Submitted For Your Consideration

September 2009

How a Twitter Skeptic Became a Twitter Convert

"I really hate Hitler."

That comment popped up on my Tweetdeck and I did a double take. What an odd and interesting thing to say. Funny, in an offbeat way -- and who'd argue with it? So I typed back, "Cool! We have something in common." I sent the tweet on its way. Not long after, I received this reply: "I just don't think we say it often enough."

It's this kind of serendipitous contact that makes Twitter interesting and unique.

When I first heard about Twitter, I thought, "Give me a break. Who wants to be tweeting and reading tweets constantly? Like I don't have enough distractions? Why should I care what someone I've never met had for lunch? Forget about it. I'm not doing Twitter."

I held this stance for some time. But I kept reading about Twitter. How it could be used to network and promote your business. And -- most especially -- how it didn't have to take all your time.

Maybe it was when David Pogue, the New York Times tech columnist, tried Twitter and liked it that I said, "Okay, fine. I'll give it a go. If I hate it, I can always stop. What have I got to lose, really?"

That was several months earlier -- maybe March? Since then, I've learned a lot about the power of Twitter. I have to say, I'm truly surprised and delighted with it. But it took some time and learning the ropes to understand and use Twitter with any degree of confidence.

I'm sure everyone has learned to use Twitter differently, but this is the way it's gone down for me. And while learning to use it, I've reaped some benefits along the way.

The first thing I had to learn was how to keep track of tweets. The Twitter-verse seemed so confusing when I started. All these tweets flying around. Some of them re-tweets (whatever those were), some of them replies -- and how did people keep track of all this? How could one hold a decent conversation on Twitter?

The secret was organization. Twitter apps like Twitterfox and Tweetdeck helped me organize my tweets. Kept the sheer volume of activity from overwhelming me.

So... now that I could keep track of who was who and what type of user they were, I could scan through the lists of various tweets, look for interesting ones and either reply or retweet (resend to show your interest and allow your followers to see them), thus engaging myself in the Twitter community. However, I didn't do this right away. I was a bit of a lurker at first. A shy wallflower at the Twitter party.

I started off by merely tweeting my blog posts. Now, having five blogs, I seemed to have no shortage of things to tweet about. At least once (sometimes twice) a day, I'd send out a tweet and see if it brought more traffic to my blog or a response.

Twitter did seem to help drive traffic to my blogs. And, after a while, I was drawing a few retweets and replies, too. But I kept thinking, isn't there more to Twitter than this? How do I take this to the next level?

Shortly after I started, I was followed by loads of people. I wondered, "Who'd want to follow me?" I figured I'd follow them back and see how that went. I figured maybe the more people I followed, the more who would follow me, too. However, this is a fairly passive approach. It took a while to realize I could be targeting people to follow and building a following that way.

One reason I knew about Twitter is that various bloggers had written about it. People I'd want to follow, because they were in the writing business, both freelance and fiction. So my own first follows were those people. Then, it occurred to me. Why not look at who the people you're interested in are following? Then follow them, too.

Your interest in a certain type of tweeter will attract the attention of others who you'd like to have follow you. And that's the whole idea of Twitter. To build the kind of following that serves your interests, whatever those happen to be.

So there I am, figuring out my Twitter strategy, and this comment about Hitler comes up. And it just seemed to beg for a reply. So I did. It may have been my first spontaneous Twitter conversation. And it was an almost transformative experience. I realized you could do more than simply tweet blog posts or promotional stuff. You could do more than follow the people who others are following. In fact, you could reach out to or simply converse with people you'd never otherwise meet.

Twitter has actually set the foundation for at least two personal relationships. Twitter has a community of tweeters (or is it Twits?) with dystonia. I got to know one of them on Twitter (@promogurl) before meeting her during Dystonia Advocacy Day last May.

In fact, I've discovered a whole world of dystonia advocates on Twitter (such as @dystonia2006, @celtic_mist, @cmcansoda, @TeacherBug03, @TheKomodoDragon, @ConwayMykol, @Joey_T, @ejheat and @Eschnak).

I also recently met for coffee with a blogger who's currently working on her first novel, to talk about writing and publishing (@theantidc).

I've touched base with authors and publishing professionals in crime fiction (@sethharwood), as well as those outside the genre (@uncubicled). I've also connected with other freelance writers, entrepreneurs and social media mavens (or so they claim -- you see them a lot on Twitter -- hardly surprising). For instance, I've gotten advice from the owner of a small press (@PublishingGuru).

I've shared my fondness for cheesecake and chocolate with a mystery journal editor and blogger (@JanetRudolph).

I've exchanged writing and publishing stories with an aspiring author (@ChrisPaternoste).

I have lots of favorite "green" tweeters -- too many to name (@greenbiztweets, @thegoodhuman, @TwilightEarth, @timeofgreen, @greenprofs and @peace_of_green).

I keep in touch with local freelancers (@ebuie, @mindieb and @WDCGardener).

I've kept up or reconnected with friends who've moved away, but are less distant due to social media (@rickholton -- a freelance writer -- and @CarlaBuckley -- a thriller novelist, who I initially reconnected with through Facebook, then Twitter).

I've followed the amazing cross-country biking journey of an attorney seeking to simplify his life, plus find adventure and himself (@radicaljack).

And I've shared some laughs and random tweets with many others (such as @brian_weis, @LiberalViewer1, @dhutson and @dbgrady -- who's not only a fellow freelance writer and fiction author, but the one who set off my Twitter epiphany with the Hitler remark).

I've probably only scratched the surface, so if you're not named, don't take it personally. And I haven't even gotten into other things like #FollowFriday (where you recommend people to follow) and getting listed in directories like #WeFollow (where you can list your subject specialties). Or using hashtags (like #FollowFriday or #writechat or #[insert subject]) to focus discussion on a certain topic or target your tweets toward readers with particular interests.

Oh, and I also have a Twitter success story. Someone on Twitter noticed my blog posts about digital publishing. As it happened, this person does features for Voice of America. He asked me for an interview, and I (of course) agreed.

So thank you @zigawatt for that!

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