Am I twittering wrong?

juniper said:

Huh. Does it also have Tweets from people who've followed me (for whatever strange reason)? Cuz I don't know some of those folks. Maybe my cat is using my Twitter, although she has her own account.

Click to expand...

It might be retweets. If one of the people you followed is prone to unsuitable/spammy retweets, but you otherwise want to follow them, you can turn off retweets for that person. In the web version, go to their Twitter profile. Click on the little person icon (it's by the button that says "following"). A menu should appear. Click "Turn off Retweets".

You can tell who is sending the retweets by looking under the message. It will say "Retweeted by *person name*". You can click on the name to get to their profile.

Twitter clients may have their own way of handling it, but if not, it won't take long to turn off retweets on a few profiles on the web.

pernickety said:

mmmhh I'm new to twitter and taking it slowly. Anyone who decides to follow me, I look at their profile. If they have similar interests I'm tempted to follow but then I check the number of tweets a day. If it's more than 20 I'm not interested. I don't want to hear every brain fart.

Click to expand...

This is exactly what I do. I try to focus on following writers or book sellers, or writers groups first. If it's someone who may be interesting, I look at their tweets. If they have more than several tweets a day of ridiculous stuff, I don't bother.

Snowstorm said:

This is exactly what I do. I try to focus on following writers or book sellers, or writers groups first. If it's someone who may be interesting, I look at their tweets. If they have more than several tweets a day of ridiculous stuff, I don't bother.

Click to expand...

Exactly. I get followed a lot by random writers. If their last couple tweets have been full of good advice, or funny, I'll follow back.

Occasionally I've been peppered with adverts after that, but hitting the "unfollow" button isn't hard.

Oh, random question: Someone mentioned something called tweetdeck? What is that? Is that an app?

To be honest, I pay little attention to my scroll feed on Twitter. I'll glance at it but I won't "scroll down" through it. Twitter is really a good networking tool. I follow authors, book companies, etc in hopes to at least "get out" there, cause you never know who may see your tweets down the line right?

My experience so far is similar to a lot of what is being said here. I'm following a number of writers, especially self-published, but what I'm finding is that they tend to pump out promotional bunk every thirty seconds rather than useful ideas. I'm starting to doubt the Twitter as a good marketing tool!

Erin Latimer said:

Oh, random question: Someone mentioned something called tweetdeck? What is that? Is that an app?

Click to expand...

I've used it (back when I was more interested in Twitter), it's a program to install on your computer. It lets you see tweets from a few different Twitter accounts, all at once. Someone more knowledgeable than me can give you more info. Here's a link.

http://tweetdeck.com

Polenth said:

It might be retweets. If one of the people you followed is prone to unsuitable/spammy retweets, but you otherwise want to follow them, you can turn off retweets for that person.

Click to expand...

Just checked Twitter and yep some of them are retweets. And some are "Promoted by ___" - AKA advertisements, I think. Any way to turn them off? Probably not.

I just started today, so I am completely an EXPERT, okay? But I say (just as a general rule), don't over think it. If you are on Twitter because you think you SHOULD be or because you want to sell yourself/your books/peanut-shaped hats, I think that's a bit silly -- at the end of the day, we can all follow who we want + unfollow who we don't want + we definitely shouldn't feel weird about it or like we owe something to the great Twitter machine! Liberate Twitter! Free bird! (off-topic(?), but it is, unfortunately, wine o'clock here in England).

Oy. I have so much to learn. I'm not even up on the terminology or lingo. I like my quiet, simple life. I just want to write and, if a publisher likes it, they can publish it. Book tours and readings are great and I'm all for those. You know, the three-dimensional method of promotion?

I enjoy forums but, as for the rest, I have no personal interest in being involved with any of it. I'm working on it because the world has changed and things are done differently. But it's the one aspect of the writing and publishing world that I hate! (Editing and rewrites are GLAMOROUS to me compare to self-promoting online!)

Besides, getting involved with all the online socializing, branding, promoting and managing would seem to take away of precious writing time. I seriously think a person could drive themselves to a nervous breakdown trying to keep up with it all!

I love Twitter for news, gossip, and really interesting bits of advice. I don't love it for the continual retweets, for the adverts that have started to appear, and for the nights when people are all watching some awful tv reality show and the stream gets clogged up with nonsense. The secret, apparently, is Tweetdeck (or similar) but I like my simple, low tech, Twitter-on-the-web.

I've been on there for years and follow 1800 people or so, and am followed by 3500(? isn) and it's been a brilliant way of getting word out about my book, so it can work. The secret - and it's a really fine balance - is mentioning the book, but not going ON AND ON and ON about it. I try and mention it a couple of times a day, and occasionally will link to a nice review (I had a particularly lovely one the other day from an ex-Costa book awards judge which frankly I would quite like to frame and put on the wall, as well as mentioning it on Twitter ).

I'm thinking of doing a how-to-play-Twitter post on my author blog. If anyone has any questions, give me a shout (PM me if you like) and I'll try and answer them.