Twitter - Navigating the Billion Tweet Waters

Happy Tuesday, everyone! So, today's post is going to be for all the Twitter newbies out there. I'm planning to give you all a quick lesson in navigating the awesome waters that all start with a little bird. There will be a list of dos and don'ts, as well as some terminology explanation and how to find new followers.

If you're all ready, and you're a Tweetbaby (this won't help you seasoned vets), grab a pen and your notebook and let's get going!

I'm gonna start with terminology so you don't get lost in the next section.
Retweet (often abbreviated as RT): On the tweet of a tweep, you click the rotating arrows so the information is shared with your followers.
Tweet: What you share on Twitter.
Tweep: Your Twitter followers or those you follow.
Follower: Someone who wishes to see your tweets (like a subscriber).
Following: When you click the follow button on a Twitter account.
#FF: Follow Friday. This is used to suggest other people follow a certain account (or accounts).
@XxX: this is someone's Twitter handle. If you tweet "at" a person, they'll be the audience for your tweet, and they'll get a notification.
Handle: Your name on Twitter.
DM: Direct Message. This is when someone clicks the mail icon on your page.
#: Hashtag. This is used to define the content of a tweet.
Favorite: This functions like the Facebook "like" button except it curates all tweets you click the star on in a favorites list you can access from your page.
Lists: You can add certain people to lists you create. When you're on these lists, the tweeps listed are the only ones you'll see content from.
TY: Thank you!
Unfollow: When you stop following a tweep or they stop following you.
News feed: All the tweets from all the tweeps.

Let's go into the list of DOS:
Retweet others.
Be engaging.
Show thanks when others RT your stuff. A shoutout only takes a moment (TY for the RT!).
Follow back the accounts you think you might like the content from.
Thank folks for the follow(s).
Seek out new and interesting accounts to follow.

DON'TS:
Spam.
Retweet the same thing over and over.
Constantly tweet "buy my book."
DM people right away, asking for reviews or buys of your book (see spam above).
Follow a bunch of people and expect them to follow you right back.

How to gain followers, and my suggestion on etiquette:
Follow about ten to twenty new accounts every day (those you actually want content from, please). If you're providing great content, they'll be happy to follow you back. Now, one of the things that makes me NUTSO is a confirmation that I'm a real person before I can follow an account. What I get is that you don't want to follow an account that's from a robot, but why can't I follow you without going through a fifteen step verification process?

I unfollow/don't respond when someone requests this, because it comes off (to me) as arrogance. If I'm asking you to follow me, that's a different story. I mean, come ON, people. Just stop.

There's an app a lot of folks use on Twitter that seeks accounts on your feed that are inactive or people who have quit following you. It actually tweets out a message that announces who you unfollowed.

Yeah... Just... no. Please. I understand, but what does an inactive account really cost you? There's no limit, and they aren't producing content that hangs in your news feed, right? And unfollowing someone because they unfollowed you?

We're older than two. Let's act like it. *grin*

Okay, if you've stayed with me this long, you probably have a pretty good grip on the terms and suggested etiquette.

If you have any specific questions I didn't answer, feel free to pop them in the comments! I'll answer to the best of my ability!

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Back and Playing Catchup

Happy Thursday, everyone! I know it seems like I've been around, but I've been on vacation since last Wednesday. I'm stunned at the response my post on MS Word and Scrivener got last week. I can see how passionate you all are about the topic. As you probably know, I had a guest post slated to go live today, but it never appeared in my inbox so I'm having to skip it.

That being said, since I've been out for a week, my inbox is overflowing. I'm planning to spend today playing catchup and I'll be back with awesomeness for you all tomorrow. There were some great questions raised on that post last week, and I'm gonna do my best to get them answered tomorrow.

Until then, I'm taking a moment to give you all a huge shout out and a thank you for sharing and discussing my post.

You guys rock!

I'll be back tomorrow with that post and responses to the comments that were left on the last one.

Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

A Checklist of Tools

Happy Monday, good people of the blogosphere! Wow, what a weekend, eh? Well, on to another week at the fantabulous Jo Michaels blog. You know you love me. If you didn't, you wouldn't be here, reading this post!

What's that? This is your first visit? Oh my... You should take a moment and give yourself a little tour. Check out the link list on the sidebar, grab your free branding PDF, and browse through some of the awesomeness that's found around here. Then, subscribe via e-mail so you don't miss anything new.

I know it's April Fool's Day, but you won't find shenanigans here. Sorry if I disappointed you.

Today's post is a compliment (call it a checklist, if you will) to my Social Networking Schedule. It's a handy little thing you can flash down to be sure you have all the things you need in your virtual tool belt.

