Welcome to the first installment of Twitter Tuesday. In the spirit of Twitter, this blog will be short and sweet and to the point. There is a lot of bad advice floating around when it comes to how to use Twitter. Is it because these “experts” are wrong? No, but they may not be giving advice that’s good for authors. 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 brand. This blog will help you rule the Twitterverse without devolving into a spam bot.

This Week’s Fail Whale–Unfollowing People for Inactivity

I have recently read some blogs where writers talked about unfollowing people for inactivity. I never unfollow anyone unless they are:

1. Abusive

2. Inappropriate

3. A bot.

Why? Because we never know why that person is being inactive. They could have had their computer crash, gotten married, deployed or been temporarily thrust into witness protection to hide from an evil twin who has ties to the mob. We don’t know! Thing is, they aren’t taking up any room, so why cull the herd? The Six Degrees of Separation is our friend. We could inadverdently unfollow the person who might have made that critical difference in our career. Play it smart and leave it be.

This Week’s Twitter Tip–Download TweetDeck

Regular Twitter is fine for the regular user who is only keeping up with a handful of people. TweetDeck makes it possible not only to follow thousands of people, but also genuinely interact….and it keeps you from wanting to slam your head in a door repeatedly (which is always a plus). Yes, there are other similar applications, but TweetDeck is my favorite and the example I use in my book.

Tweet ya later!

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