As indie author's one of the most powerful tools for getting our name
and product out there is social media. It's been a learning process
over the past year, but we've finally got it down. I'm not sure about
Von, but my favorite social media tool is Twitter. It's short and sweet,
no need for extraneous content, 140 characters and you're done. If I
happen to find an interesting article or picture, I just click on the
blue bird, it's miniaturized to Shrinky Dink size and posted to our
Twitter page, easy enough.
As our Twitter followers have grown
over the past few months, so have our interactions, or Retweets. At
first, we would send a Thank You tweet, thanking them for thinking of
us, but we soon discovered that retweeting the retweeters content was
even better to return the favor. If an author happens to follow us then
we make it a point to follow them back. It's a good way to grow your
network and interact with other people trying to do the same thing
you're doing.
I got quite a shock, one day while trying to thank
one of our retweeters. I clicked on that author's name to find a profile
page full of nudity, whips, chains, and handcuffs. Okay, if we're not
comfortable even looking at this person's page, do we have to retweet
their material because they retweeted ours?
Another question
concerns serial retweeters. If we know they retweet our stuff almost
automatically, sometimes several times a day, do we retweet their stuff
multiple time also?
What about Followers
who speak an entirely different language? Do I follow someone even
though I don't have a clue what they're saying?
It's
not like someone wrote a handbook on proper Twitter etiquette. I hate
being rude and don't want our Followers to think we're trying to snub
them. So we had to make up our own rules.
If
a Follower is into something risque that we're not quite comfortable
sharing on our page, we'll send a thank you Tweet or retweet something
safe they've retweeted from someone else.
For the serial retweeters, we retweet them once or twice. Anything more and you're caught in a vicious, repeating loop.
The
rest is just play it by ear and stick with our own judgment. If we're
not comfortable with something, than the best course of action is to
leave it alone. Over time you'll gain Followers and you'll lose
Followers, that's just the way Twitter goes.
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