Apps:

• Evernote (handy for syncing information across ALL devices)
• Flipboard
• Hootsuite (or Buffer)
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Goodreads
• Pinterest
• LinkedIn
• Google+
• Facebook Pages Manager
• Blogger (this got an update and works beautifully)
• StumbleUpon
• Tumblr

Social media you should be a part of:

• StumbleUpon
• Quora
• Squidoo
• YouTube
• Pinterest
• Facebook
• Twitter
• A blogging platform (Blogger, Tumblr, or WordPress)
• LinkedIn
• Google+
• Goodreads

Tools you should be using to streamline your workflow and up your visibility:

• Hootsuite (or Buffer)
• Flipboard
• Some kind of schedule, posted where you can see it every day

If you don't have a tablet, you might think about getting one. It will help you on your quest to becoming a force to be reckoned with online. I don't know what I'd do without my iPad. Seriously.

What's the point in taking the time to set up all these social networks?

The more places you are, the more places you can be found. Easy to explain.

How many of these networks are you on?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Proven Results Social Networking Schedule

Happy Monday, good people of the blogosphere! Today, I'm happy to share with you my results from using my Social Networking Schedule I posted two weeks ago. I used it last week, and here are some of my stats:

I enjoyed several retweets over the weekend and a number of downloads of my free PDF on cleaning up your image.


I gained five new fans and enjoyed two shares of my posts on Facebook.

Stumbleupon sent me eight new visitors to the blog.

I gained two new followers over on Tumblr.

I sold three books.

I got mentioned twice on Google+.

I now have two featured lenses over on Squidoo. http://www.squidoo.com/book-formatting2 and http://www.squidoo.com/things-i-learned-from-my-editor

I answered a question on Quora.

No video last week; but I intend to do one this week, as scheduled.

Ms. Rebecca Fyfe, over at the ChaBooCha, asked me to write a guest post for her. Integrating the Social Networking Schedule has never been easier! Go check out the post here.

Now that's a lot of activity. How many more people do you think I got my voice heard by? Becoming recognized in your field is easy if you schedule your time and use it to maximize efficiency.

If you missed my Saturday post, it was a blog tour stop for Good Ghost Gone Bad. I'm giving away two e-copies of that book. Go check it out and enter!

Remember, branding is important and so is social media. So, get on it!

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Twit Tweet Twitter Tweeps - Day Three WABC

Happy Sunday, good people of the blogosphere! Today, I bring you yet another awesome post from the Winter Author Blog Challenge. If you can't tell by the title of this post, today is all about Twitter! Yay! For all you folks who aren't familiar with the Twitterverse, you need to be. I'll tell you why in a moment! First, here's the prompt for today:

Are you on Twitter? Perhaps more than any of the other social media platforms, Twitter has developed its own language. Tweets. Twitterverse. Rewteet. Are you invested in the lingo? So how do you make a statement in 140 characters? Are you following more people or are more people following you? How do you decide whom to follow? Do you reciprocate and automatically follow back everyone who follows you? What kinds of things do you post? How often do you post? What advice do you have for those who are just getting started? IF YOU’RE NOT USING Twitter, go look at it (twitter.com) and either find your favorite author or put “author” in the search field and look around. What’s your take? Which tweets interest you? What would you post if you did decide to create an account? What’s the likelihood you’ll be following @AuthorBlogChal anytime soon? Be sure to give us the link.

I went on a rant two weeks ago about this very topic. Again, I'll address that in a moment. Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

Twitter, for me, is a lovely and convenient way of browsing what's going on in the world. Because I don't have to read long, drawn-out posts, I tend to absorb more information much more quickly than if I'm meandering through blogs or Facebook status updates. Of course I'm on Twitter. You can find me here: @WriteJoMichaels. And, like every other page associated with me, it follows my branding. A custom background and my logo instead of my face or books. Again, I wrote a post on this topic in my xXx series. It's called lOOk at YoUr tWitTeR. Go check it out. You won't be sorry.

Learning the language of Twitter wasn't difficult. Probably because, like Facebook, I've been a member with a profile since inception. You have to learn how to textspeak on Twitter because of the brevity. Words like: you, at, because, and, later, and see all become symbols or short snaps of themselves. You have to use: U, @, bcz, l8r, &, C to keep within the required allotment of letters.

Example time!
Normal: I went to see a movie yesterday! Here's a link to the trailer and my review (link here).
Tweet: I went 2 c a movie! Link 2 trailr & review: (link here) #moviereview #newrelease #reviewer

To shorten your link, you can use bit.ly. But somehow, your link needs to be less than ten characters or so. This allows space for what is known in the Twitterverse as hashtags. People searching for your content can go to the search function and type in #author and every tweet with that hashtag is magically displayed for them to peruse. Cool stuff, huh?

