I had to be dragged onto Twitter kicking and screaming. On my strictly personal Facebook page, I usually went at least 2-3 days without posting anything. And those posts were geared towards my close friends, who actually care about the minutiae of my life. The thought of posting all day long about who knows what to total strangers just stymied me. What on earth would I say? Why on earth would anyone care?
But then I sat through a long presentation on the glories of Twitter by my friend and fellow author Eliza Knight. She is a true believer, and thus very persuasive. She badgered everyone in the room for over an hour about increasing our social media profiles. Frankly, she scared me a little. So I caved.
I opened an account and spent a day just reading posts. Funny posts. Posts with informative links. Snarky posts. Lo and behold, some of my favorite authors were in, using the same delightful voice that resonates in their books. Eliza swore up and down it was okay to respond to famous people I'd never met. Still, I'll admit to a fair amount of trepidation the first time I sassed back to Victoria Dahl. Amazingly enough, she answered me!
The way Eliza really pushed me over the cliff was at the end of our meeting. I'd just toured the Ben & Jerry's factory in Vermont, and spent ten minutes raving to anyone who would listen about their Late Night Snack ice cream, an homage to Jimmy Fallon. Eliza pointed out that if I'd had that conversation on Twitter, Jimmy Fallon probably would've seen it, and retweeted to his gajillion followers, who then would all buy my books. More or less.
I didn't really expect anything like that to happen. Yes, I'm Twitter friends with a few big name authors now. And yes, when I raved about Angry Orchard cider, I made sure to hash tag it, and they retweeted me. But then, two nights ago, I watched a surprisingly good Keanu Reeves movie. I tweeted about it, using exactly those words. Since it was quite the back-handed compliment, I didn't bother using a hash tag. Nobody but my followers should've seen it.
To my amazement, frickin' Neo from The Matrix retweeted my post! And (although I can't prove it is directly related) I picked up two new followers that day.
Which means now I'm the one urging everyone I know to get on the social media bandwagon. Maybe someday a cast member from The Avengers will tweet about you. If it sells even one copy of my book, I say it is TOTALLY worth it. Anyone else have good Twitter stories to share?
Yes!! Have two stories, once John Cusack tweeted into a conversation I was having with another person, and he was following it and jumped in. So very cool.
ReplyDeleteThen I was tweeting Milla Jovovich about how awesomesauce she is, along with all the other 100000s of people, and she tweeted back "No, you are the awesomesauciest" I faved that tweet and look at it periodically. Because I really love her. :-)