This is the second entry in a series of blog posts about my social media use.
Platform: Twitter (@dandelionstudio)
Followers: 1504
I've been on Twitter for a while, but it took me a long time from first learning about it to actually trying it out. Twitter has something of a learning curve to it. The idea is simple: Post entries limited to 140 characters in length. The flow of using Twitter can be tricky to figure out.
Twitter depends heavily on hashtags to attract common interest (although they are sometimes more used for humorous or other effect), and it depends on the retweeting of others' tweets in order to reach larger audiences. The noise-to-signal ratio on Twitter is enormous, so it is impossible to keep up with everything, or ever to keep up with everything posted by those you follow, once you're following a sizeable number of accounts.
I seldom read my Twitter feed. I'll occasionally glance at it to see if anything catches my interest, but mostly, I'm using Twitter as a way to boost the signal of my other endeavors: My writing, my blogging (this entry will get tweeted), my photos on Flickr and Instagram, and the occasional update on what I'm doing or where I'm going.
I allow myself to get a bit more political on Twitter than I do on other social media, but this usually takes the form of me retweeting the tweets of others, rather than getting directly involved in political discourse.
I follow about 1800 Twitter accounts and am followed by around 1500. I make an active effort to manage and organically grow my followers by adding new accounts and unfollowing accounts that don't follow me back. This is not exactly a recipe for fast growth, but it has allowed me to expand my reach steadily. I have no interest in buying followers, in spite of the promises of the many spam accounts that add me. I'm looking for people with common interests: Writers, readers, comic fans, convention people, travel bloggers and expats, general geeks and nerds.
I've made use of some specialized hashtags. I use the #ff hashtag, which stands for "Follow Friday", a Twitter tradition where users tweet out lists of suggested accounts to follow on Friday.
I also made up a #seenfromsaigonbustoday hashtag for a series of phone photos taken while riding the public busses in Ho Chi Minh City. When I was taking the public bus to work during my first year in Vietnam, I was posting to this hashtag almost daily. I still use it occasionally when I take the bus around town, and I've got a minicomic about the hashtag in the works.
I've also found hashtags to be great for events, as you can easily find other accounts tweeting from the same venue.
While I don't get as much interaction on Twitter as I do on Facebook, I find it a very useful site for expanding my brand, introducing my work to others, and spreading work of my postings on other social media sites.
Platform: Twitter (@dandelionstudio)
Followers: 1504
I've been on Twitter for a while, but it took me a long time from first learning about it to actually trying it out. Twitter has something of a learning curve to it. The idea is simple: Post entries limited to 140 characters in length. The flow of using Twitter can be tricky to figure out.
Twitter depends heavily on hashtags to attract common interest (although they are sometimes more used for humorous or other effect), and it depends on the retweeting of others' tweets in order to reach larger audiences. The noise-to-signal ratio on Twitter is enormous, so it is impossible to keep up with everything, or ever to keep up with everything posted by those you follow, once you're following a sizeable number of accounts.
I seldom read my Twitter feed. I'll occasionally glance at it to see if anything catches my interest, but mostly, I'm using Twitter as a way to boost the signal of my other endeavors: My writing, my blogging (this entry will get tweeted), my photos on Flickr and Instagram, and the occasional update on what I'm doing or where I'm going.
I allow myself to get a bit more political on Twitter than I do on other social media, but this usually takes the form of me retweeting the tweets of others, rather than getting directly involved in political discourse.
I follow about 1800 Twitter accounts and am followed by around 1500. I make an active effort to manage and organically grow my followers by adding new accounts and unfollowing accounts that don't follow me back. This is not exactly a recipe for fast growth, but it has allowed me to expand my reach steadily. I have no interest in buying followers, in spite of the promises of the many spam accounts that add me. I'm looking for people with common interests: Writers, readers, comic fans, convention people, travel bloggers and expats, general geeks and nerds.
I've made use of some specialized hashtags. I use the #ff hashtag, which stands for "Follow Friday", a Twitter tradition where users tweet out lists of suggested accounts to follow on Friday.
I also made up a #seenfromsaigonbustoday hashtag for a series of phone photos taken while riding the public busses in Ho Chi Minh City. When I was taking the public bus to work during my first year in Vietnam, I was posting to this hashtag almost daily. I still use it occasionally when I take the bus around town, and I've got a minicomic about the hashtag in the works.
I've also found hashtags to be great for events, as you can easily find other accounts tweeting from the same venue.
While I don't get as much interaction on Twitter as I do on Facebook, I find it a very useful site for expanding my brand, introducing my work to others, and spreading work of my postings on other social media sites.
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