Sorry I’m late. Please come back tomorrow for another excellent guest blog by Holly Jennings about finding an agent. Thursday I’ll post a photo prompt since I’m doing the Monday blog today.
I’ve been on Twitter now for a few months with my pen name and maybe a month with my real name. I’m no expert, but I’ve definitely come to some conclusions about Twitter based on what I’ve seen.
The first observation is: sex sells.
The word “sex” appears in my bio for my pen name and not for the bio of my real name. Otherwise, the two bios are similar in structure. I got on twitter with my pen name, followed a few people and otherwise did nothing with it for a month. After a month of doing nothing, I had around thirty followers. With my real name, I got on, followed a few people, but have been so busy now twittering on my pen name that I’ve neglected my real name account. I have four followers. Both accounts were essentially inactive for a month at the beginning. The sex one had thirty followers at the end, and the non-sex one had four.
The next observation is people are wiggy about follow backs. When I started paying more attention to twitter, I noticed that some people gave me 24 hours or less to follow them back or their follow disappeared. I do a lot of follow backs because you never know what connection is going to be a great one, but I find the people who have such a limited time on a follow back to be annoying, and I say good riddance. Not all people are on Twitter 24/7, and a fast unfollow says you’re really not interested in the content the person is sharing, just interested in them as a number for your own followers list.
My big observation is Twitter is like a slot machine. You tweet; you follow; you favorite all in the hopes that it will pan out into a bunch of follows for yourself, a bunch of retweets for your words of wisdom, or a bunch of favorites. It’s just like sitting in front of a slot machine, putting in your quarters and hoping for the 777. It’s addicting in the same way because it focuses on the reward centers of your brain. This means don’t neglect your followers. Every time they login to Twitter, they’re hoping for a dozen notifications that somebody has seen them. Give that to them just like you’re hoping to receive.
Now off to figure out how to get followers for myself without using sex 
Come on, Twitter, baby needs a new pair of shoes!
I hit the jackpot yesterday…one sale and a link in someone’s news letter!
Yes it is sad that we have to use sex, drugs, and/or violence to get noticed. I have an article on my blog that I titled “I Tried to Cut Off My Cousin’s Penis” and you’d be surprised at the number of folks Googling that!!! But I did not title my article that way to get hits (well sort of), it was a true account of something my sister and I got in trouble for when we were toddlers. Truly innocent, but the story is for real. 😀
Got ALOT of hits that month.
Wow! Now I must go read it
I don’t want to know why people Google that!
I guess the problem I always had with Twitter is that even I wouldn’t want to follow myself, why should anyone else.
I need to get over this as I come closer to finishing my WIP. And I do have a idea for creating a blog presence. But as you say, time is such a limited resource. But I am inspired right now while writing, so hopefully manuscript in hand will generate the final push to get out there and talk about it.
I would start twittering now like you’re researching agents.
Another reason I think my pen name will be more successful on twitter than MM is she’s not about writing. She’s about romance which I can encapsulate a lot in: self improvement, recipes, indulgences, anything I can post with a romantic slant can work. As the guy who founded Smashwords said in his how to publish guide: Don’t tweet about writing. It’s boring. But what you should do is tweet about something that happens while your writing and tag it #amwriting. One of my most popular tweets happened when a guy was stalking me at SB. I could use #amwriting and #coffee which are two often used tags.
I feel like I’m starting another blog. Sorry. Point is tweet starting now to build up a ready made audience when your book is published.