First there was the website and then the Facebook fan page
for my book,
Hands at Work. Soon, another Facebook page for
me.
That seemed like plenty of
“social media” for this semi-introverted-living-on-a-remote-island Quaker
writer—until April 2010, when I attended a meeting of
QUIP - Quakers Uniting in Publications.
There, Friends of all ages spoke of the Quaker history of writing as ministry
and how it is evolving as publishing and communication change. With the
guidance and encouragement of QUIP participants, I returned home
convinced
to blog; a few weeks later, as my writing group cheered me on, I created
this blog site.
Maybe I hadn’t quite learned to love social media by the time I was sitting in Kelly’s workshop, but
I wasn’t worrying about it—until I read the first item on the handout: My
Twitter Plan. I started to hyperventilate.
“Don’t you need a smartphone to tweet?” I asked Kelly. I’m off the hook on this one, I thought;
my antique flip phone can barely make calls and handle texts.
“That’s how Twitter worked when it first started,” Kelly
said. “But now you can tweet from your computer, too.”
“Oh… good,” I said, sweat starting to prickle my hairline.
Kelly became my interpreter and guide, introducing me to
this new culture, a part of today’s communication stream I’d avoided. She
walked me through the steps to begin:
·
Add photo (or else Twitter will use
the default image of an egg)
·
Write a brief bio – as with all
things Twitter, you have 140 characters.
The mechanics seemed easy enough, now that I understood
I could do all of this on my laptop. Then Kelly introduced beginning
Twitter-speak:
·
Following – people whose tweets you
want to read when you check your Twitter feed (a string of their photos and
140-character tweets show up when I log in)
·
Followers – people who want to see
your tweets when they check their Twitter feed
·
@ is used to “tag” someone that you
mention in a tweet
·
# - hashtags before words (such as
#Quakerblogger) allow you to become part of larger conversations by linking you
to all posts on this subject
·
Retweet – lets you “recycle”
someone else’s tweet so your “followers” see it.
I know there’s much more vocabulary and nuance to this new
language. Just as I do with my elementary Spanish skills, I’ll undoubtedly
fumble and make mistakes, but Kelly taught me enough to get started. And she offered some advice about
hanging around this “water cooler of the Internet.”
·
Act like a person, not like a sales
robot.
·
Think about the things you’re
willing to talk about and share with others—Twitter is very public.
·
Demonstrate a sense of humor.
·
Share things that are worth
reading.
·
Interact with other people, such as
asking someone a question.
·
Promote other writers (or whoever
your community is) in a real and honest way.
So far, I’m enjoying my exploration of this form of
communication. I’ve been surprised by who else is involved. For example, I’m following a number of
Quakers and Quaker organizations such as:
@pendlehill
@westernfriend
@friendsjournal
@DianeFCNL
@jonwatts.
Many of my writing friends, plus well-known authors
(@AnneLamott, @AmyTan) tweet regularly, too.
One of my questions when I started to blog resurfaced
with thoughts of entering the world of Twitter:
Do
I want to spend more of my already-full life in front of the computer screen
engaging in this virtual, but distant, way with others?
I’m still not clear about that, and I have concerns about
these “connections,” about the quality of interactions, and the quantity of
input. But for now, I’m feeling
convinced that Twitter is a helpful tool to expand my writing and Quaker
networks.
How about you?
Have you been convinced to Tweet? Why – or why not?
