Posts by Annie Neugebauer

After weighing the pros and cons of Twitter last time, maybe you’ve decided to take the leap. But you’re understandably overwhelmed, because Twitter is a strange and mysterious land to the uninitiated. Never fear! I’m here with the basics of what you need to do to start off your Twitter life with a bang. And even if this Twitter thing is old hat to you, I hope you’ll give it a quick glance, because there are tips for everyone hiding in these basics. Let’s go!

1. Use the name you publish under.

If you’re joining Twitter for the sake of building your writing platform, you should use the exact name that you publish under. This helps readers avoid confusion. So if you publish under George K. Schmidt, that’s how you should fill out your name – not George Schmidt or George Karl Schmidt.

2. Make your handle as close to that name as possible.

Your Twitter name and your Twitter handle don’t have to match, but they should. Again, you’re working toward recognition and clarity. If the handle for your exact name is taken, choose the closest thing that makes sense and seems professional. Think @GKSchmidt, not @GeorgiePorgie.

3. Upload a photo of your face, or at least yourself. (No book covers.)

I know, I know. Some authors are so resistant to headshots. I can’t force you to come out of your shell, but I can say that people on Twitter want to talk to humans, not eggs, not logos, not your pet dog, and (sorry) not your book cover. It doesn’t matter how gorgeous your cover is or how smitten you are with it; people want to follow an author, not a book. Still can’t bring yourself to use a face shot? The next best thing is humanoid alternatives (silhouettes, profiles, cartoon renderings) – not landscapes or objects.

In my last post here at Writer Unboxed, I mentioned that – despite what the “build a platform” drones might chant outside your bedroom window at night – writers don’t have to be on Twitter. It is not required. Believe it or not, we are all grown-up people here (or let’s pretend we are), and we have the right to pick and choose which things we participate in. Shocking, right?

I resisted the siren call of Twitter for years. Everyone and their dog was talking about how it’s so much better than Facebook, but I’ll admit I have an obstinate streak, and the sheer volume of “You should be on Twitter” comments had me vowing I would never touch the thing. To be honest with you, I feel silly for taking that stance for that reason. There are many reasons for writers not to use Twitter, but sheer stubbornness is surely the least valid. Needless to say, since I write an entire column about it, that I am now decidedly on Team Twitter.

But don’t get me wrong. I’m on Team Twitter because it’s turned out to be a fantastic “fit” for me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see that it’s a horrible fit for others, or that it has drawbacks. I have several friends who used Twitter for years before deleting their accounts – and as far as I know, they couldn’t be happier with their decision to jump ship.

This post is for those of you who haven’t made up your minds yet. Maybe your writing buddies are trying to talk you into it but you have reservations. Maybe you want to try but feel intimidated. Maybe you have an account you never use and are wondering if you should delete it. Maybe you’re already active and secretly loathing it, wishing you could cut it out of your life. No matter where you stand on the scale of undecided, a nice old-fashioned pros and cons list is always helpful!

Pros of Twitter:

This post probably isn’t what you’re expecting. If you’re looking for guidelines and tips on how to use and get the most out of Twitter, you can view a list of my past posts here. But before you get overwhelmed, don’t worry. This is not a crash-course on everything you could possible learn about the art of Twitter. This post is about what you really need to know about Twitter, and that boils down to five surprisingly simple things.

1. There is no one right way.

Don’t roll your eyes; it’s true! If what you’re doing is working, it’s the right way for you. If it’s not, it’s not. It truly is that simple.

There will always be things that work for you that won’t work for someone else, and vice versa. This is a fact of life. Use it to free yourself from the stress of “following the rules.” If getting on Twitter feels like a chore – or a field of social land mines – because you’re so wound-up about “doing something wrong,” you’re not going to enjoy it. And if you’re not enjoying it, your followers probably aren’t either, which defeats the entire point. So here’s your permission: take what works for you. Leave the rest.

2. There is no such thing as a Twitter expert.

If there’s no such thing as “Twitter rules,” there also can be no such thing as a “Twitter expert.” That might sound strange coming from someone who writes a Twitter column, but trust me: I don’t consider myself an expert. In fact, I would run far, far away from anyone who calls themselves a Twitter expert. That type of terminology just doesn’t leave enough space for individual variables for my taste.

Every once in a while, I’ll be on Twitter and start feeling glum. No one is talking to me, I think. No one new is following me. No one’s replying to my tweets. There’s a problem here, and that problem is me.

It never fails that if I notice a Twitter slump, it’s my own fault. Whenever I start feeling left out, I know it’s because I’ve gotten lazy. Twitter is not always the priority, so there’s nothing wrong with letting it lag when you have other things to focus on (that writing thing, anyone?), but sometimes we focus on Twitter and still feel dissatisfied. Those are the best times to take a step back and ask if there’s a good reason for this feeling.

Twitter is a social platform. Think of it as a party or large gathering. You can’t just stand in the middle of the room and talk; you have to go up to people and engage in conversations. You might get away with being the storyteller who draws people to you for a while, but eventually people will realize that you have no interest in others and wander away.

Today I’m going to cover the 5 most common shortcuts tweeps use, and why they can become a problem.

