Thursday, July 14, 2016

Snoozing on Sundays

Working to gain followers on twitter has been my goal this week. It is easier than writing my novel and requires no housework. I have a lot of good books to read. I woke up with a low grade cold Sunday morning. Our Sunday dinner was just us with no guests which takes a bit of fun out of it. But I did not want to share my cold which was short-lived. The worst part was I couldn't do any yard
work which I love to do.

I've yet to find what the joy of twitter is. It is like the penny pincher gazette with a myriad of ads. Everyone is selling their book. I've gotten so many direct messages of free books, like me on Facebook, validate yourself on true twitter, offers to increase my followers, offers to perform miracles for me of a literary nature.

And all I got was a slap on the wrist. I was busy deleting followers who did not follow back. Some of them were very unrelated to me. My thought with twitter was why follow someone if they had no interest in me. I understand why all the celebrities on SNL did not follow me back. Anyway, I could not follow people for awhile due to my massive deletion of about 300 people.

I looked up the reason why, they frown on people churning their accounts for followers. Well I was churning. A few people I blocked due to the fact they are porn. But anyone that followed me, I followed. Meanwhile in the back of my mind was the fact that I am able to follow people I have no knowledge of and I may not like them. Add to that, they might not like me. Luckily the 140 character limit allows me to understand a few Spanish and couple of French folks that followed me.

My blog visitors were up. Apparently some want to check you out when you begin to follow them. So, if my goal was to have a higher readership of my blog, I could do a mess of liking. I have heard you can like 500 people in one days. I may have hit that threshold.

I remember when I first started twitter. Some stranger would follow me and I would carefully check them out. Now, if there is no sexy woman, no mention of BDSM, fetish, no politics like "X stinks and is an idiot, party affiliation is fine, I will follow them back. Sometimes they are sneaky, one innocent looking twitterer constantly recommended some pretty dirty books with their not so tantalizing passages. It is great to not be young in that you truly could care less, the curiosity is gone.

My beef is that occasionally I would get a follow by someone with a huge amount of followers in the past. Then after I followed them back, they unfollowed me. So ---

I also played with their ads. I got 12 followers. Of that 12, some of them were spammers. But I got close to 650 by churning.

Anyway, I got an audience. The bulk of which is preoccupied with selling me their book. But tomorrow, I start my first regular tweet which will be front yard Friday. I've got to cook up some themes. Sell you something Sunday will not be one.

Now Sunday snoozing may be a little accurate for some. I don't know if it is a Baptist thing, but, taking it easy on the Sabbath was taken seriously. I remember the raging debate when I was a kid about working on Sunday. Old blue laws were being repealed. Then the preacher got up and said if the Lord gives you a job on Sunday, thank him for the work. Being proud you had a job was the norm.

But I'll have to find a better one for Sunday. The Chihuahuas are particular about unflattering pictures. Besides, I got to get a hang of the hashtag thing.


17 comments:

  1. I admire you for venturing over to Twitter. I may have an account there but I just don't have time to do all the social media things, blogs and Facebook stretch me too thin at times. My daughter in law was explaining hash tags to me the other day; I don't think I got it. I got it, but it just didn't make much sense so maybe I didn't get it.

    I think I would have gotten into trouble for deleting too. I tend to go through periods of time where I'll delete "friends" from Facebook or un-follow blogs. I learned a long time ago a lot of people will follow blogs hoping you'll follow them back and then you never hear from them, they never leave a comment. I would follow a blog because they followed mine and I make it a point if I'm following a blog to try to read and respond by comment to all posts they write. I learned to stop following or not begin to follow if I considered them a "fly by" follower.

    betty

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I follow everyone nearly during A to Z if their blog is something I can relate to. What is interesting is that so many do not blog afterwards. I usually just scan for blogs I enjoy. Being busy, it is hard to read them all. I do try to comment but lately I just read. I have had to make a little checklist to read some. For some reason, I never get a prompt about a new post.
      I have noticed some do not reciprocate. They are missing out. It's nice to get know folks.

      Delete
  2. The more you have, the more you can delete. I am slow at following back sometimes as I got it set on auto for tweets, so less work for me haha I deleted a few thousand months back because they were fake crap or hadn't posted in years.

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    Replies
    1. I downloaded your book on Kindle that Betty recommended. I'm looking forward to reading a detective book by you.
      I probably should have waited on deleting all those folks. Like I say, I am playing on twitter.

      Delete
  3. I check whounfollowedme.com every week. Some it's easy to see that they are just fishing for followers. If you get involved in Triberr or RoundTeam, that will really up your following.

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    Replies
    1. I will have to check these sites out Alex. I hope to have some legitimate content. I feel for folks selling their books. It is interesting that they do the same thing online as people at a book fair. Some are cool to let you browse their book. Too many are just begging people to buy their books.

      This is why I would always have an agent sell my house, it is hard to sell your personal items. I have given thought of just becoming a book peddler at book fairs for people. With no emotion, I imagine the books would sell better and folks would more likely read them. I buy tons of books. The ones I bought out of sympathy I rarely read.

      Delete
  4. Nothing is open on Sunday around me hardly. It's just small town life in the Midwest.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Wow, in some ways that is great. Everything is open here. Many stores are 24/7. Beer and wine is for sale on Sunday. Mixed drinks are available. This is all a far cry from my youth. I remember at a friend's wedding, the priest was joking that I served from the Catholic bowl and the other bowl was the Baptist bowl.

      Delete
  5. It takes a while to build momentum on Twitter. Eventually the followers balance out enough you can delete a lot more.

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    1. I have no idea what twitter is all about except that it is a microblog. I probably cleaned house a wee early. But except for celebrities, someone would have to be powerfully witty to maintain followers without following back. I did consider to just follow willy nilly which is what I may wind up doing.

      Delete
  6. I basically use twitter to get information on my books out there and I also forward animal rights info.
    I'm like you, Ann, I've gotten some tweets that were totally embarrassing and unfollowed quickly.
    Have a great weekend.

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  7. Quite a brave decision to start twitting. It takes a gallant effort to decide. Hank had been on twitter but found it too time-consuming. Otherwise it is a great source for info! Wonderful prose Ann!

    Hank

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  8. I've yet to find the joys of Twitter too, Ann... I try, but it just... I don't know. It doesn't engage me. Not like FB, for instance. Then again, it probably has to do with the huge amount of time I spend on FB vs the five minutes a year I do on Twitter :D Cause and effect, yes, but a bit like the chicken and the egg, right? Good for you, though, on spending the time to grow your audience — and on weeding those irritating spammers and ersatz followers. I'm sure eventually you'll collect a core group of regular, and worthy, interactors.
    Guilie @ Life In Dogs

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  9. I laughed. I mentioned on my blog today about how mean Twitter can be. I've made some good friends on there but there are a lot of ads. And those porn followers. I don't know if it is a joy or a habit.

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  10. I blog and I am a very poor Facebook participant. I really am not a fan of social media. It is just such a can of worms. Sometimes you need to just "be". Sundays are good for that. Hugs.

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  11. Um...I'm not on Twitter... though I feel like an idiot admitting it in public :) Your post made me glad that I'm not, it sounds way complicated...

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  12. Hope you're having a good one, Ann.

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