Followers, Schmollowers
Agent, Janet Reid hit the monkey on the head with her recent post about book promotion on Twitter. The biggest reason I don't spend a lot of time on Twitter anymore is because people are always shilling something. Once in a while is fine. Too often and it becomes noise, forcing people to ignore it completely.
Her ratio of one shill post to every ten is more than fair--and easier on my brain.
I also liked what she said about 'followers'.
Reid said: Don't talk about this stuff at ALL. No one following you cares how many other people are. They ONLY care that you say something of interest to them.
So true! The number of followers is only important to the person asking for the followers.
That said, there are good reasons to have followers. I had a conversation with someone recently about contests. She wasn't going to ask for people to be a follower in order to enter her contests. I suggested she reconsider it. I've found that people willing to follow (to enter) are less likely to be contest trolls and more likely to be true fans of the genre or author.
Follow because you WANT to be a part of that person's world. And those asking for 'follows' should be doing it because they have something marvelous to offer in return. No one cares how many people are in your posse. That's just ego talking. Real followers care about your content.
I still add myself to other people's follow list, but only if I truly enjoy that person's blog. I want to show my appreciation and that's one small way to do it.
I just think we need to move away from that high school clique mentality. Social networks are really crowded and noisy with spam. To stand out, we need to be a little less self-centered and more genuinely social.
Touch us where we live through pictures and anecdotes. Talk about other people. Quote them. Link to them. Expand your scope beyond selling yourself and you'll find a more receptive audience.
Reid had so many good points in her post. I highly recommend it.
Have you ever tried to gauge which posts or tweets worked best for you? What did you discover?
Her ratio of one shill post to every ten is more than fair--and easier on my brain.
I also liked what she said about 'followers'.
Reid said: Don't talk about this stuff at ALL. No one following you cares how many other people are. They ONLY care that you say something of interest to them.
So true! The number of followers is only important to the person asking for the followers.
That said, there are good reasons to have followers. I had a conversation with someone recently about contests. She wasn't going to ask for people to be a follower in order to enter her contests. I suggested she reconsider it. I've found that people willing to follow (to enter) are less likely to be contest trolls and more likely to be true fans of the genre or author.
Follow because you WANT to be a part of that person's world. And those asking for 'follows' should be doing it because they have something marvelous to offer in return. No one cares how many people are in your posse. That's just ego talking. Real followers care about your content.
I still add myself to other people's follow list, but only if I truly enjoy that person's blog. I want to show my appreciation and that's one small way to do it.
I just think we need to move away from that high school clique mentality. Social networks are really crowded and noisy with spam. To stand out, we need to be a little less self-centered and more genuinely social.
Touch us where we live through pictures and anecdotes. Talk about other people. Quote them. Link to them. Expand your scope beyond selling yourself and you'll find a more receptive audience.
Reid had so many good points in her post. I highly recommend it.
Have you ever tried to gauge which posts or tweets worked best for you? What did you discover?
Comments
;O)
Before i follow anyone on twitter i make sure to check their twitter stream. If all they do is shill their's or other's work, or tweet links to articles or what have you, i will not follow back. I want actual conversations and real people stuff.
Then they will list new followers in an effort to convince people that the followers must have liked their book, when in essence the people are just "following back." Ugh. Of course, I've never been much of a Twitter person. The 140 character limit doesn't work for me. But I guess you can tell that by this long comment.
I think the reasons are two-fold.
1. I'm not trying to sell anything.
2. I mirror what someone else has already experienced--or never hopes to experience--like snakes. :)
Re: The 140 character limit doesn't work for me. But I guess you can tell that by this long comment.
LOL! I have the same problem.
Part of the problem is because some "guru" somewhere is telling authors that this is what you have to do to get known. I'm not mentioning names but you see their mantra regularly.
Even I fell for it at one time, believing they must know more than little old me. If they're successful, it's not for the vomit of tweets but for something else entirely.
But I do like to read about interesting people.
More positively, I really like that if you follow news sites that interest you, you hear the news as it breaks.
I don't know if I've sold even one extra book directly because of Twitter, but I do think you can make yourself a bit more visible to reviewers if you tweet interesting stuff.
When I'm actively promoting, I'll only tweet about the book once every couple of hours for two days. Then I stop because it's boring to talk about myself and I've got to move on.
When I'm NOT actively promoting, I'll tweet a book every so often, but I'll schedule it for 3am.
Of course, this is only if I'm actively Tweeting. And when I'm not writing.
Hope you're well.
Did you kill BBQ?
I don't try to gauge anything. If people like it, fine, if they don't, that's fine too.
le sigh...
Whereas I've become good friends with new people on FB. It's gotta be the 140 characters holding me back. :)
Re: BBQ
That son of a gun is still with me. We're going to see about reinforcing a separate pen for him--at least until the girls deliver. I don't want him bothering them.
If we do put him on the pit we'll wait for warmer weather.
It'll be interesting to see what new social networks develop in the next five years. The current ones are starting to feel stale--especially for business.
I still don't understand what good it did him. It's not like I'm some big name and the stuff he shilled was relatively dull.
Life is too short for crazies.
Off to Janet's post :)