Discussion: Social Media & Blogging- Let's Talk Twitter!

Two weeks ago I kicked off the discussion series about Social Media and Blogging with a discussion about g+ and whether it's a useful tool.  Last week I did a recap of everyone's thoughts and started a discussion about Facebook.  This week I'll do a recap with everyone's thoughts about Facebook and start a discussion about Twitter.  I had planned to do Pinterest next, but it felt like the most logical one to do was Twitter since that's up there with Facebook, right?

• I was surprised when there were a lot of comments by bloggers that said they didn't have a Facebook page for their blog.  I shouldn't be surprised though, it took me 4 years to get one up myself.

•  It was pretty clear that time is an issue for many, we have to pick and choose what we want to spend our time on.  I understand that one far too well. 

•  Maja says she uses her Facebook page far more than Twitter and sees much more traffic come from it.  She feels Twitter is pointless anymore and she dislikes it.  I do agree to a certain extent about Twitter, I'll share those thoughts down below.

•  Maja, along with some others, doesn't like that Facebook is trying to get us to pay for getting more viewers.  If we pay to promote the post then it may go from 50 people seeing it to 400 people seeing it and that's just a pain and so wrong.  I'm in agreement with this 100%.  I did pay once, and it made no difference in how many views that post actually got (on my blog).  I won't do it again.  I do want to mention that if you post a link and then click the x that makes the box go away (the one that shows a tease of it with an image) you will get WAY more views.  I almost always do this.

•  Kimba, and several others, like Facebook for cover reveals, sharing about special deals and other promotional things we may not want cluttering our blog.  I agree with this as well.  I don't usually do cover reveals on my blog unless it's for a client or an author I love already.  I also don't do kindle deals on my blog so sharing on my Facebook page works well.

•  Melissa had a great comment that I want to share in it's entirety because it's quite interesting. I share some deals and try to help authors out, but I was always afraid of overdoing it and annoying people, maybe I shouldn't be as concerned about it though.

I  agree that FB seems to be the way to go anymore (twitter can be frustrating at times). I have a FB blog page and I have the same issue sometimes. I post things and it's like nobody cares! And then I see other sites posting a million posts and they have twice as many likes as I do or more. I think the key to it is what you are posting. If you are posting just your blog posts, you won't get much feedback as most people have better things to do (just being real). But, when I scroll through and see books posted that are cheap or free, I click on it cuz I want to check out the book. And if you are the kind of blog that is constantly promoting authors (like myself) I have a tendency to fancy their blog more because it isn't about them so much as the authors. I have had my blog FB page for almost 8 mo and I went from 200 likes to almost 1500 likes simply because I started promoting authors on my page. The more you promote, the better your site will do.

• A few mentioned Network Blogs, I have that as well but I put that up when I put up my blog and it's hooked to my personal Facebook, so it posts there each day. I haven't tried to see if I can add another and make it post on my Facebook, but I don't really mind putting up a link myself since I like to share some thoughts about my post and not just the link.

• Jessica says photos and videos do better on there than links, which I suppose is true since it's something to actually talk about.  She also says having something exclusive to your social media can get more interaction.  And that's definitely true.  She also recommended putting up pictures of book signings and stuff.  I think I can throw in here that pictures of your bookshelves would likely work as well.

• Melissa mentioned that some may not 'like' posts because it shows their name.

• Katie said she does better with g+, her Facebook posts get little to no attention. On g+ she's gotten 70+ comments back.  {This is fascinating, seeing how different things work for different people.}

• Ginny said she has the same issues as me. Sometimes her posts get lots of attention and other times not.  Sometimes giveaway's go well on Facebook and other times she doesn't get much response.

• BB had a great comment and rather then try to cut it down I'm going to post the majority of it. I think there's some good points here and this plays into the twitter discussion I'm starting.  And I definitely post more then once or twice a day (most people do in my feed too) but I'm figuring out a way to cut it down to maybe 4 times a day rather then like the 12 I sometimes I have.

I like Twitter as a promotional platform. It is definitely the best for connecting with like-minded souls and getting the word out about anything. I like Facebook too, but I try to be careful about posting too much. Twitter spam is easily scrolled through. On Facebook you want to engage your followers, not bore or annoy them. I usually only post there once or twice a week; once or twice a day if I have a promotion going. Once or twice a day I think is average if you've got new and interesting content. I wouldn't do Facebook giveaways, but doing a blog giveaway and promoting it on Facebook works pretty well.

There were a lot of comments and I wasn't able to cover everything, but I think I got the gist of it all here.  Also I wanted to point out that some have said they like the schedule feature on Facebook, so we can spread out our Facebook posts throughout the day.  


Now that we've read that giant book, let's talk Twitter! 

I use Twitter for promotional only.  At least for the most part.  I use to be far more active on there and would ask random questions or say random things, but I just lost interest in doing that.  I either had too many spam replies or no replies at all.  Looking through tweets to chat back became 'another thing to do' and it was on the chopping block, I just stopped looking through my feed at all.  So chatting with others via Twitter isn't really happening here.  At least not often. 

However, I use Twitter for promotional reasons.  I'm a member of several Triberr tribes, so we all tweet each others blog posts, so I have regular tweets going out for that.  I sometimes feel like my feed is just a bunch of spam, but really it's not.  I mean, I don 't tweet everything for everyone. I don't usually tweet the cover reveals or book blasts.  Mostly I tweet reviews, discussion posts and giveaway's.  Does it work? I don't know.  I know that I have got some readers from Triberr itself and I have several blogs in my Triberr tribes that I visit regularly.  For that reason, I think that it's probably worth it. I feel like I've made some new friends with it.  But really, that's more Triberr then Twitter. 

So what are your thoughts?