Make what obligatory? An official twitter account? That could easily end up being a huge waste of effort given the number of series that are likely to be dead and gone in less than 20-30 chapters. Plus who runs it? The mangaka? One of his assistants? Some Jump editor? Then there's the matter that a twitter account can be a double edged sword. It's a great way way to announce things to your fans. As a means of fan feedback it's mixed at best. It makes it easy for fans to give quick praise, but the format is poor for any sort of more detailed feedback. Meanwhile the drawbacks can be significant. Obsessed shippers will be responding to every tweet begging or outright demanding their preferred pairing be made canon. People with an axe to grind will be publicly complaining about the series constantly in response to every announcement. If someone manages to stir up a social media outrage about the series, the twitter account will be the main target and flooded with outrage that's likely from people who aren't even fans. As long as early leaks happen, the official account will have to suffer through idiots commenting about them to the official account before the chapter is formally even out in Japan. And so on.
All in all it's much better to leave it up to the discretion of the individual mangaka if they want to have such a public social media presence, or if they'd prefer to stick to regular old fan mail.
It's not to make a social media account, but to have social interaction. It doesn't necessarily need to be a Twitter account specifically from the series. It can be its own mangaka, or even the editor. And no, it's not a waste of effort. It's actually profitable and can be perfectly managed if you take into account Mitama's editor manages like 8 series and still has time to create content for the series on Twitter and promote it. Why is it that much of a problem who manages it? Editor's job is to promote and push the series they manage in order to make them profitable and successful. It's not a waste of effort, it's
literal work. And why is it that receiving criticism is directly bad? If we actually looked through every single negative consequence making a campaign would have, there would literally be 0 marketing work for any series,
just because it can end up bad. We're talking about posting about volume releases, about extra content from series. It's not a total bidirectional feedback since achieving that with a product that in itself is released later than it's produced is basically impossible, but it can be a good way of expanding your audience and trying to reach new people that could get attached to the series and help its popularity.
And what if there's a social media outrage? Why do you think Public Relations exist. This is not about just creating an account and posting stuff, this is about starting to know your audience, and later on create content and stuff your audience will enjoy. And when problems come up, fix them with whatever is needed, and continue with it. If we're gonna be scared about what our advertisement can bring up, then just don't make anything and let whatever you create sink without giving it a chance of growth. There are experts, there's experienced people in the topic, they won't literally fuck it up with the single first tweet they post. This is business, they're not dumb. You're really looking into every single negative possibility not thinking that all of this stuff is early
planned, this is not made randomly.
And no, this is not telling the mangaka to have social media presence, it's for the product. To show it, to promote it, and do it with marketing experts that have knowledge enough in managing stuff in social media. We're not trying to eradicate privacy from people who don't want to appear publicly, but to actually invest in what you offer to your audience, and if it doesn't work, analyze what went wrong and planificate future works.
