I wrote a post a few weeks ago, Twitter Tips for Writers + 25 Good follows, that continues to generate waves of traffic to this blog. So apparently a lot of you are on Twitter now and that’s great. I think it’s the best medium of the moment to network and reach out to others in your niche.
A common problem seems to be not knowing what to do on Twitter once you’re on there. Here’s what seems to happen: You sign up. You look around for a few interesting looking peeps to follow. You’re now privy to a confusing, never-ending stream of micro-conversations, rants, links and more. What to do now?
There are all sorts of apps you can turn to to help filter through the endless chatter to find what you may actually be interested in. I don’t use this but many recommend TweetDeck for this purpose.
What works for me is really honing in on a specific niche, almost thinking about Twitter like I’m a beat reporter covering a particular topic 140 characters at a time.
It takes time to find your voice on Twitter, just like in any other medium. But I think the following tips work well for writers, especially those just starting who want to join the fray.
Here are tips that will help you build your Twitter cred and increase your platform and followers:
• Link to relevant blog posts in your niche.
• Retweet good posts from others. To do this, simply copy and paste the full Tweet and put RT @namehere in front of it.
• Follow Friday is a great way to develop good Twitter karma. On Fridays, tweet the Twitter handle of people you think others might like to follow. Use a hash tag (e.g. #followfriday) and relevant niche (e.g. #writing) to make it easily searchable.
• Link to your own blog posts, but don’t over-do it. See my 60/40 rule of self-promotion for guidance on this.
• Answer questions in an insightful way (challenging in 140 characters, yes, but that’s part of the fun).
• Continually seek out others in your niche and follow them. I think the best way to do this is to start off following 50 or so in your niche and watching who they follow and reply to.
• I’d recommend tweeting less than 10 times a day at the beginning, until you find your footing on Twitter. And space out your tweets since the Twitterverse gets easily annoyed with stream hogs.
• Never ask for followers. This is a big no-no—Twitter suicide.
• Don’t set up any sort of auto-responders. Keep it real, personal and relevant.
If you want to really get into the minutiae of Twitter, there are whole blogs devoted to it, one of the best is TwiTip. I’d recommend checking in there occasionally for great advice on all things Twitter.
And feel free to follow me @mariaschneider. If you leave your Twitter handle in the comments here, I’ll follow you back.
-Maria Schneider
You can sign up to subscribe (free!) to this blog’s daily feed here and get it right in your inbox or feedreader.
flickr photo by striatic
{ 6 trackbacks }
{ 50 comments… read them below or add one }
Another useful post. Thanks! I’m splinister on Twitter.
Great advice, Maria! http://search.twitter.com and http://hashtags.org/ are a great combo to discover interesting people to follow. I came across some great Tweeters via #TOC this week.
Very useful. I’ve been using Twitter as a digital notebook for myself, a place to put cool websites I find. For this purpose, it’s great. But I’ve been hearing so much twitter about Twitter that I’ve had an inclining I can and should be doing more.
Thanks. Oh… I’m nancydevine on Twitter.
I’m finding Twitter a lot more useful than I expected and I try my best to provide something useful, either through chatting with others or providing writing-related links. I think you’re right about the niche thing, too. As a networking tool *spits*, it’s a good idea to follow people who are writing about or interested in the same things.
I’m @iainbroome, by the way folks.
Why oh why couldn’t that Russian spy-sat have smashed into the Twitter satellite and put an end to the madness!!!!
I will not Twitter in the car
I will not Twitter in the bar
I will not Twitter here or there
I will not Twitter anywhere
All this Twitter is worse than spam,
I will not Twitter, Sam I am!
–John
Hey, Maria. I think you are right that you can (and probably should) work Twitter like a beat reporter. Towards that end, I highly recommend that you combine the power of Twitter search with your newsreader via the RSS feed built into each and every search. Instead of me looking for writing contests, I let 1.3 million other people look for me. Each search term you enter can be fed to your newsreader from now until you turn it off. Now that is valuable.
