Twittering

This month I have discovered the wonderful world of Twitter and I thought I would take some time to celebrate all the amazing people I have met and some of the exchanges we have had.

I started without a clue what I was doing or why, having been told this was the way to promote my book. The very first night, I began with just two Tweets from Angela Blackwood and Philip Davies from my writers’ group and I tweeted them back forlornly, ‘Goodnight to both my followers.’

Next day a friend from Muddlegraders, Kate Walker, invited me to Tweet on her followers, so I did and in no time at all I had 2001 and an e-mail from Twitter telling me that if I didn’t stop, I would be thrown off.

So instead of trying to conquer the world, I began noticing the new people I was following – like the kind Judy Peace who retweeted me on numerous occasions and told me she liked my blog, which gave me a huge boost.

And the Younger Jay Squires, whose profile says ‘In the gene pool of life I am an unflushable floater.’ I asked him what kept him afloat, and he said, ‘Gas, Cordelia, Gas.’

Sam followed me from the US, inviting me to drink at Sam’s Tavern in Seattle. ‘You pay my airfare and I’ll be right over, Sam,’ I tweeted. Shortly afterwards, Las Lobo chipped in, ‘Come on Sam, pay her airfare.’ ‘Yes come on Sam, be a sport,’ I tweeted. ‘LOL rt ’ came the reply. In the end I tweeted, ‘Feeling sorry for you Sam. I’ll let you off if you leave a comment on my blog.’ But he hasn’t yet.

I also discovered George Henry, with a photo of him smiling and sipping a drink in the sun, so I tweeted him saying that he looked too relaxed to have written his racy thriller, Love and Death in Trieste.

‘That was before, Cordelia. This is after,’ he tweeted, alongside the photo of him stark naked and haggard on a motorbike.

There were numerous other little connections, including John J. Higgins, who wrote me a great comment on my blog after I promised to love him forever, and a visit to Jason Howell’s quirky but interesting website, as well as Georgia Rose, who also has a pen name.

One of the funniest websites was that of The Struggling Writer.

Despite not having a book to his name, has clocked up 10,000 followers and when I asked him how he did it, he tweeted, ‘By spending too much time on Twitter. These days I focus on the writing.’

Which reminded me what I ought to be doing. I’m listening, Struggling Writer, I’m listening.

13 thoughts on “Twittering”

  1. Ha! Nice post. I’m still spending too much time on twitter, but i’m losing followers these days – have been for months in fact. But i still spend more time struggling than anything else 🙂

    1. Better to struggle at something worthwhile , than sit in front of the box eating cake. ?
      Well… maybe. Anyhow, I can’t eat cake because I’m diabetic and there’s mostly rubbish on the box.
      Never give up I say!
      Cordelia. PS Plug your website and your followers will come back because it’s a good laugh.

  2. Hi Cordelia (fabulous name!) Appleby – have just returned from holiday to find this lovely mention!! Many thanks and I shall certainly make sure I am following Struggling Writer (above!). Pleased to see you are enjoying the wonderful writing world on Twitter. I joined in January not thinking I would but love it! Am now having to take steps not to spend too much time on it as trying to get my second book out this summer 🙂 I have to find the balance somehow between working and marketing!! I have also come across some of the wonderful characters you have and greatly enjoy their company!!

  3. So many of us have been surprised by how much fun Twitter can be for writers. What a fab way to celebrate your followers — and now you have another one!

  4. Really interesting to hear of your experience with Twitter, Cordelia. It hasn’t really worked so well for me. I started with Twitter towards the end of 2013 and now have around 500 followers. For the most part though I haven’t actually made any meaningful connection with them – the one exception being Geoffrey West with whom I feel I have forged a ‘virtual’ friendship. Maybe now that we have made each other’s acquaintance I can make that two exceptions!
    I am now on Facebook too https://www.facebook.com/?sk=nf and so far I am finding that to be, in general, a more personal experience.

    1. Hi Ray,
      Thank you so much for this. I think you have to be very proactive on Twitter, otherwise nothing happens. Click on my followers if you like. Cordelia

  5. Hi Cordelia:
    We have connected in Twitter. Twitter is a very strange beast and when you get to have many followers you can’t neither see nor read everything even if you spent 24 hours a day there. The problem with following too many people at once is that you have to keep a balance of the people you follow and the people who follow you. You can follow more people than follow you but not by very much and once you get to 2100 that applies. Now I use things like Tweepie to get rid of people who don’t follow me back (there are people who will follow and then unfollow you to increase their numbers). It is useful to get the word out and I’ve met many interesting people through it but I think there’s so much noise and people that the message gets lost too quickly. I haven’t found Facebook that useful other than the groups either (and I used chat to talk to other writers or people I know). To tell you the truth, I think more books is the best way of promoting. And it’s useful to share other people’s work…

  6. I like Twitter and I feel like a lot of writers and artist probably think that it takes too much time away from writing but I think it is an important part of building a following. Even once you’ve written your second story or novel, those existing connections don’t go away; they uplift and support continuous writing and creation.

  7. Cordelia,

    For me Twitter has been a great way to connect and interact with fans of my book, Battle for Honor: Gates. I’ve been actively using Twitter for about a year now and have just under 27k followers. However, I do agree that the message can get lost in the vast Twitter sphere, but I do strongly feel that it is worth the effort. In between writing, editing and working I have to make sure I carve out a good block of time each day solely dedicated to Twitter. I use Hootsuite to help me manage and schedule my tweets strategically throughout the days. Other than that the majority of my Twitter time is answering DM’s and mentions. Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions you may have.

  8. I agree twitter is a great place to network. I have found that its easier to reach companies and to grow your network. I am so glad I met you, I’ll be looking forward to work with you in the future, and I definitely have to write up a blog about you and your writings!

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