What is a hashtag? When is the best time to post something? What does it mean when there is an @ symbol? Is my username stupid/and or cumbersome? All these questions can only mean one thing, I am now diving into the time-wasting pool that is twitter.
I know, I’m only 7-ish years late to the game, but I was PISSED when I found that someone else had @ivereadthis. I mean, what are they doing with that? Clearly, it is my website name and I deserve it. The people who have it aren’t doing anything with it. They have only 25 followers, and I have 34, and they’ve tweeted all of once since May. Give it back!!!
Whew, ok sorry I lost my cool there, I’ve been spending way too much time in front of my phone and computer today, all because of twitter. It’s so addicting, and yet I’m terrible at it. Someone asked me today why I was on it, and I didn’t really have an answer for them, other than the fact that I thought it would drive more traffic to my blog. Is that sad? And don’t even get me started on instagram and snap chat, I know where to draw the line.
So obviously any advice you have on twitter for this book blogger would be greatly appreciated, and I’ll insert my plea for a pity follow here: please follow me, my handle is: @ivereadthisblog
Update! I just changed my twitter handle due to some very helpful comments from below (yay blogsophere!), the updated one is above so just click on it to follow 🙂
Link your blog to Twitter. That way you tweet your reviews as and when they’re published. It also means that we can share your reviews and posts easily as well. Twitter is great. I love it but it can be very distracting 😂
thank you for this advice! I’ve been trying to re-format my blog posts for twitter so it looks nicer when I post them, but maybe this is just a waste of time? I only post a few times a week anyway…on my blog that is lol
sorry but I am still Twitterless so cannot help you with this. Maybe you could ask President Trump he seems to be proficient at it.
haha yah right! you’re probably better staying off twitter anyway
Afraid I can’t help with Twitter, but I do love the panda GIF.
Oh thank you! I loved that GIF too, even if it didn’t apply 100% to my post
I’m at 96 followers so not that many more haha. I am learning to engage more in conversations instead of just relying on my own tweets – no matter how many hashtags I use. Engage with other twitter accounts and hashtags!
ok ok this is good advice! 96 is pretty good too!
It could be a good idea to have your handle be @ivereadthisblog, to distinguish yourself as a blog account. Also, the best time to post on Twitter is 12 – 3 pm Mondays through Fridays, as most retweets/clicks happen around 3 pm. Tweets have an average half life of only about 30 minutes and will reach their potential engagement within three hours – after that, it’s unlikely that you’ll get more action out of it, so consistent updates are key. Use relevant hashtags like #bookreview #bookblog, #blogger, etc. Follow a lot of other bloggers and retweet them, reply to them, engage with them, and their followers may find you. It’s like online networking in a sense.
Hope this helped!
Love,
A Fellow Blogger with a Communication and Media Studies degree 🙂
OMG yes this is super helpful! Thank you for all this advice 🙂 Especially the best times to post, very fascinating!
ok I just changed my twitter handle, thank you!!!!
You could try changing your handle to @ivereadthisblog or @ivereadthisbookblog to distinguish yourself as a blog. The best time to post on Twitter is between 12 – 3 pm Monday – Friday, as most clicks/retweets happen around 3 pm. Tweets only have a half life of about 30 mins and will reach their potential engagement within 3 hours, making consistent updates key. Use relevant hashtags like #bookreview #bookblog #blogger etc. Also, follow a lot of other bloggers and engage with them. Their followers may find you that way.
Hope this helped!
Love,
A Fellow blogger with a Communication and Media Studies degree 🙂
Hmm… I’m on Twitter, but since I think it’s the biggest waste of time in the universe I’m perhaps not the best person to offer you advice! However, blogwise, here goes:
I find the best way to drive traffic to the blog is to include the author’s twitter name when you tweet your review – so long as it’s a glowing review of course! (“The Burning by @JaneCaseyAuthor @PenguinUK” for example.) They’ll often retweet it, and you’ll get a little surge of visitors. The same goes if you include the publisher’s twitter name. But it’s very rare that these visitors like, comment or follow – they come, read (I assume) and go.
The hashtag has two purposes: the serious one is to link your tweet to others on the same subject so that interested people might see it. For example, you might have #bookreview, or maybe the book title (#TheBurning) if it’s a new release. Or if you wnat to expand beyond book related tweeting, the “trends” showing on the twitter page usually have associated hashtags which you can use to join in a conversation – this is actually a good way to get new twitter followers. The less serious use of the hashtag is to use it to be funny – so you might tweet something like “Just saw Trump get off an airplane in a high wind… #BadHairDay”
But truthfully, apart from when an author retweets, I hardly get any blog visits via twitter, so although I faithfully tweet my post each time, I still think it’s a total waste of time… sorry to be so negative! Have fun with it… 😀
it’s not negativity, it’s honesty! Very important, so thank you 🙂
This was me about a year ago. I had no idea. But I caught on quickly, and it looks like you are too!