I wrote up a little graphic tutorial on how to do this if anyone needs step-by-step instructions. You can read it here:
http://www.jmstrother.com/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=1&postId=57 Almost all of the writing contests I post in the EU forum and on my blog come straight to me via Twitter search, feed, and read.
I actually encourage people not to tweet to often. I have recently dropped a couple of prominent tweeters because they just tweet too damned often. One of the features I’d like to see added is a Tweets/day indicator on profiles, so I can judge if I want to follow or not. But that’s just me.
~jon
Maria, another very helpful article; your blog saves me so much time….
Great follow up post, Ms. Maria.
John,
I see a horror story in the making here. A man is locked in a room, with only Twitter as his means of communication… ;)
~jon
Great post. Very useful tips for someone like me who is new to Twitter.
@NixyValentine
Great article on the uses of Twitter. All i would add is simply be yourself. Learn from others, read up on all the tons of information that is available on the do’s and dont’s of Twitter, but then just be yourself…
@markshaw
Hi Maria,
When I first joined Twitter, I didn’t get it. Who cares what I am doing? Well, I discovered that Twitter really isn’t so much about that as it is connecting. I’ve had a lot of success with Twitter and it is now a ubiquitous tab on my browser whenever I am at the keyboard.
Headed over right now to have a peek at the article you mention at the beginning of this post.
Cheers!
George
Hey, I was going to write this post today, no fair. Still might. Twitter is largely untapped, which is why it’s exciting. It’s newness might wear off, but this is definitely the time to get involved.
Found you on my home page, where someone was replying to you and mark coker.
http://twitter.com/selfpubreview
@Jon: Check out http://www.mrtweet.net/ It’s a pretty cool resource for finding relevant Tweeters based on your own Twittering, and includes stats on Tweets/Day, # of links posted and @ conversations to get a sense of how each person is using their account.
@Self-pub: That was my reply! Perfect example of Twitter making relevant connections. Maria’s doing great work here with editorunleashed!
Hi, Guy. Thanks for the reminder on Mr. Tweet. I had forgotten they give tweets/day. I’d still rather see it right in the person’s profile on Twitter so that I could just make a decision on the spot. I’ve made the suggestion to them directly. Maybe some day.
~jon
There is a scary side to Twitter – and I just found it out today! I got one tweet about internet criminals on Twitter with a link to http://praguebob-webxdotoh.blogspot.com/ article about Perry Belcher. Then, right under it on my home page was a tweet from guess who – Perry Belcher, who somehow became my friend on Twitter! Of course I took him off my list, but he has a ton of followers. Be careful who you follow!
Kaza Kingsley
Author of the Erec Rex series
Oh yeah, don’t be afraid to block people. So far I’ve blocked three. They all seemed to be scam artists or interested in showing me a good time.
Blocking is different than just not following some one back. It keeps them from seeing your tweets. Do you really want creeps seeing your tweets?
Twitter is actually pretty good about getting rid of nefarious user accounts, once they find out about them. And they seem to have no tolerance for pretenders – the fake Dalai Lama was gone the same day.
~jon
Really nice tips!
Thanks for the article: I am just getting started with Twitter and trying to figure out how to make it more than just another internet timesink. I’m Cartazon there.
I’m now following you on Twitter primarily because you have a crapload of cool articles and that means you’ll be an interesting person to follow on there. If you want to follow me back, my twitter ID is @shaunduke (http://www.twitter.com/shaunduke)
Anywho, good article and hope to see you in the twitterverse.
Another great collection of info. Following you as hayleyelavik :)
Maria, what a great post. Wish I had seen it before I got my Twitter account :-) I’m so new that I have to say I think my handle is @1writeway ….
