Tag Archives: social media

How I Got 8,000 New Twitter Followers in Six Months (Without Shelling Out Any Money)

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How I Got 8,000 New Twitter Followers in Six Months (Without Shelling Out Any Money)

I’m not good at keeping track of my stats. Whether it be blog visitors, Twitter followers, or Facebook fans, I just don’t pay much attention. There was a time I did, of course. We all do. I just stopped worrying about it somewhere along the line. I only know my Facebook page reach because Facebook has stuck it on my newsfeed page.

So it was completely accidental that I noticed I had more than 18,500 Twitter followers a few days before the end of the year. Being a tad bit OCD, and enjoying those round numbers (and a little bit just to see if I could), I decided to see if I could make it to 20,000 followers by the end of the year. (I made it with few hours to spare. By noon on New Year’s Eve, I had 20,000 followers.)

Of course I was excited, and of course I shared on Facebook and Twitter, which led to several people asking how I got that many followers. When I looked at TwitterCounter and realized that I had gained 8,000 of those followers in the last six months, I was even more excited, and knew I had to share my “secrets.” (They’re not really secrets, but it makes me feel important so just roll with it.) Continue reading →

6 Twitter Auto-DMs We’re All Tired Of Getting

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I don’t know who was the first person to come up with the idea of automatically sending a private message to everyone who follows you on Twitter, but it was a really bad idea, and has rendered the DM function almost useless. I know many people who don’t even check their DMs anymore because 99% of them are auto-DMs. The 1% that are legitimate messages just drift off into Twitter oblivion.

Twitter really should just ban auto-DMs. They’ve banned apps that auto-follow; surely more common sense can’t be far behind.

If you’re wondering if your auto-DM is annoying, the answer is most likely yes. I’ve seen a few — very, very few — that were funny or clever. That’s out of 10,000 or so. (Just rounding here. I haven’t actually archived or counted my DMs.) Those are pretty low odds.

[Tweet “If you’re wondering if your auto-DM is annoying, the answer is most likely yes.”]

If you’re still not sure, I’m happy to spell it out for you (and vent a little in the process). Continue reading →

What Part of Social Do You Not Understand?

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Why are we still talking about this? There are probably a thousand blog posts and articles out there advising authors how to use Twitter and other social media. But, especially Twitter. I’ve even written about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are entire books dedicated to teaching authors to use social media for marketing.

So, for the love of Pete, can someone tell me why this is still an issue?!? I follow a fairly narrow group of people on Twitter: authors, publishers, bloggers (in various niches), autism/Asperger’s experts/moms (obviously there is some overlap there), and fitness experts (although I end up dumping the ones that are only spamming links). So, when I go through my Twitter feed to see what’s going on, what do I find? A few quotes, the occasional personal remark, quite a few links to author/writing/publishing blog posts. But at least 90% of my feed (and I’m probably being generous) is book links posted by the author. It makes it really hard to have a conversation when you haven’t said anything in the first place. And you can bet I’m not going to retweet someone else’s spammy ad. Continue reading →