What is the point of Twitter?

Posted on by Eric Klingenberg

birds

I was first told to get a twitter account by my nephew when he got fed up of me posting about last year’s Eurovision on facebook. I know it’s sad, I watch Eurovision it one of the highlight of my year, posting disparaging comments about it. I did get a twitter account not for Eurovision but to help publicize my blog.

I now use twitter two ways firstly to publicize my blog only with limited success. So far I have only had 27 clicks via twitter. I also use it to share others bloggers posts I like. I didn’t’ want to fill my blog up with re-blogs so it was a compromise.

I have had some very kind people re-tweet my post and have done likewise but I have the feeling I’m not using it to its true potential. I recently noticed my tweet name add to a tweet that was being re-tweeted (sorry lots of tweets in that sentence) but some very nice fellow bloggers. I’m not sure what that was about, and me being me didn’t ask any of them.

So apart from keeping my nephew happy during Eurovision has anyone else got a clever way of using twitter?

40 thoughts on “What is the point of Twitter?”

  2. I use both Facebook and Twitter for my photography and I have to say I have had more positive engagement and work as a result of conversations throughTwitter. Using the # is a great way of engaging with larger groups of people with similar interests and there are many positive netwoking opportunities that take place at specified times and days such as #DevonHour and #ArtistsHour. Be clear in your profile what it is you do and have conversations with people and be selective who you follow 🙂 Sharing pictures and retweeting helps as well… Good luck and I look forward to your #Eurovision tweets in 2016

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  3. I joined Twitter 5 years ago and sent approximately 6 tweets. I left it unattended until I started my blog six months ago (in fact, it was another couple of months before I started linking my blog). I still don’t fully ‘get it’ but I have received quite a bit of traffic from there and made new blogging connections. It does seem to be all about the hashtags and using the correct ones.

    So I always take part in #SundayBlogShare and #MondayBlogs. #folkloreThursday may be one you could utilise too, with your love of Potter.

    Within each tweet, I generally always use one or more of the following: #amwriting #blogging #lbloggers (lifestyle blogs) #photography #food. Basically, whatever I see is relevant to the post.

    Of course, you could throw in any hashtag and see where it gets you. One of my most retweeted offerings had #Dogsoftwitter in it – it was a picture of a cow…!

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      1. The tweet you were included in with others may have been a Follow Friday tweet (#FF) – I didn’t know what it was until I asked but it’s basically a shout out to say ‘follow this person, I like them’.

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    2. Good to know, Haylee! My publicist uses Twitter for me a lot. She figured out how to unblock me which has taken me from 700 connections to 13,000 to date. This is great as I am connected with people all over the country & the world and people are retweeting posts about my book.
      BUT I still have not learned how to use hash tags & even tho I have asked about this, others don’t seem to know how to do this either!
      It would be great if someone could explain it to us like we are two year olds! 😉 ❤
      Peace,
      Sherrie
      Sherrie Miranda's historically based, coming of age, Adventure novel “Secrets & Lies in El Salvador” is about an American girl in war-torn El Salvador:
      http://tinyurl.com/klxbt4y
      Her husband made a video for her novel. He wrote the song too:

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      2. I think it is a little about self education when it comes to hashtags. I remember doing the ‘Twitter in 3 words’ challenge and I went with hashtags for everything!

        I do know that if you use one, search it first and see when the last time stamp of it being used was… And how relevant the content of the tweet containing it. Obviously more recent ones are still in regular use and so forth.

        Your publicist is certainly doing something right if your followers have grown that much. I’m still on less than 200, so I’m an utter novice!

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  5. I gotta admit, I find Twitter to be kinda pointless. Perhaps it is the fact that I don’t give a shit about most people’s opinions and make it a point to avoid “celebrities”

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      1. I just signed up for twitter yesterday. First thing we have to do is add a Twitter Follow button to our wordpress home page. I haven’t figured out how to do it yet. Then our posts have to have the right hashtags. Its the hashtags that will bring people to your twitter, then hopefully your blog.

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  7. I can understand the frustration of Twitter from where you stand Eric. For me Twitter is a whole other land. I made an account years ago to follow and communicate with some friends and people I had met through a fan fiction website. I abandoned the account for a good while because I had other ways of communicating with friends and I left the world of fan fiction. When I decided to start pushing my publication and ‘advertise’ as it were I knew I had a good base of followers. So I knew I needed to connect Tweets because people would follow. I feel on Twitter you have to tweet about more than just writing. You have to connect with people there as well.

    One of the ways that I’ve felt like I’ve ‘made waves’ and gained a few followers is to tweet at people I admire and emulate. Example Scott Westerfield is one of my all time favorite authors so I tweeted at him a couple of time about how I enjoyed his books and my current experience on one of his more recent publications. As a result he retweeted me and I gained a few followers. Twitter is a mode of communication first and foremost. You have to reach out and engage in conversation there.

    Now while I say all this, I know that I’m not the best at keeping up with Twitter as it tries to eat most of my day away and many times I want to be writing more than reaching out on social media but I do check in on things from time to time. I think Facebook is what I use the least with marketing though my posts do get pushed there as well.

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  11. Twitter has been a slow burn for me, so slow you can hardly see the flame but there have been puffs of smoke and even warmth, it’s a trial and error thing. I find being you, being honest and most of all being kind works, all three a bit of a novelty it can seem. I’ve made a handful of ‘friends’ who have picked up on my blog and I theirs. I’ve no idea how the mega follower counts come about, and not too bothered, I can hardly keep up with the 80 odd I have. The one lesson I should have learnt is to hold back and just ‘favourite’ tweets, sometimes commenting can get you drawn into things perhaps best not too, but then again you can always delete your tweets! Using established hastags rather than your own has worked better for me, and using various prompts for poetry and very short stories can be good for getting your writing seen. On balance I think my blog is more visible thro’ using Twitter … and blog post tags which I’ve only recently started to use. I’ll stop rambling on now this dark and windy Sunday afternoon. I’m Eric too by the way!.

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  13. I love how most of the commenters use Twitter yet aren’t quite sure how it works – I feel the same way, so I’m glad to know it’s not only me! I try to mix up my tweets – when I first started I had a few authors following me, so I followed them back, and then was horrified to see my feed inundated with post after post after post about their book. ‘Buy my book, read my book, review my book, did you know I’ve written a book!’ No other attempt was made to engage. I then discovered the ‘Mute’ button and my feed became a lot clearer. So I have had some lovely exchanges with people and gained some blog traffic, though I now check everyone’s tweets before deciding to follow them – if it’s all book promos I tend not to bother. Sorry if that’s harsh, but I don’t think that’s what Twitter is for. 🙂

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      1. No worries, Eric – hope you are feeling better now. The Mute button is located on their home page, so if you want to mute someone, simply click on their Twitter profile, then click the little icon that looks like a wheel next to the Follow button – it should give you the option to Mute their tweets. That way, you still follow them, but only see tweets that mention you, plus they do not know you have muted them. Hope that helps 🙂

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  14. I have 3 accounts on Twitter and think of it more of a business, professional platform. I’ve had my oldest account for over 4 years and I’m around 2000+ followers. My newer accounts are taking awhile to gain support. I guess it depends on the focus of your page and the size audience you appeal to. You could also pay for advertising but this success isn’t guaranteed just like anything else, but it could help.

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I'm a special needs teacher living in Devon England. I'm currently writing my first fantasy novel. When not writing I enjoy chess, reading, sailing and computer games. I'm married with 2 step sons and one grown up foster son.