The Tweet and Run

We’re all guilty of this at some point.

If you spend any amount of time on the internet, you’ve probably seen people using words or phrases with pound signs in front of them, #like #this. On Twitter, this is called a hashtag.

Putting that symbol in front of a word turns it into a searchable link. In other words, you can then click on that #hashtag and see the tweets of everyone else also using it. It’s a way to find people talking about the same thing you’re talking about; it creates a larger conversation all in one feed.

How to Make One

There’s no trick to making a hashtag. You don’t have to register it, log it, or reserve it. All you do is type it, and Twitter will automatically turn it into a clickable search term.

Start with the pound sign (#), but don’t include any spaces or special characters (?’!&, etc.). Spaces and special characters will break your hashtag.

So if you want to use the phrase “author’s choice,” you would need to write it as: #authorschoice or #AuthorsChoice . Neither #author’schoice nor #authors choice will work properly. Some people use caps to make new words easier to read, but this is optional.

Numbers are okay, but don’t start your hashtag with numbers. #2013Conference won’t work. #Conference2013 will, though.

And lastly, don’t forget to keep it short. Hashtags do count toward your 140-character tweet limit, so the longer they are the less space you have to add other text.

Best Ways to Use Them

Today I want to talk about a problem I see in the community of writers on Twitter: a growing sense of entitlement.

We writers work hard to build our platform. We’re told how important it is, so we put our time, energy, and hearts into the effort of building our potential audience. And there are certain unspoken rules, as most of us know. Tenuous things such as, If I retweet your blog post you’ll retweet one of mine soon, and If I add you to my list of awesome writers you’ll add me to yours. Most of these rules come down to the idea of digital karma. If we support and promote other writers, they’ll do the same for us. Which is usually true.

Except when it isn’t.

And who knows why sometimes it isn’t? Maybe someone just didn’t like your blog post this week. Maybe they don’t want to be associated with your genre, persona, or presence. Maybe they’re busy. Maybe they just forgot. There are dozens of fair and unfair reasons that someone might not do what we wanted, hoped, or even expected them to do… which is when our sense of entitlement rears its ugly head.

Which is the perfect time to step back, think, and remind ourselves what’s what – and what’s worth it.

What We Are Entitled To

…And that’s pretty much it. (But that’s a lot.)

What We’re Not Entitled To

The Bottom Line

It’s easy to mistake courtesy with entitlement. Is it polite for a person to respond when we @ mention them? Yes, of course. But they are not obligated to. Would it be nice if everyone we followed followed us back? Yep. But that’s not how it works.

If you’re new to Twitter, you’ve likely already seen retweeting come up. If you’re about to jump on the bandwagon, this is one of the first things you’ll need to learn. And even if you’re a seasoned tweep, the intricacies of the mysterious retweet can be confusing. Don’t you worry; I’m here to help. Let’s walk through the details step by step.

What a Retweet Is

A tweet is 140-character message. When someone else publishes a tweet that you like, you can share it with your own followers by “retweeting” it – which you’ll commonly see abbreviated as “RT.” There are several ways to retweet someone, and we’ll cover those below.

What a MT Is

You might see “MT” floating around the twitosphere; it stands for “modified tweet.” A modified tweet is exactly like a retweet except it’s used when you’ve changed some of the original tweet. So if you have to cut out some of the original tweeter’s words or adjust their phrasing for some reason, you should use the abbreviation MT instead of RT to let your followers know you’ve tweaked something.

Why You Should Retweet

Retweeting is the heart of Twitter, which is why I’m dedicating a whole post to it today. The beauty of Twitter is in its brevity; the fact that tweets are so short make them easy to share and pass along. Retweeting excellent tweets does several things: it improves (and varies) your content for your followers, it supports the original tweeter by getting their content viewed by a new group of people, and it lets someone know you appreciate their tweet – an easy way to make steps toward connecting with others.

How to Retweet

There are two ways to retweet: manually or by pushing the retweet button.

Hello Writer Unboxed readers! I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Annie Neugebauer, and I’m the new Twitter columnist around these parts. I’ll be blogging Twitter tips, theory, and practice every other month. Many thanks to Nina Badzin for recommending me, and to Therese Walsh and the whole WU crew for welcoming me with open arms.

I’m going to assume that you guys have been following Nina’s posts (archived here, if you need to go back) and that you also know some basic Twitter etiquette. I thought I would use this first post to reveal my Twitter philosophy with five unshakeable beliefs. These fundamentals have evolved since I really started using Twitter in 2011 and have served me well, and I believe that if you take them to heart they’ll serve you well too.

1) It’s All About Balance

Twitter for writers is a conundrum. We’re told to “build a platform” and “network,” and indeed, Twitter is fantastic for both of those things. If used correctly, it’s an incredibly powerful marketing tool. Yet Twitter is inherently an informal social forum. It started out with the simple concept of quickly answering the question “What are you doing?” …not “Why should I buy your book?”

If you use Twitter strictly as a professional venue, your feed might be useful, but it’ll be about as exciting as a five-hour board meeting. But if you use it playfully and personally, an editor considering your manuscript might see your tweets about your cat licking his butt. So what’s a writer to do?