Reflections on Twittering (or should that be tweeting?)
I've been reading about branding, and marketing, and growing your audience, and right now twitter seems to be "where it's at", so I thought I should try it. I haven't been there long, so I don't have any idea if this will work to promote my longer writings yet, but I'm having fun. One of the things I read is that you need to establish a presence, a voice there, that people don't follow someone if all their tweets are self-promotion. You need to establish your credentials, provide links to useful things, or tweet about your life in some interesting way. I think it boils down to that people want to follow people that they like, in one way or another. Twitter is designed to be personal, intimate-feeling.
The other challenge, as anyone who has been reading me on LJ knows, I like words. I like discussing something thoroughly, looking at it from different angles. 140 characters? Not even 140 words--just 140 characters, including the spaces? So, trying to communicate with people in only tiny, short bursts is a challenge for me. There's only one form I've written in that is that short (unless you count titles as a "form").
So I guess it was inevitable that http://twitter.com/Wyld_Dandelyon seems to be developing into My Life In Haiku
I should collect my favorites somehwere more permanent. Here's a couple:
Writer's Quandry // If our arms were wings / How would we carry our things? / Oh-opposing toes!
Just Now // A skunk in my yard / pouffy pretty tail held high / can't move the hose now!
rude highway drivers / delay Foodie Friend's dinner / but OH it's tasty
(So I'm sitting there at dinner, and the idea hits, and my brain switches to Creative Process Mode, and automatically I grab my phone. Social Mode is on hold--I'm only peripherally aware that Foodie Friend is looking perplexed, then unhappy, because I am fiddling with my phone and neglecting the food he labored over while it starts to get cold. Once I come out of the creative trance and explain what I was doing, however, it is all good. I wasn't slighting the food, I was writing poetry to it!)
Finally, since there are so many writers here:
words are incomplete / if like zen trees in the woods / their fall is unheard
The other challenge, as anyone who has been reading me on LJ knows, I like words. I like discussing something thoroughly, looking at it from different angles. 140 characters? Not even 140 words--just 140 characters, including the spaces? So, trying to communicate with people in only tiny, short bursts is a challenge for me. There's only one form I've written in that is that short (unless you count titles as a "form").
So I guess it was inevitable that http://twitter.com/Wyld_Dandelyon seems to be developing into My Life In Haiku
I should collect my favorites somehwere more permanent. Here's a couple:
Writer's Quandry // If our arms were wings / How would we carry our things? / Oh-opposing toes!
Just Now // A skunk in my yard / pouffy pretty tail held high / can't move the hose now!
rude highway drivers / delay Foodie Friend's dinner / but OH it's tasty
(So I'm sitting there at dinner, and the idea hits, and my brain switches to Creative Process Mode, and automatically I grab my phone. Social Mode is on hold--I'm only peripherally aware that Foodie Friend is looking perplexed, then unhappy, because I am fiddling with my phone and neglecting the food he labored over while it starts to get cold. Once I come out of the creative trance and explain what I was doing, however, it is all good. I wasn't slighting the food, I was writing poetry to it!)
Finally, since there are so many writers here:
words are incomplete / if like zen trees in the woods / their fall is unheard