How are you using Twitter?

How are you using Twitter?

Feb 16

writing, blogging, blog, fiction, novel, book, freelance

Are you on Twitter? You can follow me here. I just crossed the 100 followers threshold, so I’m pretty excited about that.

What is twitter?

Twitter is a social networking site that allows you to post updates in 140 character blips. Think IM plus social networking, and you’ve more or less got it. With twitter, it’s perfectly acceptable to follow complete strangers while that’s frowned on by other sites.

Ideas for using twitter

I use twitter to post updates for some of my blog posts. It’s also a nice way to jump in to interesting conversations that I run across, and that’s more acceptable on twitter since the conversations are public.

One thing that I don’t see talked about as much with twitter is the value of just following. It’s a great way to get ideas about a topic, see what people are talking about, etc. I’ve gotten good results asking for responses on twitter, so it’s another option besides the traditional blog poll.

I can see other potential uses for twitter. I can see it as an interesting medium for poetry or even ultra short stories. I’m hoping that as more people use it and experiment, other interesting uses will come out.

So, how do you get people to follow you on twitter?

First, go to Twitter search and look for people with interests similar to yours and follow some of them. You’ll start getting their updates in your friends list. Chances are, some of them will follow you in return.

Ask for followers on your blog. That seems so obvious, but it’s all to easy to forget to do the simple things. You might want to put a “follow me” button somewhere on your site, but I’ve had good results writing a quick post just asking people to follow. In fact, I just gained about 15 followers in the last week by doing that and asking for followers on a forum I frequent.

Ask for followers on forums you’re a member of. First though, be sure it’s okay to do so and within the community guidelines. Even if it is, be sure it’s acceptable in the culture of the forum you’re on as well. Otherwise, you could end up doing yourself more harm than good.

You’d be surprised, but explaining what you want and just asking works wonders. I wanted to cross the 100 followers threshold, and I did by simply asking.  So, I’m asking again. I’ve got 102 followers right now, and I’m curious how long it might take to reach 200. Care to help me get there?

writing, blogging, blog, fiction, novel, book, freelance