d. Web. 16 June 2012. “Chose the Truth or You Fail.” Youtube.com. n.d. Web. 16 June 2012.

“Vlog Brothers.” Youtube.com. n.d. Web. 16 June 2012. Green, John (realjohngreen). “My response to someone who asked, "I'm ugly. What should I do?" 16 June 2012, 9:20 a.m. Tweet.