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When the Wall Street Journal decides to write a glowing piece about an emerging technology, it’s time to take notice. The Journal has recently run an article about Twitter, a facility initially discounted as frivolous but which is now being increasingly used by business, journalists and writers to promote their work. it’s time for writers to pay attention.
In case you don’t know, Twitter is considered a “micro-blog” where one is limited to posts not exceeding 140 characters. One fiction writer even created an “award” for the best Twitter novel — a story reduced to 140 characters!
Here’ a snippet from the article:
Other users are flocking to Twitter as an easy self-publishing and promotional tool. People are using it to build up their professional reputation by sharing updates about their work in a less time-intensive way than starting a blog. Andrew Flusche, an attorney in Fredericksburg, Va., recently used Twitter to promote a webinar he was holding on trademark registration. The session got 15 attendees, compared with seven for a subsequent seminar he didn’t promote on the service.
I started using Twitter a couple months ago, just to see what it was all about. At first, I searched out people that I thought would be interesting to “follow.” Twitter makes this search easy, using keywords. From this exercise, along with others added along the way, I’m following 48 people. Some of them are internet high-flyers and gurus. Through this exercise, I’ve identified information that I’ve passed on to you here in the blog, long before most people even knew about it.
More importantly, I set up my own Twitter profile page and began very selectively writing tweets of interest to writers. It must be working, as over the last 3 weeks or so, I’m beginning to attract my own followers, forty as of today. And this blog has also gotten 20 new subscribers during that time, some of whom probably came from my Twitter exposure.
Active writers should be able to find interesting ways to use Twitter, promoting book signings, keeping people abreast of progress on one’s novel, or directing one’s readers of material of interest.
Communication by snippets, in fact, may be the wave of the future. I spend lots of my time in the Philippines, long the cellphone text messaging capital of the world. However, the US is fast catching on. Dan Gould at the PSFK blog recently wrote:
Is the world’s attention span shrinking? Recent data from Nielsen indicates that “snack-size” communication is becoming the new default mode for many people. They report that as of Q2 of 2008, Americans are sending or receiving more text messages than phone calls. Nielsen says that U.S. mobile subscribers sent and received 357 text messages per month as compared to only 204 phone calls.
By the way, you too can FOLLOW ME at Twitter. My handle is simply “tomcolvin”. Let me know, and I’ll follow you back, expecially if your tweets are substantive.
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Sorry, comments are closed.
Comment by
Lillie Ammann
4 Nov 2008
I've been resisting Twitter … this post doesn't help my will to resist.
Comment by
tomcolvin
6 Nov 2008
I too resisted Twitter for the longest time. Seemed so frivilous.
However, just five minutes ago, Twitter lead me to discover an exciting new
internet facility that could be enormously valuable for authors seeking to
build loyal fan base by live internet chat right within one's blog. It's
the best such facility I've come across. Will put up a post to my blog
within the next two hours. THANKS TO TWITTER.
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