What I've learnt about Social Media, #13

Information Overload

Oh My God!
On my list of 50 things to do this year, I decided I would experiment with social media (#13). Oh My God!! There is a flood of tweets coming my way and I have no clue what to do with them! I am only following about 40 people, but I know some who are following thousands, THOUSANDS! What tools and how many assistants do they have?

9 things I've learnt about Twitter

People follow you based on what you list as interests in your profile and you may or may not follow them back.
It is used as a marketing and promotions tool by many people (for example, authors promote their books, giveaways, and good reviews on Amazon or Goodreads).
It is a great way for people to communicate with fans and any others who share their interests. Rick Riordan who tweets @camphalfblood has great interaction with his fans.
You can choose to have Twitter promote specific tweets for you.
You get some useful analytics, for example my top tweet showed up more than 1,000 times. Since I don't have many followers, that's huge. Some of the statistics could be a little overwhelming and/or inconsistent. For example I tweeted a bit.ly link to my blog. Per bit.ly, the link was clicked 43 times. Per Twitter, people saw my tweet 35 times and interacted with it twice. Per Blogger for the same post I had 67 page views but the traffic sources were mostly Facebook and only about 10 were from bit.ly. Hmmm I need "Reconciling Social Media stats for Dummies."
If you have multiple interests, you could get followers in any area but they may not stay if you don't tweet things that they find interesting. For example, I am a Strike Back fan, so I have a few posts about that, but not so much on vitiligo, so I have a few Strike Back fans following me, but not any around vitiligo.
I can track who comes to this blog page if I use a specific link in my tweet (compared to another I may use on Facebook - that information comes from Blogger).
You should have some idea of what you want to use Twitter for - that will help focus your tweets and audience, and not be all over the place like I am. And finally,
Immediacy. You know when you text friends and family and they tell you they are at a soccer game or the grocery it does not freak you out, because you know them. Imagine you are following someone like Rihanna and she tweets, just landed at Chicago O'Hare. You know where she is at that very specific point in time, like you would your kids! Blows my mind. But that live action is what Twitter is all about.

Follow me on Twitter Follow @AustinTrini , Instagram AustinTrini

I also have my own (as me) Twitter account, so you can also follow me under my real name for my professional tweets.

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Cancer Survivor, writing about Health and Fitness as you age

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