Category Archives: Three for Thursday

Welcome to my blog feature – “Three for Thursday.”  You may not see an installment every Thursday, but when I can manage it, I’ll be sharing three cool – er – somethings.

I’m once again breaking my self-imposed policy to not talk about social media on my blog.  I hope that you’ll forgive me this indulgence.  I wanted to share three quick tips that perhaps you’ll find elsewhere, but in speed-round form.  I use Twitter as a specific example, but the tips apply to any social media platform.

1.  If you’re new to Twitter and you’re growing your following, don’t begin by following 2,000 people en masse just to see who follows you back.  The way to grow a quality following is to think “turtle” rather than “hare” and grow it slowly.  This allows you time to interact with your new followees and followers.  Trust me, it’s better to have 200 high quality followers than 2000 random followers.  When I have a new follower who is following 2000 and only has 100 people following them, that’s a red flag to me and I scrutinize that person further before determining whether or not to follow back.

2.  If you’re an author and you have a book (or multiple books) out, please don’t make every tweet a promo for your book or a retweet of one of your friend’s promos.  I have seen so many tweetstreams that are completely filled with promos – many promos each day – with virtually no interaction with followers.  I don’t follow these accounts and you shouldn’t either.  And you definitely shouldn’t BE one of these accounts.  {side note:  don’t go to the opposite extreme either and never tell your followers about your books.  I recently discovered one of my Twitter peeps is a writer with a published book and since she never tweets about it, I didn’t even realize it.}  And on a similar subject – auto DM’s for new followers?  Just say “no.”  There’s no way to do this without coming off as a spammer.

3.  It’s OK to follow people and not expect a follow back.  Aren’t you glad I’m giving you permission? Reciprocal follows are wonderful and they are what Twitter is really all about.  It’s so much easier to have a conversation when it’s a two-way conversation rather than one-way.  But sometimes if somebody’s stream is interesting, then just press “follow” and don’t worry whether that person will follow you back or not.  I follow (at last count) 383 people who don’t follow me back.  Surprised?  I also follow many more than that via lists.  My main list of people who I follow to gain information (not so much focused on interaction) is currently maxed out at 500 people, some of whom follow me back and some don’t.  Figure out what topics you’re interested in and follow people who tweet about it and don’t worry about your stats.

And your bonus tip for today?  Please don’t go overboard with #followfriday’s or #writerwednesday’s or any other special mention days.  Sending out too many and/or retweeting every single one you receive just fills up people’s streams and keeps them from seeing valuable information.  Want to mention lots of people?  Make a list and tweet the link to that list.

Thanks for bearing with me through my mini-rant.  Happy tweeting! And Facebooking and Google Plusing …

Welcome to my blog feature – “Three for Thursday.”  You may not see an installment every Thursday, but when I can manage it, I’ll be sharing three cool – er – somethings.

I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook, as I’ve talked about several times on this blog.  Kind of like that crazy neighbor lady who smells bad but always tells me I look like I’ve lost weight.  But I digress.

And then along came Google+.  I won’t waste my time and yours giving you some sort of history or high level overview of Google+ – you can get that in a thousand other places.  What I want to share is what has struck me as some key advantages of Google+ in the two weeks since I joined:

1. The entire system is built on the concept of Circles.  Circles are essentially like lists on Twitter and Facebook, except where lists are a bit kludgy on Twitter and an unintuitive afterthought on Facebook, they are front and center in Google+.  Circles are easy to build and manipulate.  I can envision some lovely functionality down the road when they enhance the drag and drop capabilities.  You “follow” people by placing them in a circle.  It’s best to think in advance how you might like to organize yourself, but it’s easy enough to change it down the road if you make a mis-step.  I have three circles entitled Tiers 1 through 3.  If I only have a few minutes, I check only the Tier 1 stream, more time and I check 2 and still more time and I check 3.  I also don’t put anybody in a circle just to be nice – I put them there because I am interested in their posts.

2.  At the moment, Google+ is filled with Type-A people.  Early adopters are cool peeps and are busily sharing wonderful content even as we speak.  If you are dragging your feet about getting on Google+, please don’t take offense – I’m not saying YOU aren’t cool too.  I simply mean to say that it’s a very interesting place to be right now.  There are almost no spammers and I have not yet encountered anybody who’s trying to do the hard sell on me.  Everybody is still exploring and learning.

3.  Privacy and Security are user-centered, not “big brother”-centered.  Rather than feeling like you’re signing over your first-born when you join the network, you have a feeling of being in the driver’s seat.  You can customize your security settings easily.  The best privacy feature is being able to easily select how widely you want your update broadcast:  to an individual, to a small group, to a circle, to multiple circles, all your circles, your “extended circles” (the circles of your peeps) or public.  That’s some serious flexibility and it’s there at your fingertips rather than having to dig through multiple screens to find it.

So, two weeks in and I have to say I’m a convert.  Facebook still has a lot of value to me but only for the connections that I’ve made there in my personal account and on my fan page.  So, I’ll still be hanging around that neighborhood, too.  But I’m also kicking the tires of Google+ and liking what I see so far.  If you’re interested in joining, I happen to have a few invites, so just drop me a line.

Are you on Google+?  What are the things YOU like (or dislike) about it?