As I have previously written, I was encouraged by my appearance on the Marketing 2.0 Panel at Push to Publish to give Twitter another try. I duly buffed up my profile, snagged a few good people to follow, downloaded Tweetdeck and dedicated 15-20 minutes a day to posting useful links. I observed (roughly) Don Lafferty’s 12:1 ratio, which suggests that you should tweet 12 things of general interest for every time you tweet something really only about marketing yourself. So I tweeted NJ poetry events that were nothing to do with me, links to contests I happened to receive emails about, links to interesting poetry stuff on the blogosphere, and even links to the odd “famous” poem that swam across my brain. And every now and then I tweeted about my own new blog post, or calls for submissions to one of the many (!) poetry journals with which I am involved. I labeled everything with the hashtag #poetry, and felt like a good Marketing 2.0 citizen.
Unfortunately I am coming to the conclusion that Twitter is not ready for #poetry in any serious interpretation of the word. If you search #poetry then most of what you get is bad haiku–it clearly has not been lost on the twittosphere that you can usually fit a haiku into 140 characters. Not many people, it seems, are tweeting poetry like good Marketing 2.0 citizens. (The exception would be the chat #poettues arranged by @robertleebrewer, but that only really happens on Tuesdays, as the name would suggest.)
I see Twitter being incredibly useful to my fellow panelists @donlafferty and @centsiblelife, and I want to make it work for #poetry as well, so, come on, any ideas?
Hmm. Maybe Twitter is just too new still? I have my twitter feed hooked up to my FB status and most of the responses I get are thru FB. I know a lot of people just don’t want to be bothered with yet another social networking duty. However, I have answered several calls to submission via Twitter and I’ve always been grateful to get that news. I send out sub. calls, too, and that works well. BTW, @TheExternalist (edited by Larina Warnock) posts good twitter poetry news.
Comment by Christine — November 2, 2009 @ 5:01 pm
I think you’re right, Christine! And I should have given you a shout out as a good Marketing 2.0 citizen as well–I have noticed you tweeting some good stuff! I’ll be sure to follow @TheExternalist too.
Comment by Anna M Evans — November 3, 2009 @ 7:53 am
I think you’re overthinking Twitter a bit. Yes, it’s a great marketing tool, but I’m not sure that 12:1 ratio is terribly interesting. I consider myself to be an average Twitter user, and I’m much more interested in what you as an average Tweeter happen to be doing at any given moment, rather than what events or contests you might post about. Your personality has to appear in the tweets, too, or else people aren’t going to be hugely interested in following you.
I took a look at Don Lafferty’s tweets; his personality is all over the place, even when he’s retweeting someone or plugging something. Think of it as an extension of your blog – just a shorter one. Plug your blog entries, tweet your cups of tea, snippets of your favorite poems (don’t forget to hashtag that one with #wishiwrote).
Also, participate in the Twitter community stuff – #followfriday (or #FF), when you hashtag a tweet with #FF and then just list a bunch of people you want to follow. Check out their trending topics, see what’s hot.
:shrug: My two cents.
Comment by Rachel — November 3, 2009 @ 8:55 am
LOL! If I tweeted my cups of tea that’s pretty much all you’d get! Seriously though, you make some good points. The 12:1 ratio is just a guideline for those who don’t want people to see their tweets as ONLY about them and their stuff (and really, I don’t think that applies to the “cups of tea” type tweet, but to the “read my blog” type).
(And the bad haiku is often REALLY bad!)
Comment by Anna M Evans — November 3, 2009 @ 9:18 am
Or maybe Twitter is just a bit fucking stupid. Is it just me who thinks so?
Comment by Quincy R. Lehr — November 4, 2009 @ 9:07 pm
Quincy:
Yes.
Comment by Rachel — November 5, 2009 @ 8:35 am