Category Archives: Twitter guidelines

by | 13 April 2018 · 11:53 am

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 9: Follow These Folks for Great Content

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Related Posts

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 1: Part 1:
Your UserName, Display Name, BIO, Profile Picture,
Header, Pinned Tweets, Hashtags, and All That Jazz

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 2:
Finding Content to Tweet via Topic Hashtags,
Google Alerts, Lists, and All That Jazzy-Jazz

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 3:
Accounts to Follow and Accounts to Run From

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 4:
Creating Threads

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 5:
How to Reply Correctly to Multi-UserName Tweets
and How to Get Out of Conversations
When Others Do It So Wrong

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 6:
How to Encourage Accounts to Follow You,
Following/Unfollowing,
Twitter’s Unfollow Bug and #TrueTwit

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 7:
How to Legitimately Let People Know You’re a Writer
While Avoiding AutoDMs and Spam

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 8:
Don’t Be a Spammer;
Here’s What to Do Instead
to Let People Know about Your Work

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 9:
Follow These Folks for Great Content

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 10:
More Great Folks to Follow for Good Content

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Filed under #TwitterSmarter, #WritingTips, Tweeting, Twitter, Twitter guidelines

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by | 4 April 2018 · 8:59 am

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 8: Don’t Be a Spammer; Here’s What to Do Instead to Let People Know about your Work

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♦

Related Posts

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 1: Part 1:
Your UserName, Display Name, BIO, Profile Picture,
Header, Pinned Tweets, Hashtags, and All That Jazz

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 2:
Finding Content to Tweet via Topic Hashtags,
Google Alerts, Lists, and All That Jazzy-Jazz

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 3:
Accounts to Follow and Accounts to Run From

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 4:
Creating Threads

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 5:
How to Reply Correctly to Multi-UserName Tweets
and How to Get Out of Conversations
When Others Do It So Wrong

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 6:
How to Encourage Accounts to Follow You,
Following/Unfollowing,
Twitter’s Unfollow Bug and #TrueTwit

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 7:
How to Legitimately Let People Know You’re a Writer
While Avoiding AutoDMs and Spam

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 8:
Don’t Be a Spammer;
Here’s What to Do Instead
to Let People Know about Your Work

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 9:
Follow These Folks for Great Content

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 10:
More Great Folks to Follow for Good Content

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Leave a Comment

Filed under #TwitterSmarter, #WritingTips, Authors, Tweeting, Twitter, Twitter guidelines

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by | 30 March 2018 · 9:32 am

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 7: How to Legitimately Let People Know You’re a Writer While Avoiding AutoDMs and Spam

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♦

Related Posts

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 1: Part 1:
Your UserName, Display Name, BIO, Profile Picture,
Header, Pinned Tweets, Hashtags, and All That Jazz

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 2:
Finding Content to Tweet via Topic Hashtags,
Google Alerts, Lists, and All That Jazzy-Jazz

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 3:
Accounts to Follow and Accounts to Run From

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 4:
Creating Threads

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 5:
How to Reply Correctly to Multi-UserName Tweets
and How to Get Out of Conversations
When Others Do It So Wrong

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 6:
How to Encourage Accounts to Follow You,
Following/Unfollowing,
Twitter’s Unfollow Bug and #TrueTwit

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 7:
How to Legitimately Let People Know You’re a Writer
While Avoiding AutoDMs and Spam

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 8:
Don’t Be a Spammer;
Here’s What to Do Instead
to Let People Know about Your Work

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 9:
Follow These Folks for Great Content

How to Do Twitter, for Writers, Part 10:
More Great Folks to Follow for Good Content

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Leave a Comment

Filed under #TwitterSmarter, #WritingTips, Indie Authors, Tweeting, Twitter, Twitter guidelines, Writing

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by | 2 November 2013 · 10:15 am

How to Alienate People and Lose Followers on Twitter

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Hey, congratulations. You’ve finally joined The Twitter, but you’re not sure exactly how to work the system yet. You’ve seen the blog posts, articles, and even e-books on how to increase your number of followers, but merely having vast numbers of followers is totally irrelevant and pointless unless you’re a celebrity, a rock star, a best-selling author, trying to become the dictator of a country that cannot be easily located on the map, or all of the above.

The most important thing you need to learn in order to really make a name for yourself on The Twitter is how to alienate people and lose followers. Use some, or all, of these simple guidelines, and you, too, can successfully reduce your followers to zero, or, if you’re really diligent at annoying and alienating people, get every account you open — each time under a different name — closed by The Twitter Police.

1) Be an egg-head.

