Monday, May 30, 2011

Joining the Larger Community, Part 3 (I promise, a new topic next!)

My first tweet was basically, "Hi!" My second tweet offered information about the reduction in self-employment taxes for 2011. Maybe a lot of people know about this already, but I thought it would be nice to share. After all, I only learned about it a short while ago.

As soon as I tweeted this information, I realized I’d left out a whole bunch of people I should be following. Why wasn’t I following self-employed people? Other writers? I quickly searched and added to my list. Now, I was following more than 75 accounts. I felt overwhelmed.

I turned once again to my husband, who advised grouping them into lists. Which I did. I made them private lists because I can’t figure out why anyone would make them public, and private is my default setting. Maybe I'll change my mind as I learn more about this. While I had his ear, I asked my husband what to do about my followers. (Yay! I have followers!) He recommended a short note thanking them for following. It’s proper etiquette, he said.

Twitter can easily get pretty time-consuming, but I think it's going to be worth the effort. On my first day following only editors, I learned many were at BookExpo America. Without Twitter, I never would have even heard of the event!

Definitely a sign I’ve been too isolated as a writer.

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