I’ve fought Twitter for the longest time, because at first it seemed so damned pointless. I’m a novelist. I couldn’t see how anything worthwhile could be discussed in 120 characters.
But the explosive popularity of Twitter, and texting in general, proved me wrong.
I’ve embraced Twitter conditionally. We’re working partners for now. I still don’t really get the appeal that it seems to have for lots of people, because it’s more of a summarising agency than a real gathering place, such a Facebook. But with the help of a few tools, like Tweetdeck, Twitter does become a little more manageable.
Especially if you exploit hashtags, like I’ve recently learned to mine the depths of properly. Hashtags are really useful little buggers, aren’t they?
If you, like me, haven’t really taken to Twitter, then allow me to explain that if you’re using a application/platform/program like Tweetdeck, that will permanently search and sort Tweets with specific hashtags, then hashtags start operating like Groups on Twitter, and these days, that’s what a lot of hashtags are used for: Group chatting.
Here’s some of the more common hashtags used for romance novels and their genres. If you set up a permanent search/sort for these tags, you can start chatting with like-minded tweeters on your sub-genre of choice, and pick up news and tips about new titles, free titles, reviews, and more.
Some of these are used individually, but some of them are also used in combination. For instance: #romantic #suspense — instead of #romsus, which is used almost exclusively by Harlequin Romance to push their latest category titles. You can also get mega combinations: #romantic #suspense #free #indie #kindle #ebook — although one could ague the author of that tweet could have saved themselves 6 characters by dropping the #ebook tag off….
It becomes quite fascinating watching some of the more obscure tags come through. Depending on the program you’re using to monitor Twitter, you can often click on a hashtag within a Tweet, and another column will open up with all Tweets for just that hashtag will appear. If it’s a popular tag, you’ll quickly see lots of Tweets. If not, you can shut down the column.
#paranormalromance
#amreading
#romance
#fridayfinds
#goodreads
#kensingtonbooks (and most of the other big publishers, and major authors, too)
#soulmate
#freereads
#darkfantasy
#magic
#urbanfantasy
#99cents
#ebook
#vampires
#werewolves
#lovestory
#demons
#erotica (good in combination with romance)
#angels
#IndieKindle
#bookreview
#suspense
#historical
#western
#chicklit
#amreading (a reader’s haven)
Beware…following your nose sucks up mega amounts of time…but it’s fun!
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I love Twitter, and spend more time there than I do on Facebook, though I don’t tweet nearly as often as I used to. I’ve discovered a lot of new authors through Twitter. Basically, Facebook friends are people you know, and Twitter friends are people you wish you knew!
Interesting way of putting it, Robin.
Do you have any tips for filting the mass of repeat tweets? That’s one thing I find frustrating about Twitter. People repeat their own tweets three or four times (are they afraid people might miss them?), then everyone else re-tweets them, so scrolling through a hashtag group looking for interesting tweets means you’re reading the same tweet over and over again. It makes for massive traffic and low content.
As I said, I’m still learning this stuff.
But the hashtags really made a difference for me, when I discovered them.
t.
I follow a lot of authors, but I tend to avoid following ones who do a lot of retweets. Before I follow someone, I look at their timeline and if they seem to do more retweets than original tweets, or if they constantly tweet a lot of links, I don’t follow them. But yeah, sometimes I’m wading through a lot of that.