Getting The Most Out Of Twitter

I recently wrote about how I have discovered that Twitter is not a good promotional tool for my blogging.  I enjoy using it and want to keep on using it, but I can't justify the amount of time I spend on it.  In fact I think I would probably enjoy it more if I spent less time on it.  It is so easy to simply log on and see what is going on that I do so every couple of hours.


The most fun on Twitter is to come up with something that gets a lot of retweets.  Obviously I am not Stephen Fry, so when I say a lot  of retweets what I mean is about half a dozen.  The trouble is that when I get something that seems to generate some interest my initial reaction is to continually monitor the screen to see if anybody else has retweeted it.  This is not the smartest move of course.  Watching something all the time is the best way of making you think that nothing is happening.  If you have ever followed the news closely for a period of time you always get the feeling that nothing much is happening.

So the optimum strategy is not to flit in and out of Twitter all day coming up with loads of quips, most of which nobody wants to read and which nobody will ever read.  It is much better to spend the time coming up with really good ideas for tweets, then staying away for a reasonably long period of time to see if they catch on.  After all, if I do hit my unofficial target of six retweets then it is a lot more satisfying to see them all in one go than stretched out over a long period of time.

So I am going to limit myself to two visits to Twitter a day - one in the morning and one in the evening.  The time I would have spent on there will be repurposed to coming up with the best tweets my brain can come up with.  (If you follow me on Twitter, your expectations will not be too high here.)  I may allow myself a little leeway on the visits - because Twitter is a good research tool.  It is also a great source of inspiration for jokes in particular.  But basically I am going to try and be disciplined about how I use it.

I haven't decided yet whether I am going to bother scheduling tweets promoting my blogs.  They don't seem to generate much in the way of results and probably put people off following me.  But on the other hand they do provoke a little feedback from time to time, and just about any feedback is welcome.  I am convinced that most of what I write is never read by another human being.

So that is the plan.   Just for my own records - and on the basis that nobody reads my stuff anyway - I currently have 4728 followers.  That number has grown very gradually since I have been on Twitter.  It will be interesting to see if it starts to fall if I spend less time actively tweeting.  I have a feeling it will.