Twitter and Hoot Suite

Good title, Twitter Challenge. It was indeed a challenge for someone who hadn't used it before. I still don't do the fancy things the other Tweeple do, but I'm catching on.

How I use Twitter

The main way I use Twitter is to post my articles and RT the articles that show up in my Twitter stream while I'm online. The auto-post that I used to rely on with Associated Content doesn't seem to work anymore, so I post my articles myself. I don't know how to make the links shorter, so I hope it's under 140 characters, or it doesn't get posted.

I click on the links and read the articles written by my friends or the ones that interest me written by people I've never heard of. It made me wonder if others are just RTing and moving on, or if they're opening the articles, too. I have had less than a handful of comments by people who have never commented on my work before. None of them mentioned how they came across my articles. When I read an article I find on Twitter, I leave a comment and tell the person I found their article on Twitter so they know Twitter is working.

Although I have 195 followers, I only follow 56. I block the bots so they don't attach themselves like little parasites on my friends. I have no idea who or why these people are following me, but as long as they don't stalk me, I guess I'm fine with it.

Is Twitter worthwhile for me?

I'm not sure Twitter is an efficient way to promote my articles, but it is an efficient way for me use time I don't have, which is why I haven't been writing much. My writing time has been overtaken by Twitter, reading articles and commenting. Until today, I hadn't learned how to RT more effectively, so I cut and paste tweets for my RTs. If something was more than a page or two back in the Twitter stream, I didn't see it unless it had my name on it.

I found that when I started using hashtags, which is quite recently, my page views went up, so I believe there is a connection there. Other than that, I haven't seen any monumental blips in my page views, even when I concentrate on Tweeting one certain article for the entire day.

My discovery of Hoot Suite

This afternoon was the first day I used Hoot Suite and it's made a huge difference in the way I feel about Twitter. Up until now, it was a total chore to keep up. I felt unorganized and inept, wondering what people saw in Twitter and why they liked it. Now that I'm organized and not missing most of the tweets when I'm away from Twitter, I feel more like using it and it's much quicker to catch up.

My conclusion to the Twitter Challenge is that I've gotten into a wonderful circle of friends from AC who are very supportive and lots of fun. Now that the Twitter Challenge is over, I will probably continue to Tweet, since it's become a habit, and look for ways to promote myself and others a little more efficiently using Hoot Suite.