Now, if you’re an exciting, exquisite, gorgeous egg, like this,

68d30a9594728bcL-192x300

Lilies of the Valley Faberge egg: pearls and gold

or like this,

The Baroque Cockerel, or Cuckoo, Faberge Imperial Easter egg (Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin), one of six Faberge Imperial Easter eggs with embedded mechanics, which reveals a bird flapping its wings and crowing

The Baroque Cockerel, or Cuckoo, Faberge Imperial Easter egg (Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin), one of six Faberge Imperial Easter eggs with embedded mechanics, which reveals a bird flapping its wings and crowing

like this,

Imperial Czarevich Easter Egg 1912 Lapis lazuli, gold, diamonds, platinum or silver

Imperial Czarevich Easter Egg, 1912: Lapis lazuli, gold, diamonds, platinum or silver

or even like this,

13-peter-carl-faberge-egg-300512

The 1914 Faberge Mosaic Egg, one of four Faberge eggs among the Royal Collection of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth ll

most people would, no doubt, find you a clever, resourceful, and most beautiful egg, and would like to follow you. This is not what you want since you are attempting to alienate people and lose followers. Being an egg-head means using the undecorated, unimaginative, unattractive default eggs which The Twitter provides. This egg:

Default Twitter Egg Avatar, comes with different color backgrounds, though I don't know why

Default Twitter Egg Avatar, comes with different color backgrounds, though I don’t know why

Using one of those eggs will alert potential followers that you’re too lazy to take a picture of yourself or even to find an interesting egg photo to upload. This will certainly drive many potential followers away.

2) Write an incomprehensible BIO.

If being an egg-head doesn’t alienate people, and you still find yourself with too many followers, you could try the next step: fill your BIO (short for “biography” if you’re a Twitter neophyte) with #hash-tagged words (which are used to help in searches, or to connect people interested in talking about the same topics), acronyms, nonsensical letters, and terms that no one could understand unless he, too, is in your rather specialized field. Your rather intimidating and incomprehensible BIO should look something like this:

#SEO #DJ #SWF #DOD #DOJ #NSA #IBM #BDSM #TKO
#BO #CHIPS #DIP #SALSA #WTH #WTF#DUH #DOH

Since many people use Social Media to connect and communicate with people who are interested in the same things they are, you’re not likely to increase your followers with such a #BIO. I highly recommend this approach to #alienate and #confuse #people.

3) Whenever someone follows you, immediately send an automated DM asking them to do something for you.

DMs — Direct Messages — are a private way of communicating with someone who’s following you, a way of saying something special that you don’t want everyone else to see. If you reserve DMs for your private email once you’ve made friends with someone on The Twitter, for example, your follower may actually read it, which defeats the entire purpose of my writing this blog post in the first place, so, please, follow my instructions to the letter. Use entirely automated DMs (knowing full well that The Twitter frowns upon such practices), begging — or better yet, ordering — the new follower to do something for you without your offering to reciprocate, and making it very clear that you don’t even know to whom you’re writing:

Thanks for following me. Buy my book @ xxx.com, like my Facebook page, read my blog, sign up for my uber-expensive course on a topic you’re not even interested in, donate to my KickStarter Campaign, and make a non-tax-deductible contribution to my children’s college fund.

This will encourage the newbies to unfollow you, but may even make them stop reading DMs in the first place, which is a really good way for you to get a bad rep on The Twitter.

4) Call your followers “Peeps” (Twitter terminology) rather than the more accepted and dignified “Twits.”

The last I heard, #Peeps was shorthand for Peeping Toms (also known as voyeurs) which is not only illegal in most places, but one of the warning signs of potential serial rapists and serial killers. Using the term “Peeps” instead of the more acceptable “Twits” will be sure to reduce your number of followers significantly. And quite quickly. So call them “Peeps” every chance you get:

In my jammies now, Peeps.
Getting ready for bed & getting undressed, Peeps.
Looking through my telescope @ my neighbors, Peeps.
Wanking, Peeps.

You get the idea. If you want more examples, have a gander at Oprah’s account. She’s great at this kind of thing.

5) Tweet as if you’re Texting.

It is an absolute shame how many people on The Twitter completely miss this simple opportunity to confuse, bother, and bewilder followers so that they stop following you. And it’s so easy. Simply tweet to a select (read: extremely small) number of people, who know everything about your private life, as if you were texting on your Smartphone, so that no one else knows what you’re talking about. Some examples of Texting-tweets are these:

No, you did not.
Guess who likes you? Come on: guess.
Are you going to be at Applebee’s @ 6 or 6:30?
My new number is 555-555-5555. Call me now.
He is such a dufus. I can’t stand it when he talks in class.
Do you know if we can borrow your Mom’s car?
Some creep wrote to me: how did he get my account?
I’ll be @ Billy’s Bar @ 7. I’m wearing this dress (photo). Like it?
I don’t know who some of these people writing to me are: do they go to our school?

