Twitter Spring Cleaning

I have already written one post about Twitter. You can find that post here. This post is about keeping my Twitter account tidy. I have spent the last week or so--at odd moments--cleaning and organizing my Twitter account. This was a well-overdue project. There are websites that will manage Twitter accounts, but I decided to go it alone. I was raised in a do-it-yourself household and then went on to marry a do-it-yourself husband. I believe I can do it better myself.

Here and there as I went through my daily tweets I unfollowed people who were not following me. Many of them were rich and famous. It felt good somehow to hit that red UNFOLLOW button and remove the high and mighty from my feed. I have realized that there is no point in following famous people. If someone is following 14 people but has 50,000 people following them, they are famous. Why should they follow me? They probably only follow their siblings or perhaps their lawyer.

For the famous people, it is better to add them to a list. (Because, of course, I still want to read their tweets.) You do not have to follow somebody to move them into a list, but once they are on the list you set up you can read their tweets as your leisure. Your lists can be private or public.

Once I eliminated the famous people who don't follow me, I had more spaces for new people. Twitter will not allow anyone to follow more than 2,000 people until they get more than 2,000 people following them. I was stuck at around 1,600 followers for the longest time--until I decided to do something about it.

Now I have a very different Twitter feed. It's like a breath of fresh air--like opening the windows when the weather turns warm. :^)

I also discovered there were people following me who had not posted anything for three years or more. While it's nice to have a lot of followers, it's far better if they are chatty, live people. (It takes a great deal of skill to be chatty in 140 characters but there are those who do it well.) If someone has not posted in three years, I have to assume they passed away or gave up tweeting, in which case they should delete their account and try something else--like maybe Pinterest or Tumblr.

At any rate, I should have been cleaning out my account all along, but like everything else it was just going along and collecting dust bunnies. Now I feel so organized!

Have you checked your Twitter account lately?

For Those Who Still Don't Understand Twitter

Twitter is useful. It can be a very powerful tool, but it can also be fun.

We do not have cable television in our house. It is pointless since we only watch the news. When television went digital, we simply got a better antenna. (You can read about that story here.) So for the Republican debate last night, I simply went to Twitter, clicked on the trending topic and watched the tweets roll by. It was exactly like being right there in the audience--or like passing notes in the back of the classroom. I think it was better than watching the debate.

Whenever there is a breaking news story, I have seen it on Twitter first. When hubby and I experienced the earthquake while on vacation in Virginia last summer, I checked Twitter. Then I emailed everyone back home to let them know we were fine. When Whitney Houston died, I saw the news on Twitter.

As a writer, I signed up with Twitter to promote my books, but posting nothing but my own book information can get tedious and boring for both me and my followers. I have discovered it is better to post a on variety of topics. With Twitter, that's easy because most of the time, I simply have to retweet another writer's post. In that way, I am supporting my writing friends and making new writing friends. (Everyone loves retweets.)

Passing on information about writing and the publishing business is welcomed by those in the writing community. If I see a great news article on the NY Times, I pass it along. If I see a great video, I pass it along.

Twitter is great for chatting, too. I have had conversations with writers far more famous than I.

Witty people post amusing tidbits on Twitter all the time. It's great for laughs.

Yes, I still post reviews about my books and quotes from my books. I let the world know I am holding a contest and I let them know where I will be autographing my books. Everyone who has a book to promote should be on Twitter.

But Twitter is so much more. Join in on the fun.