Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Twitter (& Facebook): Tweetin' You Right?


I'm a little less Twitterpated than I used to be.

I've now been on Twitter for about a year. I currently have 6175 followers. This list grows daily of its own accord. I haven't gone after new followers on Twitter for a long time.

I've been on Facebook for around thirteen months. My friends on Facebook equal 2836 as I write this post. But this list also grows regularly. I see a minimum of ten new friends a day. I also have my Fans of Brandilyn Collins group page with a current 975 members.

So much for the stats. My thoughts on these two social media sites:

1. Twitter is becoming business-heavy. Most of my direct messages (which are private) these days are from business accounts wanting me to buy this or go to some site. I'm now even seeing @Brandilyn messages from people I'm not following and are not following me, but who want me to see their spam tweet.

2. I auto-follow and auto-unfollow on Twitter because I can't keep up with it manually. Once you hit some magic number, 5000 for certain, it all just gets too much to manage. Problem is, auto-following lets in all the riffraff. I could manually unfollow as I see them pop up. But I'd be doing that all day long. I could also go through my entire account, delete the junk, then turn off auto-follow. I would need a clone to do this.

3. Interaction with my real-people tweeps is way down. Perhaps everyone's account is becoming so large, they can't see individual tweets, and so do little responding. I know that's the case with me. And when I send out a tweet, sure I'll see retweets and some responses, but nothing like I used to. Sometimes I feel like I'm speaking into a shouting crowd.

4. #3 notwithstanding, I still post tweets on Twitter, which will then feed to Facebook as updates. I use Tweetdeck, by the way. And for regularly scheduled posts, such as Today's Word, I use Tweetlater. (Now called SocialOomph.) Dumb new name, but very helpful app.

5. My Facebook page, in contrast, is seeing more and more action. Here the friends are real people--that's the difference. They're responsive to my updates. It's a great place to keep in contact with my readers and find new ones. Yesterday for example I put out an update about having 48 copies of mass market Eyes of Elisha to give away. I asked for ideas as to how I should structure the giveaway to attract new readers. (This one didn't go through Twitter--too long.) I received thirty or so responses with some good ideas. I'll be deciding how to proceed on that giveaway in the next few days. A number of weeks ago I asked my friends for ideas for the third Rayne Tour book title--and got the perfect one: Final Touch. Numerous people respond to my Today's Word every day, and we discuss all sorts of things. I'm finding Facebook a very effective site. And I'm going to think of ways to use it--and my fan group there--more.

So how about you? How are Twitter and Facebook treating you? Got any advice for managing my cumbersome Twitter account?

By the way, if you don't like the new way Facebook is feeding you updates, you can change it back to the original. (I know this thanks to one of my very helpful friends.) On your home page look to the top left menu and click on MORE. Then drag STATUS UPDATES to the top. After dragging to top, click on it. Your default will return to the way it was before.

7 comments:

Timothy Fish said...

Twitter never has worked well for me personally, but I figured it was a better tool for people who are better known than I. It seems to me that it isn't designed for interaction but for the few to push information to many. It is a monologue, whereas Facebook is a dialogue.

Jessie at Blog Schmog said...

That's funny since I just contacted you on Facebook, probably as you wrote this post. :) I don't twitter but I do agree that social networking sites can begin to seem quite crowded. I don't like the impersonal nature.

Do you have the network blog app on facebook? It auto posts your blog activity (not comments). My family really likes to "follow" my blog that way.

WordVixen said...

As for Twitter, I only follow people that I "know" or who have personally tweeted me. I used to check out each profile individually to decide whether it was spam or not, only realize that most of the non-spam people rarely interacted with me anyway. All it did was clog up my tweetstream. I let anyone follow me, I simply don't follow back unless they start tweeting to me.

Facebook I'm loving as well. I asked a question last night and within 5 minutes I had 3 answers- 1 on twitter (she's also a FB friend) and 2 on Facebook. And now that I have the Status set to default, I don't even have to wade through everyone's BeJewelled scores anymore! Still have to click on "links" and "photos" periodically to make sure I get all the important stuff. But all in all, I'm very happy with FB.

~ Brandilyn Collins said...

Jessie, thanks for the heads up on the blog app at Facebook. I need to look into that.

Kim Cash Tate said...

Brandilyn, I've only recently begun to like Twitter a little better than Facebook. I don't have near the amount of friends/followers as you, but Twitter still was unenjoyable for me until I discovered the "groups" function on Tweetdeck. Now that I have made groups, I can keep up with tweets of my favs. For example, I have an "Authors" group of which you are a member, so I always see your tweets.

I have a Facebook group and fan page with about 1000 members each, so this is especially beneficial for me on FB. I also like the photo/notes features, but as a whole I'd rather hang out on Twitter. :)

Jessie at Blog Schmog said...

Did you figure out who I am on facebook? You came to my blog and mentioned you hadn't seen my contact. I didn't actually send a message there until today, just friend requested you. :) Thanks for your thoughtful visit! I was surprised to have you go out of your way to say hi.

~ Brandilyn Collins said...

Hey, Jessie. Glad to hear Facebook didn't drop some message from you to me. Nice to be connected with you there!