To Tweet or Not To Tweet?

To Tweet or Not To Tweet?

I don’t know that there’s a right answer to this question but if you’re not asking yourself the question, you might want to consider it.

Two years ago I was not part of the social media scene. The corporate world that I was part of did not take to this “social thing” kindly. It was new, unknown and seen as unnecessary—a frivolous notion from youth and daydreamers. It was not what serious business required. At best it was a fad—a fad I might add that’s passed its 10^th birthday.

I could all but see the pages of history turning. Hearing those repeated phrases from the past “it won’t be here long” or “it won’t last” or simply “it won’t work”. I wondered. Was it like that for the car, the plane, the radio, the television, the computer, the internet … I think so.

If my world hadn’t been reinvented, I’d still be of that thinking too… maybe…

Packed with the passion and love of writing and my 10,000 hours of practiced rejection, the writing world has become my new home and social media a close neighbor. Twitter resides next door.

The social media world came by force. My publisher said either I hire someone to do it or do it myself but I had to be part of it. I also was quickly learning that “word of mouth” and “they’ll tell two people and so on and so on” were more myth than reality.

I started with LinkedIn. It seemed closest to where I was coming from. It was a way to introduce my business contacts to The Actor (my STARBook award novel) and my new author world. It became my “webpage” with all of my media links (print, video, radio and TV interviews) along with my itinerary of book events. Facebook followed close behind because “everyone is on Facebook”. I’ve found it difficult to expand to any level significant outside of friends and family as so few “share”. Enter my new neighbor—Twitter.

With little idea on how it worked outside of the 140-character message length, I was reluctant to get more acquainted with my new neighbor. It was my son that gave me the final push out the door with the introduction, “Dad just get an account. You’ll figure it out.”

And how right he was.

I’ve been through a lot from the beginning stages of picking who to follow through the “too-numerous-to-count” stages of tweeting and what to tweet. It’s become one of the most active means I use to promote my two books The Actor and The Drive In.

Now with every tweet going to more than 70,000 followers when asked ‘to tweet or not to tweet’ my answer today is an emphatic ‘its better than not’.

TDG