Excellent post, particularly your tip about not over-Tweeting. It’s important to give your Twitter followers something of value. I unfollow people quickly if I feel as though they are only contributing to the noise on Twitter. My Twitter ID is @cyndyandbrian: http://www.twitter.com/cyndyandbrian
similar to tumblemoose, I’ve been an infrequent tweeter, but am warming up to the whole thing. In fact, I’ve recently launched a second twitter account for a new project. thanks for the sound advice, I’m @BenHess – twitter.com/BenHess
Ha! I am one of those ‘don’t have a clue how to use this but I trust it is useful for something’…I am going to go through some blogs and see if I can get myself up to speed.
Very useful info, thank you, Maria. I’m leaving now to add you to my follow list!
Nice work, keep it up. Cheers.
Thanks for a great article. I’m pretty new to Twitter, so it was very helpful. I’m @kkcthornton
also it is possible to place a twitter button or use other twitter tools on your site to attract more followers.
I just followed you on twitter. (Susan55 on twitter)
Thanks Maria. I followed your advice and doubled my Twitter followers overnight!
my Twitter handle: vickigundrum
Thanks, Maria. Great article and follow-up. I enjoy following you on twitter. @HollyWoodward
I’m a latecomer to this one but I agree with an earlier post. I had to “unknow” one Tweeter as her posts were too ADD. Less is more which means my followers get only a few from me each day.
Oh yes, I’m @ArcheologyWrtr.
:)
Thanks, Maria- great tips.
I recently “watched” a conference that I couldn’t attend, via Twitter, along with hoards of other tweeters. A community formed, not to mention a bunch of new interesting people to follow. (Yes, I probably use ‘interesting’ too often, too!)
dlmcniel on Twitter
Thanks,Maria! Busy twittering my summer away. I’m susiedec4.
My main problem is I don’t know how to find people. I don’t think most people in my address book are even on twitter. . I want to use twitter partly to promote my new biography of Lewis carroll and my travel writing, and partly just to see what other people are up to… my contacts often post interesting links but I hardly ever see them in all the chorus of voices. Maybe I’d better investigate Tweetdeck.???? – @ Jennywoolf
One of the most effective ways to find people is to simply ask them if they are on Twitter, and if so, what their user name is. And if you know them from another on line community you can use the Find People search to look for them by that username – a lot of people use the same name in different environments. If something pops up, check out their profile to see it’s a match.
~jon
@nvwriter
Just discovered your site and really enjoy what I’ve read!
Really great useful information. Thanks very much!
@katchapman
Great article thanks! I just started getting into twitter, so far I think its pretty neat. :-)
@netadept
Thanks! I’m paulambrett on twitter.
I’m loving your blog and your posts. Very helpful! I’m wendykwebb on Twitter.
Another helpful post at navigating uncharted territories. Thanks!
@Tartitude
Thanks for the tips.
@mimont
@StillSandy Found your information very helpful for a beginner … just starting both blogging and twitter last Thursday … Thanks for supplying info
There are also a lot of sites that offer free tools like tweet deck or follow trains. Where you follow the members and then you get to join the train and to join the train you have to follow those ahead of you.
Its very smart and it promotes itself so everyone keeps on growing. In a sense its automated when you join each day with a few clicks rather than watching it all day like others.
I know http://twitterbuilding.com , is a very good one and they offer vip in which you dont have to click at all….and you can stay vip for a long time. Giving you a huge boost for no work at all.
Twitter is still great for marketing, since it reaches a lot of people. Spiders search it and the best part , its free and once you have a good audience its almost like an email list in short form. Which is good for everyone.
@robinmullet
Here is my handle. I love your Mark Twain quote. I am new to both Twitter and Facebook, but am beginning to see the value. Using Tweetdeck helped a lot by focusing the tweets I received and getting past the numbing amount I didn’t need to read. Thanks to everyone for all the good tips.
@mazzz_in_Leeds is my handle
Thanks for the article, I’m pretty new to this tweeting business
Are you saying I’m only here for the emo? ,
new to twitter. Thanks for the tips. Much to learn. Jim