Welcome to the eleventh installment of Twitter Tuesday. In the spirit of Twitter, this blog will be short and sweet and to the point. The tips offered here are all based off my best-selling book We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media. If our goal is to build an author platform in the thousands to tens of thousands, then we will have to approach Twitter differently than a faceless corporation or even the regular person who does not possess a goal of becoming a brandwill help you rule the Twitterverse without devolving into a spam bot.

This Week’s Fail Whale–The Twitter Hermit

The Twitter Hermit signs up for an account, yet doesn’t interact a lot. He keeps to himself and only follows a handful of people. Twitter Hermit might be shy or not know what to say. Twitter Hermit might not see how it can be useful to follow a bunch of people he doesn’t know, has never met, and likely never will meet.

Regardless of his reasons, Twitter Hermit will not be very effective on Twitter because he never can reach a critical mass of people in his network. Thus, his Twitter experience will be extremely limited.

When we join Twitter, the more people we follow (and who follow us) the better. Why? We gain a pool of resources beyond anything we can imagine. If we are hanging out by ourselves or just with a handful of tweeps, we have severely limited how we can use the Six Degrees of Separation to our advantage.

Twitter will be a waste of time.

Twitter is one of the best ways to activate the Six Degrees of Separation–someone always knows someone who knows someone who knows someone. The more people in our network, the better odds we will connect to the right person at the right time. 

This Week’s Twitter Tip–Use Twitter as a Force Multiplier

Twitter is one of the best force multipliers ever, and probably THE best way to get great information FAST. For example, when I was toying with the idea of writing a novel about a female bounty hunter, I had a choice. Go to the library and search through all the data hoping I found what I was looking for. I could also spend hours on the Internet searching key words and hoping I would hit pay dirt.

I didn’t do either. My time is limited, so I need to spend it wisely (I am sure a few of you can relate).

I tweeted, “Hey, my tweeps! Anyone know some good resources to learn about bounty hunting?” My screen, within ten seconds, lit up with tweeps eager to help. Some even sent me links to bounty hunters they KNEW. I had links to sites and resources that it would have taken me weeks to do on my own. But, if I only had a network of 20 people, the responses would have been far more limited. With a large network of 1500 (at the time) I actually got some amazing information. With 1500 tweeps, my odds were better that someone knew someone who could help me out.

People, in general, like to help and want to serve. Let them. Twitter is an amazing community and a tremendous resource if we understand how it works.

Tweet ya later!

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