Just call me Paul

[erastes]

Because I've definitely been converted to Twitter. *shock* Erastes gets blasphemous. What? You were surprised?

I never used to "get" Twitter at all. Or Facebook. Still don't get Facebook, to be honest, far too clunky to use and full of people I know nothing about.

but Twitter is incredibly useful. Not only is it a fun way of getting in touch with people and transmitting your news quickly and swiftly but I've found that almost a secondary function.  It's amazingly handy for quick answers!  Several times I've started a tweet with "Dear [company] moan moan moan" only to have the company reply in seconds with an answer and a solution!  I've also had lovely IT geeks who must have alerts set up for buzz words (no idea how this is done) who have helped me with Tekkie problems. I've had companies that I've ordered check that I was happy with an order.

I've had communication with the local libraries about Pride events, got advice on books from the London Library and a Tweet site which specialises in 20th century London, ditto one of Victorian London.

It's not that great for promotion, to be honest, because unless someone goes to your page to see what you are up to (and I doubt people do that) your promo tweet soon gets subsumed by all the hundreds of others and unless you tweet it every hour, is less likely to be seen than a blog update. and if you update every hour, that's just irritating. But some people will do this…

anyhow. no agenda, just wanted to say that's its good to find a social network that actually works.

Comments

[aigooism.livejournal.com]

I think Twitter is a pretty good promotional device. I definitely learn about deals and stuff from it :) But you're right on how you'd have to tweet more than once to get the message across sometime.

Twitter is definitely better than FB. So much simpler!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

much simpler! I always feel lost on FB - do I post a status or a note? and why? Luckily my LJ client links to both Twitter and FB (and amazon and Goodreads) so I only need to update once blogwise!

[chris-smith-atr.livejournal.com]

Saul was nicer.
x

[erastes.livejournal.com]

*shock*

[wyldlingspirit.livejournal.com]

I enjoy Twitter for networking with other writers. It's a "timesuck" that actually helps me keep my head in the game. Yesterday it helped me reconnect with a friend I haven't communicated with since '07!

Facebook is useful for me to keep up with far-flung family and local events and businesses of interest, but I only glance at that a couple times a day. It's also really easy to get viruses from Facebook.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is a bit of a timesuck, I should have added that I only use Tweetdeck, I couldn't be arsed to keep refreshing the website.

eek - did not know that about FB - thanks for the warning!

[paragraphs.livejournal.com]

I adore my twitters--have one for me and one for my pseudonym.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I don't think I could do that--plus of course I have no "real life" to speak of...It's hard enough running 3 - erastes, speakitsname and callforsubs--I'm often posting in the wrong name!

[anteros-lmc.livejournal.com]

I use twitter extensively, but only for work, where it has become an important and ubiquitous communication and dissemination channel. Whenever we attend work events we live blog realtime on twitter using hashtags to identify the event.

I'm sometimes tempted to set up a separate twitter account for fanish activity but for the time being I am content to restrict that to LJ.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

It would be a great thing for group brainstorming, I can definitely see that. I was always trying to get my last workplace to install IM for that purpose but NO, they'd rather waste everyone's time adn money and have real meetings.

Once you get your writing up and running, you'll be swept up in the throng of it too.

[anteros-lmc.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on the meeting thing. We have all this cool tech and still we feel obliged to slog up and down the country for meetings. It drives me nuts!

Btw re hashtags, if you use the same tag across your various social media platforms you can do all kinds of cool aggregation stuff. So if you use, say, #meremortals on twitter, your blogs, and LJ and you also encourage everyone who reviews or blogs about it to use the same tag you can use a tool like memolane or storify to tell storis about your writing. Sorry, I'll shut up now... :}

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

E-reader, Twitter... what's next? :)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I know! Scary stuff innit? I'm hoping for a jetpack.

They'd have to pry my Kindle out of my cold dead fingers, btw. We have reviews booked up to 11th June now, and that's thanks to the Kindle. :D

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

LOL - awesome. I'll do a couple myself, as we're travelling to Coventry on Saturday, and I do like the Kindle for travelling.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

excellent - thank you!

[beckyblack]

I like Twitter too. Like you say, it's not much use for promotion of the "buy this book!" sort, since your Tweet soon moves on. But I think it's good for a sort of generalised self-promotion, showing people how nice/cool/funny or whatever you are and keeping your name on people's minds between releases!

And it's just fun.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there are slangingmatches but I haven't seen any (yet) thank goodness!

[markprobst.livejournal.com]

I still can't get my head wrapped around Twitter. I can't figure out where to find all the tweets people are talking about. It's not linear like Facebook. The tweets are buried somewhere where I can't find them, and how the heck do you send a message to someone who doesn't follow you?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

you can't send a direct-private-message,but you can just put @oscarwilde for example andthat will appear in his stream.

best to use tweetdeck or something similar as that is easy to find the subjects you want