Twitter Guide For Writers (Part 2)

(Updated September 2, 2009)

This is the second of a series of posts I’m writing with concrete tips, examples and strategies to help writers get the most out of Twitter. To see all my posts so far, please visit my Writer’s Guide To Twitter page.

I’m going to assume you already know the basics; if you don’t, please read Getting Started on Twitter: A Quick Guide for Kid/YA Writers by Mitali Perkins (even if you’re not a Kid/YA writer, you’ll find these newbie tips useful) or A Writer’s Guide To Twitter by Gary Smailes.

But on to Part 2…

Picking a Twitter username

Yes, I know…if you’re reading this, you probably already have a Twitter account. But there’s always a chance that someone’s reading this before signing up, or you may start another account. Here are some tips I’ve learned from mistakes in choosing my username plus mistakes I’ve seen other users make:

Choose as short a Twittername as possible. This makes it much easier for people to retweet your posts.

Choose a Twittername that’s easy to remember. Sometimes I’ll want to check a particular user’s feed but can’t remember exactly how to spell their username.

Don’t put “sales” or “marketing” in your username. or anything else that might make people block you as a spammer without checking your profile/feed first.

Also, I wish I had used my real name for the main Twitterfeed instead of “inkyelbows.” I chose “inkyelbows” on whim, figuring I could always change it later and besides, I probably wasn’t going to Twitter all that much anyway.

Now, I realize that there are probably a lot of editors who only know me as “inkyelbows” when I would rather they recognize my real name in non-Twitter contexts. Yes, they could always find out my real name by checking my profile, but if they’re really busy (which all editors are) they may not bother. Or they may not even be following me, but see other people RTing me.

“I don’t want to use my real name,” you may be saying. “I want to keep my privacy.” But that brings me to my next topic…

Private vs. public twitterfeed?

If you’re on Twitter just for fun, to follow a few people or just to lurk, the public vs. private issue doesn’t really matter.

If you’re on Twitter to network for professional reasons, I strongly advise you to keep your feed public. Why? Because some people are less likely to want to follow you if you have a private feed. When I had a very small number of followers, I didn’t mind going through the whole approval process for the privilege of being someone’s follower.

Now that I have more followers, however, I’m not as likely to be bothered unless their profiles intrigue me. I enjoy retweeting other people’s posts if I find them interesting or think others might find them useful or amusing. If the posts are from a private feed, I never know if the person will mind or not, and I don’t want the hassle of having to ask each time.

I’m also more hesitant about following people with private feeds because several times I’ve been rejected; the person only wanted people she knew personally to follow her, or the feed was family-only, etc.

Another problem with private accounts is that it makes it tricky when you want to participate in a Twitter chat; people won’t be able to see any your posts.

If you really want to have a private feed but also want to network professionally, create an extra Twitter account. There are other reasons you may want to consider having more than one account. I have -three- Twitter accounts; here’s why.

Userpic tips

Whether you pick a realistic photo or some other image, change your user icon as little as possible. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I tend to rely heavily on userpics to help me quickly identify users, especially the users whose feeds I’m always interested in checking.

Sure, I’ll get used to your new userpic eventually, but I may miss a bunch of your tweets meanwhile. It’s getting esp. confusing right now because so many people are using the same type of cartoon portrait avatars.

Here’s a great blog post about how Twitter avatars are part of your personal branding. An excerpt:

Scanning my Twitter stream, I can quickly pick out particular authors… until they change avatars. An occasional change is fine, my brain isn’t quite old enough that it can’t adapt. But when folks switch to a new cartoon character a few times in a week, any usefulness the avatar could have provided is gone. The result? I miss things I probably should see… when I’m following a couple hundred folks, I can’t read the text descriptions for every tweet, but I can quickly pick out icons.

Some authors use their book covers as a user icon. Depending on the part of the cover you choose, this can be a great way of publicizing your book. I recently was browsing a children’s bookstore and was amazed at how many new books I recognized immediately because I had seen them in my Twitterstream.

Examples:

Lisa Mantchev’s book:

R.J. Anderson’s book:

These two authors also used their book covers as background images for their Twitter account. Here are some tips on how to customize your Twitter background.

The all-important Twitter Profile

I’m constantly amazed by how many writers leave their profiles blank. Again, if you’re just using Twitter for the fun of it and don’t care if people know who you are, then this doesn’t matter.

