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The Writer’s Twitter Dilemma

Posted by george on January 17, 2012
Posted in: Writing. Tagged: . 8 comments

When I first set up my writing blog and freelance writing business, I set up a Twitter account. Twitter was still relatively new and even though I didn’t quite “get it” I sensed Twitter would be around for a while. Getting started was tough in those early days. Figuring out who to follow took a bit of work and a lot of searching.

So here I sit three and a half years later. I follow about 1,300 folks and I have about 2,650 followers. I’ve grown my Twitter organically. In other words, I haven’t participated in any schemes to get 10,000 followers or anything like that. I’m happy with the numbers and haven’t had any plans to really change how/who I follow. I’m thinking that may change in the near future.

Even though I’m happy with the raw numbers, I find myself in a bit of a dilemma. My interests are in the area of writing, publishing and reading. This means that most of the folks I follow are writers. In a lot of ways this is a very good thing. I end up finding some great articles about writing and I feel like I have my finger on the pulse.

The problem is that my Twitter feed has gone stale.

Here is how a typical scenario plays out: I receive notification of a follow (or I find someone to follow in a re-tweet) and I go have a look at their profile page. If there is a decent profile page then I usually don’t hesitate  to follow them. A vast majority of these folks are writers and almost all of them have a book out and they call themselves an author. As I peruse my feed each day, I look for interesting things to examine or re-tweet. I do a lot of re-tweeting because I want to support the authors and recognize their hard work. What I’ve found recently is that my Twitter feed is absolutely littered with tweets that are nothing more than marketing for an author’s book. Frankly, it’s making my feed a bit ho-hum and boring. It’s not so bad if the person is interacting with folks and engaging in true a social media way. Quite often this is not the case.

Do you see what I’m saying? I want to support other authors and their work. Therefore I follow a lot of authors. Unfortunately, a lot of them are less than engaging on Twitter. I’m becoming hesitant to follow any more authors. Then I think, Well, who AM I going to follow? And I’m not sure what the answer to that question is.

Fellow writers, what is your take on this? Do you use Twitter? If so, have you noticed this same trend?

 

A Social Media Success Story

Posted by george on November 16, 2011
Posted in: Fiction, Writing. Tagged: , . 7 comments

I’ve been a Twitter user for going on three years now. I think I’ve seen some benefit from the contacts I’ve made and the articles of mine that have been re-tweeted. I like Twitter and I’m there most days, re-tweeting things and interacting on a number of levels. Over the weekend I had a bit of a success story and I thought I’d share that with you folks.

In my Twitter stream, I noticed one of the folks I follow was quoting lines from one of my favorite movies. I had seen this person previously, I think but I hadn’t really interacted with them too much, if at all. Well, I started tweeting some quotes from the same movie and we had a good time of it. Later, He sent a tweet that went something like, “Buy my novel and I might be able to buy a taco for dinner.” Oh, that’s right, he’s an author. So I went to the link in the tweet and I saw his novel on Amazon – A Kindle version no less. It was just under three bucks and I was looking for a read so I downloaded “Near Death” by Richard C. Hale. I started reading and I was pleased to discover that it was a great book. I loved every moment of it, finished it over the weekend and wrote a review on Amazon. I let Richard know, and he was kind enough to download my “Short Book of Short Shorts.” but that’s not the success story.

The real success story is that a social media site worked exactly as it should. Someone in my network posted something that caught my eye and got me looking a little closer at their postings. A link was included in the posting, I clicked and I bought. He ends up with a book sale and a loyal fan. I end up making a great connection and having a great book reading experience. Win-win.

I bring this up to remind us writers to not give up and for the love of Pete, learn how to handle social media appropriately. I see writers all the time on Twitter that never re-tweet anyone’s stuff, they never acknowledge any re-tweeting of their stuff and they never engage. Their posts are always the same. Look at my book, look at my book. Sorry, not inclined to buy. Show me you’re human first.

New Twitter User Name

Posted by george on October 3, 2009
Posted in: Writing. Tagged: , , , . 8 comments

twitterHey Folks,

In preparation for a major site change towards the end of this month, I switched my username at Twitter from @tumblemoose to @GeorgeAngus Nothing really changes in terms of my following or being followed, it’s just that now you will see GeorgeAngus instead of Tumblemoose.

As I get closer to “opening day” I’ll be sure and update folks with teasers and other information.

I’m pretty excited about things – and a little fearful, truth be told.

In conjunction, a lot of you may have noticed that when I’m commenting on posts at your sites, I no longer use the Tumblemoose name – I use George Angus.

So there are a few things up my sleeve, I hope you’ll stay tuned.

Writer’s best of, a poll and a prize

Posted by george on December 10, 2008
Posted in: Writing. Tagged: , , , , . 10 comments

Sometimes when I find a great blog I want to see what else they may have to offer  but I find I don’t have the time to cruise the archives.  I bookmark the site with every intention of returning.  Like a lot of us I’m a busy camper these days and I can hardly remember what I found interesting this morning, let alone yesterday or last week.

Tumblemoose is a young blog but in my – ahem- humble opinion there are some helpful posts that deserve a peek, if you’ve not had the chance to do so.  In order to save you the pain of archive searching, I’m including some “best of” posts.

