Twitter

Twitter is being a very big distraction for me today. Yesterday, I was super excited about my work-in-progress. I stayed off social media all day and ended up writing over 4,600 words.

Then I had to go and tweet about it this morning. I got distracted by Twitter right away and then had to check all my other social media sites. Later, when I was finally back into the groove of writing, I got several email notifications from twitter about likes and a new follow, distracting me again.

The new follow was from an author I am a fan of and it completely wrecked me, lol. I can’t get over it! I’m so excited about her follow and nervous now about all my future tweets because I feel like I have to impress her or something. When realistically, she probably has me muted already.

Some hard truths about Twitter:

1. You can mute people you follow on Twitter
   • Click the little gear next to the Following button and you will see options to Mute and Turn off Retweets
   • I didn’t expect to use either of these options but when your feed becomes completely dominated by ONE PERSON’S Retweets, it isn’t such a difficult decision to make. Why would I only want to see updates from people someone else is following anyway? I would follow those people if I wanted to read their tweets. I’m not saying I hate all Retweets, far from it. I just don’t think a person should RT more than they Tweet. There are feeds for that.
   • I have stooped to Muting people I follow too. What’s the point of following them then? Well, I’m nice. After I started “following back” fellow writers and other people, my feed got crowded again with Tweets I didn’t care about (see Twitter Etiquette #1 below), and I’d have to dig to find updates from the people I wanted to read about. So, I bit the bullet and decided to mute a few people rather than Unfollow them. I can still click their names and see their feed anytime. We can still tweet to each other, but seeing as how we were strangers to begin with, I don’t really see that happening anyway.
2. Jerks will Follow you for a Follow-Back, then Unfollow you
   • Some people are the worst. Fortunately, you can go to your list of followers and look beside each person’s @(handle) to see if the words “FOLLOWS YOU” are still there in gray. If you find a stranger who isn’t following you, though you know you only follow them because you initially followed them back, simply “Unfollow Back.” Jerks.
   • This is my biggest pet peeve of Twitter. It took me months to start “Following Back” strangers because I never saw the point. What’s so great about having a million followers when they all have you muted? I created my R.Q. Woodward Twitter account for the eventual fans I hoped to have once I became a published author. Building up a community of fellow writers hadn’t even occurred to me. Now that my outlook has changed however, I get even more annoyed by the people who only see Twitter as a means for self-aggrandizement. Okay…yeah, sure, maybe that is what Twitter is for…but whatever.

Twitter Etiquette 101

1. Don’t tweet the exact same self-marketing stuff over and over again, multiple times a day, everyday
   • I get that Twitter is a great place to promote yourself, your books, your blogs, etc. But when I see the exact same book image three times in a day from you and notice that you tweeted the exact same thing the day before and the week before, I’m probably going to mute you.
   • The best way (and often only way) I’ve seen established authors promote their books is by retweeting things that other people have tweeted. When their books go on sale on Amazon, they RT someone else who tweeted it, as if they are too cool to have noticed it themselves (it works btw, they are SOOO COOL).
   • The other amazing way for authors to self-promote themselves is to Retweet all the sweet comments their fans say about their books. I’ve gotten in the habit of making sure to mention the author’s handle whenever I talk about what I #amreading in Tweets. The best authors always Like that and often RT too, depending on the content. If they’re mega famous they might not notice you or RT, but even Margaret Atwood RT’s her fans like a PRO, and she’s 77.
2. Interact (Reply, Retweet, or Like)
   • How you interact on Twitter is a matter of choice.
   • I have a follower who insists Replying is the only proper way to interact on Twitter. He hates “Likes” and true to his word has only 18 likes listed on his profile but over 4000 tweets.
   • I also came across this girl who, I swear, was “Like” stalking me. She Liked tons of my tweets over a several week period, but never said anything to me or followed me. I tweeted something to her, but she never responded. Her profile lists 326 Tweets and 105k Likes. To each his/her own.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions about Twitter and how to behave on it. Judging by the number of followers I have, you might not want to take advice from me anyway. I’m not follower hungry though (Follow me on Twitter! Click here to Follow Me! Doooooo it!). Just wanted to share some things I’ve noticed about Twitter since I was having trouble focusing on my #WIP today 😀

Oh, P.S. Sometimes Twitter likes to not give me notifications on new followers. I’ll notice my follower number has changed but I won’t have any notifications listed about it. So if you Follow me and I don’t/didn’t Follow you back, just let me know. I’m probably not being a jerk about it.