If you do care, however, FILL IN YOUR PROFILE.

One of the first things most people will do is view your profile before they follow you back. Leaving your profile blank may lead people to think you’re untrustworthy and possible a spammer. Or perhaps just boring and not worth following back.

This is a big topic, so I’ll cover this in a future post.

Before you start following people

Have at least a few posts online. The best chance you have of attracting followers is when they check out your feed for the first time. When someone first follows me, I usually check out their page right away. If they have no posts, I’m not inclined to follow them back unless their bio is unusually interesting — why should I follow them if I don’t know how they post?

“What’s the big deal?” you may ask. “They can always start following me LATER, when I start posting.” My answer: How will they know what you’re posting, if they’re not following you?

Yes, you can always mention them in a post — that way your post will appear in their feed. From my experience, however, I’ve learned that people may assume they’re already following you if they see your post in their feed. More on this later, but my point is this:

If you want people to follow you, make your feed as interesting as possible. DON’T leave it blank.

WHAT should you post about? I’ll be covering that in a future Twitter Guide For Writers installment.

Should I sent a greeting DM when people follow me?

A DM is a Direct Message. Unlike a regular Twitter post, only the recipient of the DM will see it.

Should you send a private message thanking someone for following you? Only if you can make it personal and you’re NOT trying to promote yourself at the same time (e.g. including your website URL, etc.)

Here’s the type of DM you should never, ever send:

I would STRONGLY recommend against setting up an auto-DM, or an automatic welcome message (many Twitter tools enable users to do this, unfortunately).

There are many, many Twitter users who hate auto-DMs. I’m one of them. If I want to find out more about you, I’ll check the Web site listed in your profile — I don’t need a reminder. I already get enough regular promotional-type e-mails; I don’t need my Twitter inbox cluttered with them as well.

Auto-DMs are impersonal and usually come across as blatant self-promotion. Some users will automatically UNFOLLOW when they receive an auto-DM. Some Twitter tools enable users to automatically unfollow anyone who sends them an auto-DM.

Here’s a great article from someone who explains why they stopped using auto-DMs.

How do I tell if someone is following me or not?

It took me a while to figure this out since it’s not obvious, at least not from the main Twitter site. Basically, if someone is following you, then you can send them a DM (Direct Message). How to tell:

- Go to the person’s Twitter page.

- In the right-hand navigation bar, check to see what actions you can take (listed under ACTIONS).

- If the person IS following you, you should be able to “message (twitname)” along with the ability to block them. If you can only block them, then it means they’re not following you.

re: Sad Face above. Just kidding, by the way, so please don’t go writing to Colleen Lindsay about following me!

If someone doesn’t follow you back, DON’T TAKE IT PERSONALLY. There are many reasons why they might not follow you back; I’ll cover some of these in a future post.

Isn’t it proper Twitter etiquette to always follow back if someone follows you?

It used to be, before the spammers started deluging Twitter.

Some people use Twitter auto-follow tools to make sure they follow back every person who follows them. I don’t. Why?

- Because not everyone who follows me is a person. Many are spam robots, programs set up to search for certain keywords in profiles and posts, and follow that person. They count on people who auto-follow to build up their follower numbers.

- Because not everyone who follows me is actually interested in reading my posts. Some are clearly after sheer follower numbers — I usually block anyone who is following a huge number of people compared to the number of people who follow them, and whose posts have nothing at all to do with writing, publishing or any other reason they might also find my feed interesting.

According to Twitblock.org, I’ve blocked 1732 users so far. At this moment, I have 3178 followers. If I hadn’t blocked any users, I’d have nearly 5000 followers…but what would be the point?

See my article: On Twitterspam, Followers and Culling.

Related articles about why you shouldn’t auto-follow:

Five reasons why Twitter auto-follow is bad marketing
Do you use Twitter auto-follow? Here are 3 reasons why you shouldn’t
Auto follow is like playing Russian roulette

The whole “who to follow” and following etiquette will be a whole other post on its own.

But I’ve rambled on enough in this post, so I’ll end Part 2. Thanks for all the great feedback so far, by the way! If you have any specific topics or questions you’d like me to cover, feel free to suggest them below.

For more writerly tips and resources, please follow me at @inkyelbows on Twitter.

Tagged as: twitter