Tweeking on Twitter
I love Twitter! I think I'm addicted to it. Of course given my overly obsessive compulsive additive prone personality this shouldn't be surprising. So here's the run down on this thing they call twitter. Some folks just tweet useless nonsense or you can follow tweets around an event to get the 'in the moment' play by play of what's happening. For example I followed the New York City Occupy Wall Street tweets to try to find out what their message and purpose was. It didn't take long for me to figure out they really didn't have one other then Wall Street is bad and the 1% suck. But I've now seen Twitter in a new light. I'd never thought of it as a place for professionals of the same feather to flock together to share knowledge and gain recognition.
Fortunately I read a couple books about marketing eBooks that stressed the necessity of developing a Twitter following and most importantly for me these books also went into detail about Twitter etiquette for professionals. Yes that's right, there is a particular etiquette if you want your peers to take you seriously. First off add value with your posts. With the fever only an ex-tweeker meth head can muster up, I comb through tweets looking for links to blog posts and articles that are informative and well written for me and my fellow Indie Authors. I can do this at a quick intense pace for a long period of time, with an intense obsession. I really get into it! And the pay off? Another follower! Oh yes there's nothing like turning on the computer and checking my email only to be delighted and elated by three more followers! Woo Hoo! Of course you do have to screen out @Bubbles who just loves to fuck. Yes blocking bubbles immediately is imperative in order to not let your Twitter get filled up with inappropriate spam.
Another important piece of etiquette I learned from Mark Coker's book (the guy who developed Smashwords) on eBook marketing was to not continuously talk about your book. I just gets boring. There is an author I'm following and every day she just asks you to buy her book in a little different way. Boring. I'm really glad I learned that before I started Tweeting. In order to get real followers you've got to give them good content. The original blog posts that I write will always be tweeted but I can also reference other folks too. This Tweet thing is like a spinning wheel. I can give it a good spin with a few new Tweets and it will keep going for a while but eventually it will slow down if I don't jump back in and give it another spin with some good interesting content Tweets! And then maybe- another follower. I'm hooked! Tweeking on Twitter! What's your experience? Did you get hooked immediately like me? Did you struggle?