So, this post has three distinct sections:

  1. I’m putting links to about a half dozen posts that I think are worth a look.  This will save you from having to dig through the archives.  Also, if you like what you see then you can just bookmark this page and return at your leisure.
  2. There is a poll here that will allow you to vote for which of these you think is the best.  I’d like the feedback and I’m curious to see what you folks think.
  3. A prize.  You heard me.  Follow me on Twitter and send me a DM with the word “subscribe”, subscribe via email or RSS between now and December 17th and I’ll randomly choose (eenie-meenie-miney-mo) a subscriber who will win an all expenses paid trip to Bermuda um, a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com

Here are the posts:

  1. Finding your writer’s voice – Where is it and why it’s important
  2. 10 “must have” books for writers –   There’s still time to get these for the holidays too!
  3. I will NOT work for free! – An impassioned rant about scams and bidding sites
  4. Look at what Harper-Collins is doing – For some reason, the most popular Tumblemoose post ever!  At least, in terms of traffic!
  5. How to break the idea barrier – Tips to get the train moving again
  6. On Writing – Resources that work – An early post with some great resource book reviews

Ok, here’s your chance to vote!

Now that you’ve had the chance to look around I’d like to think that Tumblemoose is worthy of your attention.  If you’re so inclined, go ahead and subscribe  – either by email at the top right corner of this page or by clicking the “RSS subscribe” at the bottom of this post.  Or better yet, follow me on Twitter to receive lightning-fast notification of Tumblemoose updates. ;-)

Oh, and comments are always appreciated!

Facebook, writer’s forums and other thoughts

Posted by george on December 8, 2008
Posted in: Writing. Tagged: , , , , . 26 comments

First let me say I don’t know whether to be peeved or luvey to Men with Pens for posting an article about writer’s forums on the day I was planning to do the same.  I guess I’m grateful to have the link to include in my post.  Oh, but isn’t the glass half full this morning!

Facebook

I dragged myself kicking and screaming into the world of Facebook over the weekend.   I hesitated to do this for a very long time.  I had a less than optimal experience with Myspace a while back and that whole genre of social media ended up having zero interest for me.  But then I started reflecting on my attitude towards Twitter and how long it took me to get on board there.  After giving Twitter a good solid month I realized the value and my Twitter referrals are up nearly every day.

After spending a couple of pretty full days exploring and adding to the Tumblemoose Facebook page I decided I like it and believe that it is a valuable social networking tool for writers.  There are all manner of writers, editors, publishers and others involved in the craft.  They are easily accessible and seem to be a helpful lot overall.  Understand that this opinion is based on a weekend getaway to the Land o’ Facebook and so it may be subject to change, but I don’t think so.

I think one of the most helpful things I discovered was the “Groups” feature.  It didn’t take very long to find lively and active groups that pertain to writing.  Some actually have thousands of members.  A few of the groups seemed to be a bit stuffy and formal, but most appeared to be quite relaxed.  I was intrigued enough to start another group: Tumblemoose Writers and Bloggers.  This leads me to the next section of this post:

Writer’s Forums

So the plan was to post a little something this morning on my Facebook adventure and follow it with information and the straight scoop on forums.  Well, I know a good thing when I see it and the Men With Pens article does a nice job and I’ll not duplicate their content here.  If you want to take a moment and view their article, I’ll wait.  (Goes and gets a fresh cup of English Breakfast…)

Ok, are you back?  Good.  What do you think?  It looks to me like forums are probably pretty good things.

That’s why I set up Tumblemoose Writers and Bloggers over at Facebook.  The set up was minimal, the posting was easy and I think that the moderating should be fairly straightforward.

I’ve already asked some questions to get discussion threads going and I guess what I’d like to see is the Tumblemoose readership head on over and join.  Let’s give this a fair shot and see if we can’t expand on some of the comment discussions we’ve had over  the past few months.  I don’t believe all of those discussion have played out and it appears to be a good forum (no pun intended) for generating discussion.

Let me have a little feedback love, ok?  Are you interested in a Tumblemoose forum?  Would you like to participate but are turned off by having to join Facebook?  Do you not really care at all about forums?

Twitter has become my RSS Reader

Since I’ve made Twitter a part of my daily existence, I’ve discovered that I almost never go to my RSS feeds anymore.  When I’m working, I view the timeline every so often throughout the day, going backwards to my last Tweet to make sure I’ve not missed anything.  What I’ve found is that since most of my community is on Twitter, and most of them Tweet a new post, I get to head right on over, read and comment.  What’s more, a lot of times, I get the heralded #1 comment spot – even on the big boy blogs.

What do you think?  Will Twitter replace RSS?

Finally

Most of you know that Tumblemoose is only about three months old.  That’s a premie in blog -years.  I was over at my Google account over the weekend and did a little update to my Adsense.  Just for giggles I headed over to my account stats and discoverd I’ve made about 50 bucks over the life of the blog, with a steady upward “trend” – I don’t know, can you call three months a trend?  Coolio!  What great incentive to get on it and work the traffic numbers and do everything I can to move Tumblemoose forward!

Whew!  I’m glad I got all of that out there.  Now let’s hear from my large and adoring audience!  ;-)