Are you tweeting into the void?

The great book extinction is coming. ... I feel your pain: writing and the nat...

Are you tweeting into the void?

In 2014, I wrote about how I became a reluctant bride of Twitter. These days, I spend the bulk of my social media time on Twitter. Social media mavens like Karma Bennett (coming to the CWC-SF/Peninsula Branch in November for a workshop) may scold me for focusing on a single platform, but so be it.

In the year-plus that I have been active on Twitter, I’ve gone from 100 followers to a little more than 700. It hasn’t exactly been a hockey-stick growth curve. I’ve been wracking my brains to figure out the secret behind the Twitter users whose accounts boast numbers with a K after them. I often feel I’m shouting into a vast canyon supposedly filled with eager hordes. “Hallooooo!!! Is anybody out there?”

At this rate, I’ll get to 10K followers sometime in the next 25 years.

After some research and reflection, I have concluded that there is no magic formula. In fact, it seems to come down to:

Tweet often
Tweet well

Like much good advice, this suffers a surfeit of detail. So, to figure out more about what’s working and what’s not for me on Twitter, I’ve written an open letter to my followers. After the letter, I offer some resources from those more expert than I.

Dear Twitter Followers,

I know you love me just as much as I love you. I mean, who wouldn’t fall in love based on a description that crams one’s entire life into a tiny block no bigger than a decorative postage stamp?

But please, if you love me, really love me. Don’t follow me one day just so you can wave your brand in front of my face and then unfollow me the next day because you don’t really care. You give me vertigo. My follower number surge and then decline. Who leaves me? @Get1000followersNow and @SpendMoneyFoolishlyWithUs and @WeDoNotCareAboutYouOnlyAboutOurselves.Should I do the same, just to put my mug in front of more people? I shall not. I shall follow only those whose profiles genuinely engage my interest.

Speaking of genuine engagement, please say something about yourself in the meager space provided. If you are Cher, Prince, or Madonna, your one name, alone, might be enough to entice me to follow you, as long as I know you are the GENUINE Cher, Prince, or Madonna (I can tell because you’re verified). But Mary? or LWM69503? Sorry.

Please don’t mention me by my Twitter handle just to get me to look and then do a “ha ha, fooled ya” with a message about how to buy Twitter followers or where to find the latest in swanky leather goods.

DO use it as @malie129 did, to invite me to the #cowrite, which is something that interests me. How can you tell if I’ll be interested in something? You might get a clue from actually reading some of my tweets (literature, science, psychology, writing, editing, technology, philosophy).

Be loyal and I shall be loyal in return. I have to send out a big, heartfelt thank-you to my Twitter tribe. Right now, it’s a handful of people. But we interact regularly. I retweet them, they retweet me. (Shout out to @CarrieRubin, @KM_Huber, @readinterrupt, @dorcas_ct, @AugstMcLaughlin, and @jbw0123. Send them some love.)

Oh, and cut me some slack if I don’t tweet as much as your average bear. I sometimes get caught up in… what is it? oh, yeah, life…

Sincerely,

A Willing Bride of Twitter

Perhaps the stamp is not actually this size, but close enough. [Source: Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons]

How to go all in

All of this, of course, begs the question: Does Twitter matter? Does social media help your “author brand,” which in turn (we assume) helps you sell books?

I think the answer is a variation of the quote “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half,” usually attributed to marketing pioneer John Wanamaker. Half of everything we do involving social media is a waste; the trouble is that we don’t know which half.

If you want to get into the nuts and bolts, there’s lots of good advice about using Twitter to your advantage, especially as an author. Here are a few I found useful.