Twitter Education

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I was asked to do an educational class on Twitter. I have no idea how many of you use it or are even familiar with it. So, I'm just going to tell you everything I know (admittedly little) and what I use twitter for and then you can take it or leave it.

I hadn't even heard of Twitter until last December. I saw a post on an agent's blog about it so I went to check it out. My "check-it-out" consisted of signing up for it, logging in, clicking a couple of buttons and then logging out again. I didn't look at it again for a month. When I started getting the occasional e-mail that someone who followed my blog was not following me on twitter, my response was actually, "Oh darn! I need to tell them to stop that." LOL At this point I never planned on logging in again. Finally I decided to log in and delete my account.

That was when I happened upon agent Colleen Lindsay's post about a community thing she was doing that day on Twitter called #queryfail. By now, I have no doubt that most of you have heard of it. As a person who was there to see it, I personally believe it got a horrible rap and was completely misunderstood, but that isn't the point here. What I really loved about #queryfail was that it got me into contact with hundreds of writers, editors and agents.

I simply watched people that were posting, clicked on their name and if they had writer, editor or agent in their byline I would follow them. Twitter is a very friendly place and most of them quickly returned the favor and followed me right back. Then, it just snowballs. I get on and post maybe 3-5 lines per day or just see what some of the people I like have said and respond to them. That is all it takes and then other people just keep following you. It's tremendous and the networking potential is unbelievable.

Both my blog and my website have started rising in views and comments steadily since I began using Twitter. On top of that, I've started really getting to know some actual agents. I had one of them message me on Twitter that they liked my blog post today... yes, an agent checked my blog! LOL I had a long conversation with an assistant agent the other day about her ferrets. It is just an amazingly great avenue for networking and to for support from fellow writers.

Today I posted a question about 1st person POV and whether there was a stigma, I had 2 agents 3 writers and an editor weigh in on it. Where else can you get that kind of inside information? It is awesome.

I also found it saves me time because you can click this button on your Facebook account and then any time you type something in Twitter with a #fb after it, it updates your Facebook status with that message. <-- this is something agent Rachelle Gardner taught me on Twitter.

Anytime I put on a new blog post, I put a link and brief description on Twitter as well. I would totally recommend that. Anyway, this is way longer than I meant for it to be. If anyone has any questions, please let me know and if you are on Twitter, then find me! :)