Twitterpated (Not) II
In August 2012, I joined Twitter. Now as most of you readers know, I'm not a big Twitter fan. I use it for Literary Mama purposes mostly, to give a shout out to the masses that writers I work with have published something with us. But I don't have the time to use Twitter well, and really, I wouldn't know how to use Twitter well. (I know the lesson there--if I used it more often, I'd learn how to use it. But really, I have other things to do.)
So here is my question to you: What are the rules of Twitter? I wonder if they exist, and if they did, would I understand them?
Which leads to my second question to you (which has to do with followers): Why would anyone follow me, get me to follow back, and then unfollow me? Is that behavior just to increase their followers number? I'm at 963 followers right now but I know that number will fluctuate. I don't expect people to follow me back if I follow them, and if I do follow someone and they follow me back, I don't unfollow them after that. That's just rude, isn't it?
And that leads to my third and final question (I swear): Do people really believe their self-worth can be measured by the number of Twitter followers?
Anyone care to explain?
So here is my question to you: What are the rules of Twitter? I wonder if they exist, and if they did, would I understand them?
Which leads to my second question to you (which has to do with followers): Why would anyone follow me, get me to follow back, and then unfollow me? Is that behavior just to increase their followers number? I'm at 963 followers right now but I know that number will fluctuate. I don't expect people to follow me back if I follow them, and if I do follow someone and they follow me back, I don't unfollow them after that. That's just rude, isn't it?
And that leads to my third and final question (I swear): Do people really believe their self-worth can be measured by the number of Twitter followers?
Anyone care to explain?
Comments
Thirdly. Yes, some people do obsess about followers, but these are the same people doing that on any other social media site as well. It's okay to ignore them.
Secondly, I agree that it's bad form to follow someone just to get them to follow you back with full plans of unfollowing them after the fact. I don't expect follow backs myself, but I do make sure to check out anyone who follows me. I'll follow back almost anyone (unless they exclusively post things I have absolutely no interest in) but I rarely follow back companies/organizations (I feel like they're only following me in order to do some marketing). Of course, these are just my ways of Twittering and not any kind of standard.
First and foremost, I think the best way to get the most out of Twitter is by making lists. I have three at the moment, and they are all private. List 1 consists of the few people I do the most tweeting with and the few people I know in person, these are the people I want to keep up with most, if not all, of their tweets; list 2 is those who I don't regularly interact with but like what they have to say so I scroll through that list maybe twice a week; list 3 is bloggers that I have encountered through twitter that I don't wish to subscribe and read all of their posts but I want to watch for a title that captures my interest. I use to have a forth list when I was current with the show Once Upon a Time in order to keep up with other fans. The best part about list making is it allows me to follow lots of people without having to wade through ALL their tweets to make sure I see the ones I do want to (I rarely scroll through my home feed, if it's not at the top when I'm on Twitter I don't see it unless that person is on one of my lists)
The other part to getting the most out of Twitter is hashtags. Whenever I put a hashtag into a tweet I click on it to see what other people have been saying using the same hashtag. I'll like/comment/share a few and then move on with my day. It's kind of like a brief moment of being in the same time and place with random strangers. Instead of being all packed onto a bus or waiting in the same waiting room, we've all come together for a brief moment in our lives because of a common hashtag. It's nothing more than a passing comment, like telling the girl you pass in a coffee shop they have a lovely scarf.
Okay, okay, I'll stop now.
Uber popular 14 year old. LOL!!