Quote: perrybond, Tuesday, 13 Jul 2010 13:59Why does it exist?
how do you make sense of it?
I've opened an account on behalf of my book Hexult. Made a few tweets, followed a few people, but still don't understand the concept.
Had a look at Marc's tweets - ExisleMoll - (I think it is Marc's) but understood very little of it. When I look at tweets I feel I am reading one side of a coded conversation.
Anyone else here have an account, perhaps if I followed a few people who are also trying to promote their work, I might gain a greater understanding of what it's all about.
It is all about the people following you Perry. Every follower will automatically receive every tweet you make. So if 20 people follow you, those 20 will get your tweet. The way to build up followers is to try and establish who is worth following for your purposes and to interact with them and maybe they'll start following you. I follow Stephen Fry, but there's no way he's going to follow me back, so that one's just for fun/ the pleasure of it.
So you really need to download for free a Twitter management tool like Tweetdeck. Then within that you can follow certain types of catergories of tweets ie ones where a key phrase is used and tweets will show up from people you aren't following but who use that key phrase; so I have a column for 'self-publishing', 'literary agents', 'pub tips', 'follow reader' and 'friday flash'. In your case there may be a 'YA' column or a 'science' column you might choose. Then as you follow people's tweets under these headings, you can start interacting with the people whose tweets seem relevant to you. Get 'talking' to them on twitter and some will follow you. The more you are able to offer and share knowledge with people, the more they follow you. For example, you should tweet links to your science videos on YouTube - not only will that drive more traffic to your youtube channel, but it may gain you followers as people start talking to you about them.
Then there are the hashtag chats such as #litchat, #storycraft, #writechat, #YAlit and others (probably a SciFi one and a Fantasy one). These are regular Twitter chats the same time each week under these catergories. Participate in those & you soon find people to follow & peole who will follow back with shared interest. For example #Litchat is Mon/Wed/Fri 9-10pm often hosted by a published author and always on a subject - last night was politics in the novel and not only was it a vibrant & interesting & fast moving debate, there were several new people I started following from it.
The other thing I'd say is you don't have to restrict it to writing related - if you have other hobbies/interests you can develop a network of people in these in the same way. Who knows, then there might be cross over and you can get them to buy your book because they like you cos you're a cricket fan, or collect matchboxes or they like your views on trying to teach kids or whatever.
Twitter does feel not that it's coded conversations, but that you're stood at one end of a party while someone in the far corner has 30 people round them and clearly saying something worth hearing, but the background noise and music is too loud so you can't hear what they're saying. Until that is you develop your own circle of people intent on hearing what you've got to say.
I'm in the middle of a piece for my blog about Twitter, how it has changed me as a writer, for better and for worse. I'll post a link up here when it's finished.
But as for driving traffic to your things, be it YouTube, be it a blog, be it samples of your books, there simply isn't anything to beat it.
Hope this helps in some way.
Marc
This post was last edited by sulcus, 13 Jul 2010, 17:41
"A,B&E", "Not In My Name" and "52FF" (flash fiction anthology) all available
on Amazon Kindle"How a psychopath makes sweet love. I can get you ringside. Royal box even."
twitter - can anyone explain?
13 Jul 2010, 13:59
"And, in the end, the love you take / Is equal to the love you make." Lennon and McCartney 1969
