Why You Should Be Using Twitter

When I saw the AC Twitter challenge I knew it was just the push I needed to try Twitter for real. As a tool for networking and promoting, Twitter seemed like an interesting new venue to explore for both my writing and my therapy work. So with 25 days to complete the challenge I signed up and in less than 5 minutes, @estherbMFT was officially tweeting. My goal was to achieve 1000 page views by the end of the challenge. I am sad to say that I came in short with only 869 page views today but lessons learned and connections made in my short time in Twitterville made the whole thing worthwhile. So here, in no particular order, are top reasons for writers, and anyone else, to start using Twitter.

1. Meet interesting writers. Although I said this was in no particular order, I will say that meeting fascinating people is by far the top reason to get on Twitter. In the span of little more than 3 weeks I have 80 followers and I am following 85 people. That may not seem like much when you consider that many people have 1000's of followers but I have been selective in following those people who are likely to say things that interest or amuse me. Because I went into this challenge wondering how Twitter could help with my writing on AC as well as my work as a therapist I have sort of developed 2 different circles of Twitter friends- writers and therapists. As a writer for AC I have to say that the AC family on Twitter is a really great bunch of folks. Often eager to RT (that's re-tweet for you Twitter neophytes) contributors such as @lynnmac04 and @poeticheart34 are wonderful Twitter friends to have. And as a therapist I have been able to connect with other health professionals and organizations that support mental health, marriage, and adolescent issues. A few of my favorites are @LisaKiftTherapy, @healmyPTSD, and @VOCALvirginia. All of which have offered insight, information, and a variety of funny tidbits.

2. Meet new and interesting people who have nothing to do with writing. Meeting other writers is great but there is a world of people out there who are not directly related to writing or publishing that are worth knowing. Aside from celebrities like Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk), and Adam Savage (@donttrythis), there are a lot of not-so famous folks worth following. A good first place to start finding your new tweeps (that's Twitter people) is with the Trending Topics. This is a list of what is currently being tweeted about the most. It's a great way to see what other people are talking about right now. Pick a topic that's intrigues you and suddenly you are connected to an endless list of other people's thought son that exact thing. For example, last week I was checking out the Trending Topics and saw that The Office was a hot topic, not surprising since the wedding episode had just aired. Having just watched it, I thought I would check out what other people were saying about the show. I noticed @WolfeTaylor made a comment that sounded exactly like something I would say. I responded and then checked out her profile, turns out she is in public relations and I have had some PR questions that I haven't been able to find the answers to. I decided to follow her, hoping that over time, her tweets would share some insights and resources that I might find helpful. Well it turns out that after asking her 1 question, she was willing to email me some detailed suggestions. Long story short, she not only shared my slightly pathetic soft spot for TV weddings, but also turned out to be a wonderfully bright and helpful professional that was happy to point me in the right direction on my PR dilemma. I didn't seek out someone to help me with my problem; instead I found someone with a mutual interest (The Office) and let our conversation naturally flow. I think the moral of the story here is that you will find the most interesting and helpful people when you are just looking to have interesting conversation. No one wants to be used or feel like you are shopping for the most useful new acquaintance. The social rules of everyday life still hold true in the virtual world; play nice and people will reciprocate.

3. Find new and interesting topics. Twitter is like a huge stream of consciousness happening right in front of your eyes. It can be completely overwhelming but with a few tricks you can learn to manage the information overload and turn it into a source of inspiration. In addition to the trending topics, you might try an application like TweetDeck or Social Oomph which will allow you to track certain topics. In this way you can filter all the tweets out there to find those that are likely to interest you. Trying to write an article on teenagers and nutrition, search for #teens and #food and with some sifting you may come across a unique angle that you wouldn't have otherwise thought of.

4. Improve your writing. You learn quickly how to get to the point and with minimal fluff when you are limited to only 140 characters. If you are long-winded, as I tend to be, then you can see Twitter as an exercise in becoming more concise and thoughtful in your word selection. In addition, you will quickly find a plethora of fascinating and helpful individuals on Twitter to help you build your writing career or at least feed your literary hunger. Johanna Penn (@thecreativepenn) is a blogger with lots of insight and information on writing, publishing, and anything any would-be author could want to know about. I am new to following @inkyelbows but they offer daily Tweet chats on topics ranging from writing memoir to kid lit to daily word goals. If you are looking for an opportunity to bond and converse with other writers, Twitter may have just what you are looking for.

5. Improve page views and visibility by promoting your writing (or business, event, website, etc.) even when you aren't available. This is a benefit that I learned firsthand as the end of challenge grew near. With only 8 days to go, my son got sick. This severely limited my time for writing content and promoting my content. Worse yet, I quickly was taken down by whatever horrific germs he had brought home from school. So with only a week left to meet my AC Twitter challenge goal I was trapped in bed, too weak to eat soup let alone tweet about my articles. After two days of rallying I realized that I was not going to get well in time to finish this challenge, in fact I worried that I might not be well enough to even write this article. So I turned to another of my favorite Twitter apps, Twuffer. Twuffer allows you to schedule tweets for later in the day or even days from now. While I hesitated to send a sea of tweets without being online to engage in conversation, I was at a loss. I was too sick to be online for more than 10 minutes and I had to see this challenge through. So with some reticence I scheduled 1 tweet every hour to promote an article I had on AC. I know that anything that seems like spam is a big no-no on Twitter so I wasn't sure if that was too much but turns out that it was no big deal. The one day of the entire 25 day challenge that I was online for less than 15 minutes, and that was only to schedule all my tweets, I had my highest page views. In retrospect I would have tried to promote 2 articles each hour as I see many other AC contributors do. If you regularly tweet about things that aren't self-serving then people don't mind you sharing your articles or website or blog. This was probably the biggest lesson I learned about Twitter for this challenge. With regular exposure you can increase your page views and the visibility of your profile and Twitter is an excellent way to get that exposure. More importantly if you are thoughtful about whom you follow and the information you tweet you can help others to understand who you are as a writer. I've already gotten my first invitation to guest blog and I owe that to Twitter. So if you haven't gotten on there yet, sign up today and then look for @estherbMFT. I look forward to following you soon.