Twitter—Is It Worth Your Time?

I’ve been on Twitter for a week now, and I have over 100 followers.  Great.  It’s also pretty easy.  If I follow someone who has similar interests listed on their bio, they usually follow me back.  This is totally going to help me sell my self-published book, right?  Eh, I’m not so sure. 

The people I’m networking with, although they seem to be nice as well as interesting, are writers, not readers.  Sure, most writers read voraciously.  Some (like me) don’t.  Don’t get me wrong, I read a lot.  I usually get through a book every week, unless it’s particularly long.  I just don’t have the time, especially if I want to get my own writing done, to read a book by everyone I follow on Twitter.  So why should I expect my followers to behave any differently?

My first couple of days on Twitter, I made contact with everyone who followed me, thanking them for taking the time to follow me back.  I had some nice chats with a couple of people, which was great.  However, I soon realized that my follower count was growing so rapidly, if I kept this up I was going to be constantly chained to my computer or phone.  Long story short, it wasn’t a productive way to spend my time, especially when my book sale count on Amazon hadn’t budged. 

So, instead of making friends, I try to promote myself instead.  After all, isn’t that what social media is all about?  I tweet about five times a day.  I usually try for a couple of retweets—ones that would matter to the writing community, like links to interesting articles, not retweets of Kim Kardashian telling us about her latest trip to get her nails done.  I also tweet a funny quote from my book on a daily basis, being sure to include a link to Amazon in case anyone wants to purchase it.  I finish it off by adding another couple of tweets about what I’m writing today or silly things that have happened to me.  The one thing I never miss is that if I get mentioned by a follower, I always retweet it and thank them for the shout-out. 

I think the takeaway here is to do what you can to be noticed by other authors’ followers through mentions and retweets.  Be interesting, and be yourself.  I have a lot to learn about Twitter, and after I have a little experience under my belt, I will blog again and let you know if my opinion has changed.  Oh, and of course I would be remiss if I didn’t urge you to follow me on Twitter (@carolinefardig) and check out the Homepage on my website to see my Twitter timeline!

Happy Tweeting!