I often find new people to follow by searching: #author, #indieauthor, or #writer. I do not automatically follow every account that follows me and I use unfollow helper to see which accounts I followed a long time ago that no longer reciprocate. Trying to keep my margin down of following/follows me isn't easy. People drop off every day. Right now, I'm sitting at 1,221 I'm following and 1,082 following me. I try to keep it in the 200 difference range. Then I don't show up when people use unfollow helper to clean up their account in the huge margin section.

I usually post links to my blog there and have enjoyed being included in many e-zines for this reason. Curators like to pick up hastags like: #writetip or #amwriting for their content. I decide who to follow based on their number of tweets and the content therein. I enjoy reading tweets about writing, books, and life in general.

I use buffer to post to my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts. If you aren't using buffer or don't have the awesome buffer button on your blog, you should. It lets you set parameters for anyone that wants to share your content. Click on mine up at the top right-hand side and you'll see what I mean. It's easy to install to Blogger, too.

Time for directions!
Go to layout.
Click Add a Gadget.
Scroll down until you find HTML.
Go to the buffer button page and set your preferences.
Copy the code.
Paste the code into the box on Blogger.
Click save.

Easy peasy.

Now for my rant!
Please don't make it harder for me to follow you than it needs to be. Services like TrueTwit validation are great and all, but why do you care if I read what you tweet? Even if I'm a robot, it doesn't matter if I read your content! If you're concerned about following me back, stop being a lazy bum and go check out my account before you follow me. If you're concerned about spam, then if/when I send you a spammy message, delete it and unfollow me. When I get a TrueTwit request, I delete it and remove the user. I'm a busy gal.

A word of warning:
DO NOT CLICK ON LINKS SENT TO YOU VIA PM UNLESS YOU KNOW THE PERSON PERSONALLY. Even then, click with caution! Your pal's account may have been hacked. When in doubt, delete without!

That's the best advice I can give someone new to the Twitterverse. If I had to add anything, it would be to be sure and thank the folks who retweet your stuff or give it a favorite. It matters. Respond to welcoming Direct Messages (DMs) with something nice about the person you've followed. Every now and then, I get a lovely thank you for following message with a nice word about my blog or page. I respond to every one. It's relationship building 101. Why else would you have a Twitter account if not to connect with people?

Have you branded your Twitter to match your other platforms? Why/Why not?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

lOOk at YoUr tWitTeR

Hello, lovely people of the blogosphere! This week will be a designer's look at what you're doing on different platforms and will be called lOOk at YoUr xXx. Follow along and learn! Today I'd like to talk to you all about your Twitter page. It's just as important as everything else you use.

Grab those pencils and paper and let's get going. As usual, we'll begin by looking at what you DO, then we'll get into how to FIX it. Let's begin...

Observations:

1. What is your background?
2. When you open the page, do you go, "Oooooooooh! Nice!"?
3. Do you have consistency with your blog, website, and Facebook?
4. Have you begun to use the new layout? If yes, what's your header background?
5. What's your icon?
6. What colors do your links and tweets appear in?
7. Do you do a lot of promotion for others as well as yourself?
8. What does your description say?
9. What is your @handle? 

Answer these for insight to the Q&A above:

1. How can you change your background to give that wow factor?
2. What can you do to increase consistency?
3. How might you use your logo or branding image with Twitter?
4. Can you change your icon to your branding image (logo/face/etc...)?
5. Come up with a color scheme if you haven't already.
6. Is it feasible to prowl Twitter a couple of times a day and re-tweet a couple of people?
7. Can you simplify your description and lead folks to your books at the same time?
8. Is your @handle the title of your book?

Tips on implementing some of your ideas:

1. Build your own Twitter background with image software that allows you to specify size. Be sure to include your logo or name somewhere. I've seen a few that do a collage of book covers and it looked pretty awesome. The only drawback I can see there is folks getting overwhelmed with imagery.
2. Update your icon with either your logo or your face.
3. Update your badge with a nifty background or color scheme that matches your brand.
4. Be consistent with your colors. Customize whatever you can here. You can specify what colors your tweets and links appear in.
5. Promote other people as well as yourself.
6. Rewrite your description as many times as you need to in order to say as much as you can in as few words/characters as possible.
7. Your @handle should be your pen name or business name. Not a product or book title. After all, what happens when you write another book or expand your Twitter to include something else? Worried you'll lose all your followers? If they love you, they'll appreciate a DM (direct message) telling them what name you're changing to. Those that don't heed the advice aren't worth it anyway.

Find more tips like these in my book The Indie Author's Guide to: Building a Great Book and take your future to new heights. It's just $2.99 on Amazon. Don't want to buy one? Enter my great giveaway to win one! Three are available.

Question of the day: Are you finding these tips and tricks easy to follow? Are you feeling more put-together?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo