Are you on Twitter? Now, bloggers do really need to be on twitter because it’s a great place to start growing a readership, if you use it right. Which is where the problem comes in. I hear a lot of writers and bloggers fuss because they don’t see how twitter is useful, but then when I check out their twitter account, they’re doing everything wrong. The important thing to remember about twitter is that it is social networking which means you need to be social. So, let’s look at one thing people do wrong – the quotes.
When I get a new twitter follower, I have to decide a couple of things. One is, am I going to follow them back out of politeness. Potential readers of my work get followed back. But then there is the second decision — am I going to put them in one of my twitter lists with the folks who’s tweets I actually read and who I interact with on twitter. Dividing people into lists helps me keep up with those folks I actually want to chat with on Twitter. This includes friends and fellow writers as well as a few people who just have really interesting things to say.
Which brings me to the twitter trend of tweeting quotes from famous people. Guess where those people go on my twitter? Actually, if the twitter list is mostly quotes I don’t even bother to follow back. If it’s heavily geared toward quotes but shows some signs of life, I may follow the twitter but I won’t list them. See, tweeting quotes tends to be a technique used by those who want to show an active twitter account but don’t really want to bother to think up anything original to say. When I first joined twitter, I was impressed by people who wanted to share quotes with me every day. But as the list of people I followed grew, I started noticing that a number of people did little but tweet quotes all day long in hopes of looking like active members of the twitter community. So, I stopped following them.