Thursday, May 5, 2011

To Tweet or not to Tweet--that is the question

If everybody I know tweets, how come they haven't found me and I haven't found them on Twitter?

Okay, I admit it.  I just don't get Twitter.  I mean, I've been on it for like two years, and I don't get it.  I've even taken an online class about it and still haven't picked up the intricacies.

I use Tweetdeck, which seems a lot more coherent than just a plain Twitter account, and this way I can coordinate my various personas.  Nice.  But what am I supposed to tweet?

And it seems like almost all my followers are other authors.  We're all telling each other about our books and not selling any of them.

I find people who tweet constantly to be a real PITA and I unfollow them as soon as possible.  I mean, do I need to know every time they burp or take a sip of Diet Coke?

I'm not saying I'm going to pitch Tweetdeck any time soon, but I don't even log on every day.

If you use Twitter, what do you think the greatest benefit is?

BTW, if you WANT to follow me, I'm @LornaBarrett @LorraineBartlet @LLBartlettbooks

10 comments:

  1. I've used Twitter for a while and I do follow all of your entities. I did not utilize Facebook until a few months ago so all my news about your books etc. pretty much came from this source. And I am a reader not an author. The greatest benefit of Twitter for me is to follow a set of people for each of my interests---deals, books, gluten-free, news, and politics.

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  2. I've had a Twitter account for a while and I don't really get it either. I keep hoping my School District will offer a PD on it. It's the only social networking site you can access from school. For a while I was able to follow my 7th Grader's team via twitter. I find FB to be much more user friendly.

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  3. I'm with you. I find Facebook and some other venues like Goodreads much more beneficial.

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  4. I Tweet only for business, so I follow only people in my field of advertising/marketing. I also follow peripheral people and groups, such as Pew Research, traditional news channels, Al Jezeera (for another slant on the news), and one or two political Tweeters on both sides of the aisle.

    Most Tweets are useless; however, I do find links to articles that are extremely useful. Sometimes, I even find an opinion that makes me happy, angry, or makes me laugh.

    Overall I don't get Twitter, either. I rarely Tweet mostly because I don't have anything profound to say every day :-) But I do enjoy reading what some other people post.

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  5. Ozsulin you need to lead us in a Twitter class. How do you group people & interests, then view just them? I use it mainly for business. Several workmates communicated that way so I didn't have a choice.

    I also created an account for the Friends of the Library. While I'm not a big Twitter user, we realize others do, and we want to connect with as many people however they choose to communicate. Anything we post on our FB fanpage gets posted on Twitter.

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  6. Not having anything profound to say doesn't seem to stop anyone else. At last we've found someone who restrains herself from informing everyone of every inane thought in her head.

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  7. I agree I might tweet my latest painting or blog post. I read interesting bits of information from museums and other blogs. I follow you and enjoy your tweets..

    noreen m

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  8. I still haven't figured it out. Facebook is much more friendly.

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  9. I normally just tweet my blog post URLs and interesting articles I've found while surfing. Or I might tweet a link to photos I've taken... like when a pair of ducks were hanging out in my pool.

    Mostly I use it to keep up with what's going on in the book world and for news. Many's the time my husband's walked in the room and said, "Did you hear....?" and I've replied, "Oh, yeah. I saw it on Twitter." It all depends on whom you follow.

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  10. I kinda like it. I'm trying to find an agent, so I have a number of agents on my list that I'm following. I also follow a number of Star Trek authors and a few celebrities. But I investigate those first to see how amusing they are and how often they tweet. If they tweet inane things -- like "I'm at the store" -- I'm dropping them.

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