#Twitter Advice Needed
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 :)
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 :)