When enough people realize that they have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, they’ll drop you faster than the proverbial hot potato.

6) Post your “daily stats” of followers & unfollowers, preferably several times a day.

Of course, when auto-posting your followers/unfollowers, the number of followers should consistently be dropping while that of the unfollowers should be rising, exponentially, one would hope, if you’re doing this correctly. There are really nice automated programs out there to help you do this (and to help you get your account closed for breaking The Twitter’s T&C, which is Terms & Conditions for those of you who are still learning the complex Twitter jargon). Your “daily stats” tweets would read this way (but you won’t have to write these yourself, or even use a calculator: remember, they’re automated):

Daily Stats: 2 Followers, 37 Unfollowers, from Unfollow . com
Daily Stats: 1 Follow, 798 Unfollows
Thanks to this AutoProgram, I know that 364 people unfollowed me today

and, one of my favorites, with its implied threat of retribution, is this one:

Thanks to WhoTheHellUnfollowedMeNow,
I know exactly who you are, you 1,497 Peeps who dropped me,
and, boy, are you going to be sorry

If that doesn’t scare them away in droves, then we’ll just have to move on to the next steps.

7) Thank all your new followers with the same phrase.

It’s considered polite, though not de rigeur, to welcome your new followers on The Twitter. Of course, if you want to alienate them quickly, it’s best to just use the same simple phrase so you don’t have to get finger-cramps from typing too much. Something like this works well.

Thanks
Thanks
Thanks
Thx
Thx
Thx
TY
TY
TY

Showing your new followers that you haven’t read their BIOs, their tweets, and that, furthermore, you don’t really care whether or not they follow you by writing the same thing every time they do follow you is a sure-fire technique to make them feel unwelcome, and, thus, drive them away.

8) Tweet nonsense.

The best way to alienate people is to tweet things that make absolutely no sense.  Here are some great examples I took directly from The Twitter, so you make sure you do it up right.

I be 1 of them that does it rite.
Be that person.
U R who U B.
If this were your last day on earth.
what it is

If you can manage to churn out at least 30-40 of these nonsensical tweets every day — preferably mixing in txtng shortcuts — you’ll alienate people and lose followers pretty quickly, so I recommend that you spend at least 5 minutes every morning piling on the pseudo-twts.

9) Hashtag everything.

#Hashtags on The Twitter are used to help people search for members of groups (#writers, #poets, #photographers), topics (#Alzheimers, #Holocaust, #WWII, #poetry, #Bieber), or to temporarily join in an event which is scheduled for a specific date and time (#AskAnAgent, #TalkToAnEditor, #PitchYourBook). Some clever Twits use #hashtags to mock the usual practice, as in #Seriously #Really #NorthByNorthWestForKimYe since these “topics” can’t really be searched. One of the surest ways to annoy anyone reading your Twitter feed is to #hashtag nonsensical words or words that no one would be searching for.

I so #like #movies about #space because I #like #scifi.
What are you #cooking for #dinner #tonight?
My #BF is such a #nitwit. He threw my #mail in the #trash.

It’s #confusing, #ridiculous, and #pointless: all sure ways to #alienate readers and lose #followers.

10) Follow, Unfollow, Re-Follow, Unfollow the same people.

For some reason that isn’t quite clear to me, many people keep daily track of Twits who follow and unfollow them. They use automated programs to do this, so they don’t have to actually search through the thousands of followers that they already have. One of the best ways I’ve found to annoy these people and make them stop following you — or, if you’re lucky, they’ll eventually block you from following them — is to follow, unfollow, follow, unfollow them. It’s best if you do this every day: follow on one day, unfollow the next; repeat this process until you get a tweet like this (which is an actual tweet I got, from a very annoyed Twit),

Why do you keep following, unfollowing, following, unfollowing me?
You are SERIOUSLY screwing up my numbers.

Or continue the follow/unfollow process until they block you. They’ll be so irritated that they’ll unfollow you at the same time, so you accomplish two goals at once: alienating and reducing your followers.

♥

Contrary to the popular belief, not everyone on The Twitter wants a great number of followers. If you find yourself suddenly so popular that you are, literally, inundated with huge numbers of followers, you can simply use any — or all — of these simple steps to alienate people and lose followers until you get the overly large numbers to a manageable (i.e., extremely small) group.

Can’t get enough of me?

Okay, then, fine.

Follow Me, by Uncle Kracker.

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Filed under Humor, Music Videos, Tweeting, Twitter, Twitter guidelines