Twitter and Me.

I’m sure everyone knows the Twitter has been bought up by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. He is in the process of making huge changes to the company, and of course, this meant the media is busy speculating whether this will lead to the death of Twitter. All over the net, there has been a mad rush for Twitter members to hunt out a new online place to play and chat. Sites like Discord and Mastodon have found themselves with a huge number of new members.

Yes, I must admit I did panic, and went to check out a couple of other online social sites but didn’t find them as appealing as Twitter. Two of them looked to be quite dated, reminding me of the earlier form of forums we used in the early days of the internet. Then there’s the problem of rebuilding my following and working out how to use the site. It seemed a lot of hassle.

I joined Twitter in 2011 and never really did anything with my account. Mainly because I couldn’t work out how to use it. For me, Facebook was the place to hang out. When I was working full-time, I heard colleagues talking about their Facebook friends, and how many followers they had on their page. At the time, I found this to be a strange world. How could you have internet friends?

Of course, now I’m published I understand the need for having a following as you try to grow your readership as well as being a form of marketing. It has only been in these last four years I finally worked out how to use Twitter and build a following. The secret is Hashtags. Once you master them, they open up the world of Twitter to you. The thing I love so much about Twitter is the Writing and Reading Community as they are so supportive of one another. We share each other’s posts and many do #Writerslifts where you retweet each other’s Pinned Tweet and then you can share details about your books. Readers will ask for book recommendations which gives us authors direct contact to our customers unlike Facebook promotional groups which I found next to useless.

In Facebook promotional groups your post gets swamped by other author’s posts, and it soon disappears from view. I’ve tried using Facebook marketing, but it just ate my money, and made no difference to my sales. I’ve tried using Free to Download Weekends, but this hasn’t generated pages-turn-sales and has left me feeling like I’ve just thrown my hard work away. I’m not on TikTok, but I am on Instagram. I’ve tried marketing there to, but it hasn’t generated any real sales unlike Twitter.

So what’s the panic?

I keep seeing Elon Musk has done this and has done that, but I can’t imagine someone suddenly pulling the plug on Twitter. I avoid the political and religious threads on all social media sites and just stick to the areas which interest me the most. This way I avoid the nasty side of the internet. Even on my personal Facebook page I’m very careful about what I say or post because I don’t want anything to come back and haunt me. Remember once it’s on the net, it remains there.

As for Me and Twitter well our relationship is stronger than ever. I’m staying put, busy building new friendships and sharing my books with the many readers I’ve found there. I’ve noticed quite a few of the members on the writing and reading Twitter threads are saying they are staying put too. It’s a very supportive part of Twitter which I don’t think I would find anywhere else. Marketing on Twitter is a joy because everyone plays a part in sharing, and I haven’t come across any nastiness within this community.

So please do check me out https://twitter.com/Darkfantasy13 if you’re staying put on Twitter. I’m very happy to share your tweets, books and anything else you post about as long as it isn’t political or religious.

Chat again soon.