Great tips for authors on using social media

One time I responded to an author's tweet before understanding all the little social rules of twitter. I had followed her, but she hadn't followed me back. My responding to her tweet set her off I guess. She said--not to me, just in her tweet--"Do you always comment on people who don't follow you?" Then she went on a long rant about how stupid people were. At first I felt like an idiot, then I was mad. Seriously, I would never treat others like that. I'm shy and hardly ever go on twitter anymore because of things like that.

Anyway, I unfollowed her that day but checked her status one last time and she was still ranting, this time mocking how someone would unfollow her. Yikes. You know, if people quit me on twitter I take it with a grain of salt. I've never had any friends anyway, haha.

I have a twitter account but don't really use it.

My blog is my main social networking tool. I get over 2,000 hits a month there. I just hit facebook every time I put up a new blog post that I feel might interest certain groups on facebook and post a link in the appropriate groups.

Personally, I'll comment on any tweet I see posted if I feel moved to.

Why?

Because twitter is not a "personal conversation" between just your twitter buddies IF you're putting it out in the public feed. If you're putting it in public, you're inviting commentary from perfect strangers. Not unlike having a conversation in a crowded bar or a public gathering.

Besides, if you never accept comments from people you don't know, why are you on Twitter in the first place? There are generic chat programs that you can limit the conversation to just those you want to talk with.

Sounds like this person simply wanted to show off "all the cool kids in my group" instead of actually twittering. Definitely someone you're better off not following.

Personally, sounds like a jerk to me. My time's too short to spend it dealing with jerks.

I use FB and Twitter every day, either to express my feelings about a subject or announce free reads and new blog posts. My new shiny blog is up and steaming ahead--doing pretty good, I guess. At least I'm getting subscribers and comments. The intensity keeps rising.

But man, I was knocking out an article a day and it really took its toll. Now I'm relaxing a bit and doing one every two or three days.

I was really going to flip my finger at the publishing industry, via my blog, but decided to tone it down just a wee bit. I don't need those kinds of comments, tearing me a new one. Nor do I feel that I should offer any advice that is contrary to accepted rules and guidelines. I think tips and tricks are enough

Aruna, I'm curious. Did you make the leap to self-pubbing anything? And how did it go? I'm seriously considering it, but I'm tech stupid and had to line up some help.

Yeah, I hear ya Tri.

I took my blog on hiatus for a couple of months while I was editing my manuscript. I just couldn't find the head-space to blog while doing serious edits. Fortunately I have enough hits on older entries that my traffic stayed high while I was not posting.

I'm never tempted to slag publishing because I intentionally avoided creating a 'writer' blog. I occasionally write about my progress, some ideas and thoughts on writing and story, but it's mostly a genre blog rather than a writing blog.

I never get trolls on Twitter. I just seem to get hooker-bots and spammer-eggs.

Folkchick: That author sounds like a grade-A tool. You didn't violate any social conventions--I reply all the time to people I don't follow or who don't follow me. No one has ever snarled at me about it. Talking to anyone you please is what Twitter is all about!

Folkchick, she's the one who doesn't get it, not you. If someone tweets publicly then their tweets are fair game for anyone to reply to. If they're not interested in your reply they're free to ignore it. No harm no foul.

I have people reply to me that I'm not following, it doesn't bother me. I've had people reply to me when neither of us is following the other! But maybe someone retweeted me and they saw it via that. Doesn't matter. I made a tweet that anyone can see and reply to. And I often find interesting people to follow that way!

I'll say this straight-up, but folkchick's story tempts me to say it sarcastically: Twitter has this @mentions feature that shows other tweets that mention your Twitter ID, even if neither of you follow the other. It's a really useful thing I don't use often enough (I'm sure third-party things such as tweetdeck place those in your feed automagically).

And of course now with the #newnewnewnewnewnewnewtwitter, the link to that feature is placed at the @connect thing in the black bar at the top, right next to the Home button. #wishestwitterwouldstopchangingthings

I kinda surprise myself at how much better I am "socially" online than I am in person, but then I've been practicing (and in early years failing) social interactions online for well over a quarter century.

folkchick said:

One time I responded to an author's tweet before understanding all the little social rules of twitter. I had followed her, but she hadn't followed me back. My responding to her tweet set her off I guess. She said--not to me, just in her tweet--"Do you always comment on people who don't follow you?" Then she went on a long rant about how stupid people were. At first I felt like an idiot, then I was mad. Seriously, I would never treat others like that. I'm shy and hardly ever go on twitter anymore because of things like that.

Anyway, I unfollowed her that day but checked her status one last time and she was still ranting, this time mocking how someone would unfollow her. Yikes. You know, if people quit me on twitter I take it with a grain of salt. I've never had any friends anyway, haha.