I’ve found the same as FictionFan in regards to traffic to my blog, but I figured I was just doing something wrong or not trying hard enough. But I find other things about Twitter fun, and so far I’ve been pretty good at not spending too much time there. Good luck with it!
hmmm ok good to know, I guess I’m just worried I’m going to be so distracted by twitter that I’ll lose focus on my blog, but only time will tell…
If I see you there too much, I’ll tell you to go home. 🙂
please do!
Twitter is suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch a timesuck. I love it for pop culture and news, things that are happening and the funnies. People on twitter are so funny – well the right people. I’m hopeless at posting quality content (insta is my jam) but I like to lurk. If you follow the right people, it’s so much fun.
see insta just feels overwhelming to me, I can’t be consistent on so many platforms! Good for you for taking advantage of it all though 🙂
Insta is so PRETTY though. And the book community is strong on there.
and it’s been called ‘the happiest place on the internet’ because you don’t have to read political rants haha
I don’t tweet, so I’m not much help, but if you don’t have your blog linked to Facebook so that your posts appear on it automatically, that’s a good thing to do. If you don’t have much presence on Twitter, I don’t think it will help you advertise your blog very much.
all good points, thanks! I do have my blog linked to facebook, so at least I’m doing something right…lol
Hi Anne! As a fellow book blogger and somebody who teaches social-media at my local library, here is my comments to your quest.
Hashtags are a way to control the subjects of your tweets to particular subject. In my case, for blog posts, the most common hashtags I use are: #CanLit (for reviews of Canadian fiction) #bookreviews (for more general reviews) and #authorinterview (usually linking when I do a Q&A on my blog with an author.) I usually find using those hashtags on those specific tweets help bring people to my blog as opposed to just a general tweet. If I happen to be posting on a Friday, I use the #fridayreads hashtag. There are usual several hundred twitters on a Friday, looking for something to read.
My most popular tweets tend to be the ones that I post during the week during weekday hours. I usually try to include twitter handles (See the next paragraph for a description of twitter handles) of authors and publishers in order to draw attention of those people in order to get them to RT (Retweet) my original post. When they do that, and that tweet appears in the news feed of their followers, it usually brings more readers to my blog.
The “@” symbol followed by a name usually means a ‘twitter handle’ for a specific account. (Yours is @ivereadthisblog ) When I usually review a book by an author, I usually include the author’s twitter handle and the publisher’s handle in the tweet (That way they receive a notification that I mentioned them in a tweet.) Notifications appear at the top of your twitter home page, when a number appears over that “Notification” bell. When somebody uses your twitter handle in a tweet, you can click on that bell as see who has mentioned you in a tweet.
I usually recommend to the participants in my class that they read “Twitter for Dummies.” They usually give great suggestions for use of Twitter in a simple manner. Also, if you have access to Lynda.com she usually has great videos on the use of social-media apps. (Most libraries in Canada give their patrons free access to Lynda.com through their library cards.)
Anyways Anne, I hope this little spiel helps you in some way. Looking forward to seeing your tweets, and if you have any other questions, feel free to ask me.
SB
Thank you Steven, it is so kind of you to have taken the time to give me all that advice, it is GREATLY appreciated 🙂
I’m slowly learning the ropes here, but how nice that bloggers have rallied around and tried to help? You guys are the best!
That is the beauty of the whole WordPress application too. I know when I started blogging on here, the networking aspect of WordPress allowed me to connect with different book and literary bloggers. 🙂
Oh my goodness – the Panda – oh my goodness – that was awesome! I am Twitter-impaired, I linked my blog to Twitter via the WP tools but I have like only 17 followers via Twitter vs 420+ on WordPress. I can barely figure out how to manually post or respond on Twitter. I appreciate all the advice your other readers have provided and plan to spend some time reading through it!
Yes it’s wonderful how everyone has offered such lovely tips!
Twitter is a HUGE timesuck for me. But I can’t seem to let it go. Right now I mostly use it for political news, which means I’m losing my mind and anxiety filled all damn day long. So I’m trying not to log onto it at night, and give myself a little break. But it is really fun, and funny, and interesting, so it does have some pluses. I forget to use Twitter to publicize my blog, actually. Fellow bloggers will tweet my blog posts when I haven’t even done so, ha ha! Mostly I retweet things – bookish articles, blogger reviews, and political stuff. I try not to be annoying about it though. I just followed you!
Thanks lady! It is fun to see news stuff though, I think I’ll enjoy it just as much for political news as book stuff 🙂