In 2009 I heard that during the State of the Union speech, several Senators were twittering to each other. I found that pretty astonishing – distinguished old guys tweeting. I took a look at Twitter, and initially found it the most time wasting thing I’d ever seen. I just didn’t see any point.
Then I looked more closely and began to study Twitter. I’ll admit freely, I learned a lot from a San Diego State student named Nate who had a social media website (no longer there). The first thing he emphasized was “social” – never forget that word in looking at Twitter. If you introduced yourself by trying to sell people something, they would quickly discount you. It was best to connect and network with people on a social level, and build relationships just like you would in other social settings.
A very nice lady in Florida showed me how to build a following. She would find like-minded people and follow them, hoping they would follow her back. I followed writers (some of the worst for following you back) and other people who I would like to connect with. Then one day I noticed one of my followers had “CNN” on the front of their user name. Hm! I checked, and it was the morning news anchor for CNN. I think that’s when the possibilities of Twitter really began to sink in.
Nate also helped me understand Retweets. I send out a message to my 1,000 followers. Then Daniel (a real guy) with 40,000 followers RT’s my message. Now my tweet has been sent to 41,000 people. One time I had a tweet RT’d to over 100,000 people in about 5 minutes. My marketing background kicked in and I realized that this was something very new. I could reach a lot of people in a very short time. Did they all read my tweet? Of course not. But if a portion did, that was substantial connection potential – for free.
Typically I connect with people through Twitter, and then the 140 character limitation quickly becomes insufficient, and I go to Facebook, email or even telephone to develop relationships. But I have friends in Canada, Ireland, Belgium, Australia and all over the US. I’ve developed an extensive author network, several of whom have reviewed my memoir. It’s been astonishing.
Sometimes it’s better to be in the right place at the right time. I met a woman through Twitter who was a psychotherapist in Los Angeles. We had many similarities and began to chat. She read my memoir, Freedom’s Just Another Word, and really enjoyed it. Did I notice that she was also a reviewer for the New York Journal of Books? Of course I did. Did I think that would do me any good? Not likely, because that organization didn’t review self published books. Then one day the NYJB editor sent out a message to his reviewers. Since October was “Child Abuse Awareness Month,” they were looking for good books to review in connection with that event.
My friend wrote the editor and said she did know of such a book, but it was self published and she knew the author, something they discouraged with their reviewers. The editor made an exception, and told her to go ahead. They published her review here:
Can Twitter be beneficial for an author? You know how I vote!
Originally published April 26, 2011 at Write By Night.
Twitter Images Courtesy Of ProductiveDreams
About Dan L. Hays
