I was talking with a friend who just happens to have nigh on 20K followers on one of a selection of twitter accounts and the discussion went something along the lines of;

- "I've found this automated tweet software that will tweet for me when I'm asleep"
- "But don't you find you lose followers when they realise that's what you're doing? (And, yes, it is obvious.)"
- "I'm getting 600 new followers every month, and they won't have seen the old content, so what does it matter if I lose one or two who have?"

And, later;

- "A lot of writers don't get that twitter is a broadcast media, not a social interaction."

Now, I can't argue with the success of the strategy. What I can say is that it isn't a good strategy to keep me as a follower, but, hey, I'm not really the target market.

The thing is, when I see some otherwise friendly tweeps tweeting the same moronic link to the same bloody book four times every day despite having only a couple of hundred followers, all of whom must (by now) be aware of the book's existence and therefore not needing reminding, I do keep thinking that there are different strategies that are appropriate dependent on where in the pecking order you fall.

But I have digressed, the question is this;

Is it all about the numbers? (EG: Auto-tweeting and accepting a certain amount of churn amongst your followers.)

Or is it all about establishing a persona? (EG: Scorning the bland, repetitive auto-tweets in favour of some actual wit and personality.)

Caught Between The Right Answer and What Should Be The Right Answer of Dublin

There seems to be roughly two opposing views about this, in publishing. A lot of writers believe that webpages, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc, should be used purely as tools to sell one's books. On the other hand, at a panel with 3 editors (Solaris, Gollancz, Angry Robot) at FantasyCon last year, all three argued that an author's web presence should be more about the author, and that constantly pushing one's books actually irritates a lot of people. In fact, they don't believe web presence actually sells books, but do believe it draws in interest (yes, sounds like a contradiction) to the point where all 3 said they will no longer look at a submission unless the author has web presence.

Terry

But what are his Tweets actually doing? Apart from getting more followers? Does it really translate into sales of actual books? I find it slightly hard to imagine.

Personally, I don't want to be broadcast to - it's not going to make me buy the book. But I guess it depends what you're selling.

To me, Twitter makes most sense as a way of just being out there, among people with whom I'm likely to connect, for whatever connections are on offer. Some are potential readers, some are potential sources of publicity or work, but all by way of some kind of two-way human contact. Some have even turned into friends.

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It seems to me that all networking - virtual or physical - only works if you're OFFERING something - interest, jokes, friendliness, information, ideas. The ones who broadcast successfully are the ones where what they're saying is intrinsically something people want. Everyone else broadcasting links to buy their e-book is just white noise.

to the point where all 3 said they will no longer look at a submission unless the author has web presence

I think the web presence was a factor in getting the friend published in the first place.

Not sure what a web-presence necessarily _means_ though. I mean, I have a twitter name and I occasionally send out articles to a blog, does that mean I have a web presence? Or merely that I know what the web is? Is 100 or 1,000 followers a web presence? Or do you need 10,000 followers?

But what are his Tweets actually doing? Apart from getting more followers? Does it really translate into sales of actual books? I find it slightly hard to imagine.

So do I, but that many people signing up for notifications is... well, it's a lot of people being notified.

And they all signed up voluntarily...

And...

Personally, I don't want to be broadcast to

Nobody I've met ever says that they _do_ want to be broadcast to, but the evidence contradicts that... Why the hell would anyone follow a pure link-broadcast tweeter otherwise? All tweets are visible without following the person concerned. It only takes ten seconds to view somebody's profile and scan the frequency and nature of tweets before following them.

The other possibility is that they are wannabe writers who follow to get a reciprocal follow-back, but... again... that's a lot of people... even if it is a futile strategy.

Some have even turned into friends.

Well... Maybe.

I can think of few environments less conducive to forming a meaningful friendship than a public forum where every comment you ever make remains permanently on public view to an unlimited public. Certainly, I know I have unfollowed a couple of tweeps who I actually quite like outside of Twitter purely because they cluttered my feed with the banal crud of unfiltered social chit-chat... stuff that would be fine in the pub, but of absolutely no relevance outside of a private conversation.

It seems to me that all networking - virtual or physical - only works if you're OFFERING something - interest, jokes, friendliness, information, ideas. The ones who broadcast successfully are the ones where what they're saying is intrinsically something people want. Everyone else broadcasting links to buy their e-book is just white noise.

Well, yes, but...

Some - actually, the majority - of those with tens of thousands of followers appear to do a lot of tweeting of links to things that others may find interesting but which do not necessarily originate with the tweeter. For example, a lot of the 20K+ guy's tweets are articles from writing related websites (and not articles he has written or even had any involvement in). They are interesting, but it would be just as easy to simply sign up to the source of those articles and bypass the broadcaster, IYSWIM.

That said, there is a regular stream of his own content, but as with 24 hour news channels, once you've watched the twenty-minute loop once, there's no need to watch it again until the next update... which probably won't happen for a _long_ while.

Still Baffled of Dublin