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Um....you are not the one who doesn't understand the social rules of twitter. She is. Anyone can reply to any tweet they feel like replying to. Anyone who has a problem with that should make their account private or stay off of twitter.

This makes me feel bad that this bad experience has made you stay off of twitter. I understand completely, but I hope you know that the other person was wrong here, not you.

Thanks everyone. At the time it did feel as if I'd performed a huge misstep, but now I know she was the one being a jerk. I still go on twitter once in a while, and will more after the book comes out, but for now I lay low. I'd rather write a good book as revenge.

folkchick said:

One time I responded to an author's tweet before understanding all the little social rules of twitter. I had followed her, but she hadn't followed me back. My responding to her tweet set her off I guess. She said--not to me, just in her tweet--"Do you always comment on people who don't follow you?" Then she went on a long rant about how stupid people were. At first I felt like an idiot, then I was mad. Seriously, I would never treat others like that. I'm shy and hardly ever go on twitter anymore because of things like that.

Anyway, I unfollowed her that day but checked her status one last time and she was still ranting, this time mocking how someone would unfollow her. Yikes. You know, if people quit me on twitter I take it with a grain of salt. I've never had any friends anyway, haha.

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Those Queen Shit on Turd Mountain types are the worst. There is a certain music blogger who thinks she's *all that* on Twitter and Tumblr. Most of her "humor" is based on sneering at people and acting like she's too cool for everything.

She's insufferable.

Gee, and here I thought it was all about how good your story was. Big dumb silly me.

This is the kind of shit that led me to stop going to writers' conferences a decade ago, but at least in those you were required to do your self-promoting and supplication right up front and personal, instead of via binary code transmitted electronically.

caw

folkchick said:

One time I responded to an author's tweet before understanding all the little social rules of twitter. I had followed her, but she hadn't followed me back. My responding to her tweet set her off I guess. She said--not to me, just in her tweet--"Do you always comment on people who don't follow you?" Then she went on a long rant about how stupid people were. At first I felt like an idiot, then I was mad. Seriously, I would never treat others like that. I'm shy and hardly ever go on twitter anymore because of things like that.

Anyway, I unfollowed her that day but checked her status one last time and she was still ranting, this time mocking how someone would unfollow her. Yikes. You know, if people quit me on twitter I take it with a grain of salt. I've never had any friends anyway, haha.

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Have I been doing it wrong? Am I only supposed to be talking to people who are following me in return?

Now I'm confused.

To this day I don't understand Twitter. It's like Facebook with only the status update section?

I'm generally a twitter fan (@ElaineIsaak), but I do feel that there are some different currents in the way that people use the feeds. I think most are open to public conversation on topics of mutual interest--that's why we post in an open forum like that, right? But OTOH, I've run into a few who seem snooty about the fact that they didn't know me *yet* when I commented. Er. . . this is the social part, where we get to know each other through our media of choice. My plan is to find people I don't know, but whom I would like to.

I think in most cases, if you are gracious to others, they will respond in kind. And those who don't probably do not deserve our attention.

Thanks Richard for putting it straight.

The rude ones probably lose followers and don't notice until they Tweet, Is anyone out there?

TTCleveland said:

To this day I don't understand Twitter. It's like Facebook with only the status update section?

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To this day, I don't understand Facebook. It's like trying to communicate by sticking post-it notes on an already-cluttered corkboard?

I think its more like having a corkboard all to yourself, and inviting people to look at it. Yes, there are other corkboards, but there are other everythings. You jobs is to make yours a good one.

aruna said:

I don't understand Twitter either. I don't know what the hashtag is and how to use it or why I get tweets (how I hate that word!) on my home page form people I'm not following and lots of other things. I kind of stumble along. I predict it'll get boring very soon. I do get some nice little tips, though -- it's through Twitter I discovered that my agent, who's fairly new at TMA, was their top-selling agent last month. That's good!

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Hashtag ... something like #pubwrite or #amwriting. Now it is easier for people to search for that hashtag. They just put it into the search box and get all tweets with that tag. Likewise they can just click on it in a tweet that contains the hashtag and get the same result. In third party programs like TweetDeck you can open another column, that just lists the tweets with the hashtag.

If you get tweets on your homepage from people you are not following, probably means that they mentioned your nickname in their tweets - like this @aruna or whatever nickname you use.

I use twitter on 2 accounts. One is linked in my sig, the other is my private account. I read more than I tweet ... with my @pulpdogg account I am following mostly writers and industry types. There are a few useful links I got out of that, and I found even a few new books. I haven't used it for promotion or anything yet, and I don't interact much.

But especially the above mentioned hashtags, #pubwrite & #amwriting will connect you to writers, I see it as a sort of support group for writing .

Of course nobody HAS to use Twitter or Facebook, and I'd advise against using it just for promoting ones book endlessly. But it can be a fun experience, Twitter more so than Facebook in my opinion, but that is just because I don't use Facebook that much.