Okay, I have to do something different with this blog. My experience on Twitter has now forced my hand. As many of you know, I am using Twitter as a public platform to promote my writing and my book. So I am always paying attention to what kind of following I'm attracting on Twitter and subsequently how that translates into successful viewers of my writing and sales of my book.
I also use Facebook to promote my book, but in a quite different way. On Facebook almost all of my "friends" are people I know: friends, family, former coworkers (also friends!). On Facebook, I've been able to attract attention and make sales of my book. The cynic would say that this is because I am able to play upon the sympathies of those who already like or love me and guilt them into buying copies of my book. In any case, I have noticed that every time I make some effort to promote my book, it results in at least a few sales of the book. At the same time, I recognize that I need to be careful not to overdo these promotion efforts because in my mind "that's not what Facebook is for."
I have no such qualms on Twitter because early on I decided that Twitter would be public and a promotion tool. Yes, I spice my tweets up with my personality and the goings on of my non-writing life because that's what you do on Twitter (or so I've been told). But I have found that no matter how many followers I have been able to attract, my promotion efforts do not seem to connect at all to sales of my book or even readers of my blog. I suppose this could be impatience on my part. I haven't been on Twitter that long and I am still learning how to be an active Tweep. Perhaps I just need to hit on the right formula. Or perhaps Twitter is Bizzarro World.
The clearest example of Twitter as Bizzarro World is my current ratio of Followers to Listed. Now presumably, the number of followers you have is an indication of how many people are interested in you and what you're putting out there (oh really?!?!). At first, it appeared to me that the lists you were on represented how your followers thought of you. If you are an author, you end up on your followers' authors lists. If you're into green energy you go on various sustainability lists. And so on. But as I've watched over the last few weeks, the volume of lists I'm on has gradually but inexorably caught up to my volume of followers and today I found that I am on more lists than I have followers (606 lists, 583 followers).
I think I have an idea why this has happened. There are some serial listers out there. Once they find you and decide to list you (whether or not they follow you), they stick you on ten or fifteen of their lists. I think this is a self-promotion tool. Not one I would choose to use, but I figure that's probably what's going on. Anyway, these serial listers naturally seek out other serial listers who support and agree with this strategy, and they copy each others lists. They also love sites like Formulists, which I happen to like, but for other reasons. What better way to form tons of lists and find Tweeps to list than a site that's all about lists! Naturally since I'm there and I follow @formulists itself, I'm a great target. I suspect that my follow of @listnotify also sets me as a target for these serial listers. Anyway, there it is. A milestone. More lists than followers. Yippee!
And I still can't say that I've sold any books off of Twitter. But Twitter is turning out to be interesting in its own right, and going forward one of the purposes of this blog is going to be documenting this Bizzarro World that I've gotten myself into. Perhaps some good can come out of Twitter after all.
