Saturday 30 June 2012

Twitterate

I now consider myself to be Twiterate, that is to know my way around Twitter. Yeah right, in my dreams. But I Do know how to Tweet and RT and SO and FF and DM. AND I know what a hashtag does... kind of.  I do Follow Friday and ...  well that's about it really.

Actually, I'm not sure I have the right personality for Twitter.

I get wildly excited when someone follows me. But then I develop and almost manic sense of responsibility for that person. A need to RT at all costs. I feel ridiculously guilty if I forget, especially if they then RT me or GASP actually talk to me.

Now that was fine when I had 80 followers.  At 200 it was getting a bit hard to be that personal with all of them and at 400 I was getting stressed. I'm now standing at 647 and I'm


I've been pointed in the direction of LISTS. YES, I love lists. NO. Tried but too boring. Too cumbersome and how the hell do I decide 1. what to call my lists and 2 who to put on which one. It would help if the person didn't know I was doing it. When I found out they get TOLD they've been put on a list and, worse, which list, I was mortified. NO I AM NOT GOING TO TELL YOU WHAT I NAMED MY LISTS. For some of the people it might not have appeared too flattering.

So what do I do. I am now writing down all the people who follow me and I have marked them manually with stars.

It would be a lot easier if people didn't change their avatar. I'm a very visual person and I remember the picture so i remember who to RT... which is everyone. BLAH

I have yet to discover whether being active on Twitter actually makes a difference to sales, but it has made a huge difference to my life. Now, instead of spending all my days writing I spend them Tweeting. Wait... that's not really a good thing is it? Oops. Maybe I should cut back on the Tweeting a bit.

Any suggestions how to make the tweeting experience more of a



Than a



10 comments:

  1. Dear Nephy,
    i follow you on Twitter. I am blunajana. I would say: stop the RT stuff. It is seriousla anoying if people RT so much. An ocassional RT of something you think that is raelly cool is absolutly all right. But if someone RTs all the time I tend to unfollow that person. And just do what you like. IF you you want to do a FF then good but don't fell you have to do it every friday. You can not keep track of everybody and I think it is best if you tweet interesting things YOU like and if you are not trying to scramble after everybody. And that way you have more time for writing which in my oppinon is the most important thing!
    Jana from Germany

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    1. Hmm... maybe I should stagger the RT's. The problem is that I find EVERYTHING interesting, especially the people. I can understand what you mean about lots of RT being annoying, but for writers I guess it's important. People won't follow if you don't RT what a writer needs is for lots of people to RT them. Otherwise it's not really a good marketing tool. At least that's what I believe and I am TOTALLY open to the possibility I may be completely wrong :)

      As for the writing... It comes out in one way or another. At the moment i'm scribbling on scraps in work. And actually I've just been reminded that I AM writing. I'm doing a project with a freind... co writing a series of books. It feels more like hanging out than writing which is why I forgot, but we've written 5 books in a little over 3 months so I guess that counts :)

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    2. I'm with Jana on this one. :( I'm still learning Twitter and not sure I use it very well. I don't RT often, for example, and only learned the other day that Favorite means you like a tweet. I don't FF because I'm not really sure what it is. As for hashmarks, I'm clueless.

      I've gotten careful who I follow because some people either spam every hour or retweet so much it becomes a chore to read my twitter feed. After a while, I just don't even looked at most of those retweets because they're all about people I don't know or have any relationship with. I always stop to read the tweets of people I that are not retweets. I don't do lists (yet) and at least now I know from you that people are informed about lists, which is obnoxious. I don't let Twitter take away from my writing, though. I never got into it quite that much. :D Thanks for the thoughtful post.

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    3. You can stop seeing people's RT's. I had to do that with some people because I couldn't cope too. In the little list next to the person's name you get a drop down that says like... block, report and stuff. one up from the bottom is top re tweets. If you click that, none of their re tweets will show.

      I've eased up on my tweeting and I've found a new way of doing it

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  2. You can make your lists private so that people don't see what your list is called or who's on it :)

    Mo x

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  3. Woooo. How? How do I do this wondrous thing of which you speak???

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  4. You are definitely twitter literate hon. I am amazed at how well you do.

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    1. Aww. You say the nicest things. Have to say I'm proud of myself but my kids are unimpressed and there was me thinking it would make me cool

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  5. all I know for sure is that twitter eats a hell of alot of time and I'm not convinced that its time well spent!

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    1. I'm actually starting to enjoy it now :) I pop in and out between other things and I only answer the tweets I'm interested in :)I EVEN remember to promote myself sometimes :) I'm a hopeless case

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