The AC Twitter Challenge-Mixed Feelings

May I be honest? I had mixed feelings about the AC Twitter Challenge, just as I have mixed feelings about self-promotion and Associated Content in general. I decided to participate in the challenge, because I was already a Twitter user, although not a very longtime user and not a very prolific user. I would typically update my Twitter status a couple times a day, if that. I thought that by participating in the AC Twitter challenge, I'd be giving myself an excuse to invest a little more time with the Twitter platform and more closely familiarize myself with its various capabilities.

My Twitter user name is nonvanilla and you can visit my profile via this link-- http://twitter.com/nonvanilla. I am a poet and most of the other Twitter users I follow are other poets, artists, and creative types. Most of them seem to use Twitter for posting a combination of creative observations and quips mixed with clever self-promotion. For example, they might link to occasional new poetry publication credits or exciting tidbits of new personal art news, but they are just as likely to share their excitement about poetry or art or other interesting or amusing affairs that are not directly related to them personally. I try to strike a similar balance with my own Twitter account so that it's not just a vehicle for shameless self-promotion, because frankly, I find it rather obnoxious when people inundate you with nugget after nugget of self promotion and nothing else.

Granted, determining how much or how little to self-promote can be a tricky fine line. It's certainly one that I have struggled with when it comes to my own creative projects, including my writing pursuits. I often feel uncertain about whether I'm under-promoting or over-promoting. I want to get the word out about new publications and projects, but I don't want to be overbearing about it. I want to be fun and charismatic when I do self-promote; I don't want to seem like some impersonal automaton, posting the same link to my own work over & over, in the hopes of attracting a few new viewers each time. This can be a tricky balance with many forums, but especially with a forum like Twitter where new content is constantly being added and old content is scrolling down the page, soon to disappear into the ether, there may be even more of a temptation to keep posting the same link.

Personally, I think it is counterproductive to post ten consecutive content links to one's own content, because even if I choose to follow one link and read one of your articles and enjoy your writing, I most likely am not going to have the time or desire to read ten consecutive articles by one content producer in one sitting. If my entire Twitter home page is inundated with tweets from one individual, then that individual risks alienating me (and risks deletion by me) by appearing as if she is only interested in her own content and seeming to assume that I am only interested in her content. This assumption irks me, because I am interested in a variety of content and really don't want to see one individual monopolizing my space.

Perhaps deciding how best to make use of social networking platforms such as Twitter is largely a matter of striking a balance that one feels personally comfortable with and that one thinks her followers will be comfortable with, too (while also keeping in mind that one can't please everyone)-and perhaps achieving this balance requires some experimentation. As part of my decision to participate in the AC Twitter Challenge, I decided to experiment with updating my Twitter account more frequently and self-promoting myself a little more than I might otherwise feel comfortable with, in order to find out what results this yielded. Instead of updating my account only 1-3 times per day (which had been my norm before entering into this challenge), I started to update 3-10 times per day. At least one (and sometimes two or three) of my daily updates included mention of some of my own favorite AC content, followed by a link to the content, followed by #bestofac. Prior to my involvement in the AC Twitter Challenge, I had used Twitter to share a link to a piece of my AC content after it had just been published, but after posting that initial link, that would be the end of my promotion. During my involvement with the challenge, I experimented with promoting links to certain pieces of content multiple times. I also installed the Associated Content Portal application widget on my Facebook page and updated that widget periodically. Overall, I invested significantly more time and effort into promoting myself and my AC content than I ordinarily do, but I didn't go so far as to resort to promotional techniques that annoy me when others use them.

As a result of my significantly increased efforts over the span of a couple weeks, I gained a couple new fans of my AC content, a few more comments than I typically receive, and slightly increased page views during this time frame. I am pleased about this slightly increased attention, but my efforts certainly didn't yield any sort of hugely substantial increase in traffic or earnings. Thus my mixed feelings about the AC Twitter Challenge, as well as my continued mixed feelings about Associated Content in general persist.

I appreciate and enjoy AC as a forum that allows me the opportunity to hone my writing skills on a variety of topics (as well as read some interesting content by others on a variety of topics) and to potentially make a few extra dollars in the process. However, it also seems to me that in order to be really successful on AC (if success is defined by lots of followers, lots of page views, and managing to earn more than a few bucks a month), one would have to devote hours upon hours per week to writing and promoting her AC content. This might be a possibility if one's AC content writing was pretty much the only writing she did, but for me (and I imagine for many other content producers, too), I am balancing the writing I do for AC with many other creative projects, ranging from other random freelance article writing assignments to script writing to poetry and much more. I don't have full-time hours to devote solely to AC and as such, I feel like I will never manage to earn more than a few bucks a month through my AC writing, no matter how high quality the articles I do produce might be.

Indeed, I suspect that someone who churns out bland and generic content, yet devotes more time to producing and promoting it , has the potential to be more successful on AC, even if their content is not particularly interesting or engaging or even necessarily well-written. I wish those who wrote for AC were referred to as content creators (or even just content writers) rather than content producers. Sometimes I feel as if AC is set up to reward production more so than genuine quality or creativity. Be that as it may though, churning out generic content does not mesh well with my own personal standards of quality or success and so I am not going to resort to that myself, just as I am not going to resort to inundating other people's space with on ongoing onslaught of self-promotion. Again, I guess it comes down to attaining a balance that one can feel personally comfortable with and good about. Personally, I am far more interested in creating as opposed to producing and so it is important to me that my writing and promotions reflect that priority.

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http://twitter.com/nonvanilla