I've spent a long time trying to promote my art and writing on twitter and it had been a giant disaster until I decided to change my tactics.
What I had been doing before was following people in hopes they would follow back, without any desire to actually see what these people have to say. I was trying to get followers through those follow exchange things and that got me some followers, but nothing was happening with them. They were a part of a long list of names that meant absolutely nothing to me and to whom I meant about as much.
I few months ago I decided to start following people I'm actually interested in following. I didn't care if they would follow me back; that wasn't the reason I was reading their tweets. I ended up finding a lot of useful information through these people's posts and I decided that I should try sounding smart by retweeting them. To my surprise some of tweeps I retweeted decided to follow me back and I got people I never even heard of following me as well.
Through twitter I found many blogs and podcasts I now enjoy reading and listening to. I tweet things I find useful or just entertaining and attach tweeter handles of people who's posts I'm tweeting. These tweets started getting retweeted and I ended up gaining more following.
After a while I decided to organize my tweeter posts by scheduling them in advance, which saved me a lot of time. I try to check tweeter every day to see if I got new followers, retweets, replies, messages and to check on those I follow.
Long story short, on the days I have four or five tweets I can safely expect a few more followers.
It's not the fastest way to grow following. What I was doing before gave me more followers per day, but my new strategy is a good way to get followers who actually care about what I'm tweeting about. Where before I was lucky to get at least one click on a link, now with about the same amount of followers as before, I consider it an unlucky tweet if I get only fifteen clicks.
Considering the fact that I have about 250 followers at the moment and that many of them are from the good old days of bad tweeting practices, I think it's not too bad. Besides, It's not like I don't get to learn a ton of good information in the process.
While changing the way I use twitter, I also changed the way I view it. I no longer use it to promote myself, although it is a good benefit. Now twitter is a way for me to get connections and I can't build them by being an asshat who shouts about me-me-me-me.
What I had been doing before was following people in hopes they would follow back, without any desire to actually see what these people have to say. I was trying to get followers through those follow exchange things and that got me some followers, but nothing was happening with them. They were a part of a long list of names that meant absolutely nothing to me and to whom I meant about as much.
I few months ago I decided to start following people I'm actually interested in following. I didn't care if they would follow me back; that wasn't the reason I was reading their tweets. I ended up finding a lot of useful information through these people's posts and I decided that I should try sounding smart by retweeting them. To my surprise some of tweeps I retweeted decided to follow me back and I got people I never even heard of following me as well.
Through twitter I found many blogs and podcasts I now enjoy reading and listening to. I tweet things I find useful or just entertaining and attach tweeter handles of people who's posts I'm tweeting. These tweets started getting retweeted and I ended up gaining more following.
After a while I decided to organize my tweeter posts by scheduling them in advance, which saved me a lot of time. I try to check tweeter every day to see if I got new followers, retweets, replies, messages and to check on those I follow.
Long story short, on the days I have four or five tweets I can safely expect a few more followers.
It's not the fastest way to grow following. What I was doing before gave me more followers per day, but my new strategy is a good way to get followers who actually care about what I'm tweeting about. Where before I was lucky to get at least one click on a link, now with about the same amount of followers as before, I consider it an unlucky tweet if I get only fifteen clicks.
Considering the fact that I have about 250 followers at the moment and that many of them are from the good old days of bad tweeting practices, I think it's not too bad. Besides, It's not like I don't get to learn a ton of good information in the process.
While changing the way I use twitter, I also changed the way I view it. I no longer use it to promote myself, although it is a good benefit. Now twitter is a way for me to get connections and I can't build them by being an asshat who shouts about me-me-me-me.