Does that sound like you? Do you think "What is this Twitter of which you speak?" And secretly (or not so secretly) you're pretty sure you should know about it? That you should sprout your own little twitter wings and fly?
Well, let's see if I can demystify Twitter for you and get you flying.
Over the next few weeks, we'll cover everything you need to know about Twitter and on toward the end of March we'll have a live chat to celebrate and to answer any lingering questions you might have.
In the meantime, please ask your questions in the comments and I'll get you the answers!
WHAT IS TWITTER AND WHY DO I NEED IT?
Twitter is a free service that lets you share tidbits of your life and interests in 140 characters or less. Your messages are read by "followers"--people who choose to subscribe to your messages. Each message is a "Tweet", and every user is identified by the "@" sign followed by their username (for instance @ali_cross).
Twitter can be of great value or a great waste of time; it's important to have a clear purpose when you use Twitter so you use it, and it doesn't use you.
Twitter says it's purpose is to answer the question, "What are you doing?", but if that's how you use it, you'll soon find people aren't as interested in following you as you might like. I mean, how interesting is, "I'm going to the store"?
Try instead to answer the question, "What's important to me?". Now the conversation is more interesting and can generate a conversation. For instance, I might say, "Just finished WATCHED by @Watched1. Such a great mystery!". A follower who reads my tweet can respond with, "I love mysteries! Gonna go check out WATCHED! Thx!"
So we've answered the what, but how about the why?
Do you need Twitter? No.
Can Twitter be helpful to you, as a writer? Heck yes.
On Twitter you have the opportunity to connect with editors, agents, writers and book bloggers. You need to know these people. You can forge relationships that can help your career in a very real way.
On Twitter, you can learn about contests and calls for submissions; you can foster a friendly relationship with agents that can help you get out of the slush pile; you can connect with book bloggers who will agree to read and review your book.
Can you still get published without Twitter? Absolutely. But Twitter can certainly be a help to you along the way.
HOW DO I SIGN UP FOR TWITTER?
1. Go to Twitter.com, and click on the "Join the Conversation" button in the middle of the page.
2. Fill out your (actual) name, your email and password. You will then be asked to choose a username--the name following the "@" sign that everyone will use when talking with you.
Think very carefully about this. A shorter name is best so you don't use up precious real estate when people want to send a tweet to you, "Hey @AuthorWhoHasASuperLongTwitterHandle! Saw this article and ..." There's not enough room to finish the thought.
It's best if you can get a name as close to your own name as possible. For instance, my username is pretty much perfect: @ali_cross. Short (but I have it easy since my name is short, lol), and when people talk to me, they know my REAL name, which makes it easier to find me online.
3. Twitter Suggestions. Twitter will suggest some popular users to follow, or you can search for specific people or groups like, "Authors", "Publishers", "Writers". You can search for multiple types of people at once simply by putting a comma after each word. Twitter will ask you to follow five people before you move on to the next step. And then it will ask you to choose five more.
4. Find your friends on Twitter. You can follow the prompts soTwitter will access your email contact lists to see if your friends are on Twitter.
5. Set up your profile. Now you'll see a page divided into two parts. On the left, you'll see a picture of an egg, your name, and your stats--the number of people you're following, the number of people who follow you, and the number of tweets you have sent (which is zero at this point).
Click on the name, or the egg, and then click EDIT PROFILE.
Choose a photo to represent you. Remember that most of the time people will only see a very tiny image, so it's best to choose something that 1) isn't too busy, and 2) is easily identifiable as YOU; for instance your face or book cover.
Enter your name as you would like people to see it.
You can enter your physical city, state or whatever you'd like for location. Or leave it blank.
Enter the URL for your blog or website--where do you want people to go to learn more about you and to connect with you?
Include a short, snappy but meaningful, bio.
And finally, choose whether you want to automatically post your tweets to Facebook. If your Facebook friends would be as interested in your tweets as your Twitter friends, then maybe connecting the two accounts would be a good choice for you. However, if you mainly use Facebook to connect with family and friends, but you're tweeting mostly about writing-related topics, you might not want the two accounts connected.
Personally, I choose NOT to have them connected. If ever I want a tweet to post to Facebook, there are other easy ways I can do that. That way only the tweets I want to share on Facebook are posted there. I'll share more on that in another Twitter post.
A WORD OF CAUTION ...
Now you're ready to start tweeting and building your Twitter connections. But remember, Twitter is a publishing medium. Tweets can be picked up by Google, so whatever you say can be found by anyone who Googles you, or whose interests happen to cross your path. So be sure to mind your manners and assume that whatever you say can and will be held against you!
Are you ready to fly?
Got questions? Ask away!
Ali Cross is the sensei of the Writer's Dojo where she holds a black belt in awesome. She lives in Utah with her kickin' husband, two sparring sons, one ninja cat, two sumo dogs and four zen turtles. Ali's the author the young adult urban fantasy novel BECOME.
That was very helpful. I wasn't planning on signing up until I'm closer to getting published, but since you gave the step-by-step, I'm in. Oooh - I will follow you. :)
ReplyDeleteAh thanks for this. I created an twitter account not that long ago, and feel stupid for saying this but I just don't get it! You explained it perfectly, thank you. I haven't written anything yet but plan to once I get my writing skills up :)
ReplyDeleteUniversal Gibberish
I would definitely make sure you have a picture instead of the default egg. I read an agent's tweet once that she was going to block people with just eggs because she thought it meant they were closer to spam than real people. If that makes any sense. :)
ReplyDeleteOK, that was kind of ironic because my gravatar didn't show up on my comment! :)
ReplyDeleteTwitter can drive me batty sometimes. lol
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