I have been up in the air about Twitter ever since joining several months ago. In the beginning it was purely a promotional tool for me as I blogged about here. I used twitterfeed to have my blog update automatically and my Etsy listings. Occasionally I would chirp in with a random comment or two. I had around 400 followers at the beginning of the week just by following people back who followed me and occasionally following people whose blog I read. But this week I decided to give it the old college try to see if I could discover what everyone else loved about it. I also set a goal of having 1000 followers by the end of the week so that I would stop feeling like I was talking to the air. Well, I breezed by that goal yesterday and am now rapidly approaching 1,500.
I managed to reach my goal by following lots and lots of people. That can be time consuming but I just found someone like minded and creative and followed all of their followers. I'll admit I mostly followed other women since I obviously feel like that is my target but if a dude follows me I will follow him back. After a few days I went through all of the people and unfollowed the ones that had not returned the favor and followed me back. Some people think that it is rude to unfollow someone for not following you back, but I personally think it is rude to not return the follow, if you follow my reasoning. If you are trying to build up numbers you will have to eventually thin the herd since once you get to 2000 people that you follow Twitter will not let you follow anymore until you have an equal number of followers. This paragraph may have broken a record for the most uses of the word follow ever recorded!
So did I waste my time? I don't think so. I have actually decided that twitter doesn't suck. It is one more way to waste some time and unwind on-line. It is a pretty valuable marketing tool to have in your arsenal I believe, although the verdict is still out on whether any sales will result from it. It can also nice to be able to connect with people albeit in a superficial and small way. For example, I had a scary incident at work yesterday. I had a student verbally assault me and slam my door so hard that it knocked the pictures off my wall. I, of course, reported it to my supervisor but since I didn't even get his name there wasn't much to be done. I recanted the story to several of my colleagues but I was still worked up about it. Since we were busy I obviously had to get on with my day but I took a minute and went on Twitter and tweeted about it. Somehow putting it out there into the world in 140 characters or less made me feel better. I had a number of people reply to me which also gave me some of that release that I needed.
Do I think that Twitter is for everyone, no. But I'm glad that I'm building up those connections and becoming part of the community, how about you?
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9 comments:
Funny, I just got NatureWithMe on Twitter a few days ago. Timothy Adam recommended. I am going to grow it up a bit, but am still trying to figure out how to make it look similar to my page, how to link it to my blog, and how to make a Follow Me cute Twitter button on my blog...
Today I spent my time beginning my separate blog and creating my own new banner there with my Fireworks program that I don't know how to use.
Life is all about the learning curve!
i'm usually behind the times with internet stuff. i held out on myspace for so long that by the time i joined, it was pretty dead, and by the time i joined facebook, both of my parents already had accounts!
but i found twitter through an etsy e-mail about advertising on twitter, and got hooked really fast. i love how easy it is to keep up with friends and favourite blogs, i never seem to have time to keep up with my RSS feeds!
at the time i wasn't actively selling on etsy, but now that i'm building my stock up again, i'm rethinking how i do twitter. i'm considering opening a second account to use for my etsy shop, because i see the value in having lots of followers, but i don't want to lose my real-life friends in the mass of tweets!
i found you through twitter, actually!
thanks for the good advice. Tim A. talked about Twitter in his latest course. He said to follow his followers, but I felt kinda weird following them. Now following a like minded jeweler, makes sense to me! How's that paragraph for the F word?
I admit that I am probably going to be the very last holdout on twitter and facebook. The thought of being in front of my computer anymore than I am right now scares the creative pants right off me ~ and believe me that's not a pretty sight.
I would love to hear back from you, in a few weeks or so, your TRUE feelings on this, and if you think it has helped your business, or just sucked up more of your time.
Thanks for this post!
Its taking some getting used to. I'm using Twitter right now to mainly update my status on Facebook...and I have a little status bar on my blog, but I know I could get so much more out of it. Thanks for the inspiration to give it a try! :)
I'm off to sign up to follow you.
Hmn...twitter is a realm I haven't even crossed. Don't think I'm going to, sounds overwhelming just by sheer numbers!
On the topic of your rude student though...I'm really sorry to hear about that, I'm sure it was very offsetting because of the age of your "kids" and I'm sure you're office made it feel more threatening being closed in a small space. Glad you got to vent about it. Just a note...I like to think I'm an expert of sorts on this kind of thing. As a teacher, I'm unfortunately used to hearing rude and sometimes offensive outbursts like that (albeit my students are much smaller thus less threatening by nature). But you have to remember to detach: they are mad at a situation, not you, can't take it personally. They also are usually fighting a need for control. It's not right at all, but it happens. Too bad you don't know who the kid was...
I'm down with twitter. It's a great way to draw folks to your blog for content or contests.
come follow me and I'll follow you. I am already following you, Paige :)
www.teitter.com/solsisters
Like you, I find I'm spending too much time in front of the computer instead of working at my craft. I'm reading up on Tim Adams, and I'm tweeting occasionally, but I'm getting bombarded with tweets from people who tweet every time they post something somewhere. How do you sift through?
Maybe I just need a computer free day......oh, but my iPhone! Nevermind!
And where do you find out how many hits your blog gets? I have no followers yet, so I doubt I have many.
Okay, I just might go ahead and join Twitter. I've been thinking about it for some time. Sounds like it might be both fun and helpful. Thanks for the insight!
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