Twitter – A bad case of Self- Importance?

I have been reading some great posts on authors’ blogs about Twitter the good, the informative as well as the useless aspects of it. Therefore, I wanted to wade into the melee with my own take on Twitter – perhaps from an intuitive perspective.

Twitter for me seems to be a lot like the mental chatter that goes on in our heads, usually this stuff never sees the light of day, however… Now with each of these social media outlets, we humans have a way to purge our every waking thought into the Universe. For the good of all of human kind….or not.

For the most part commenting, writing or working in such a manner all comes with some basic common sense amid this muddle of information bombardment, or at least we would assume this is the case. But, how much is too much, where do we draw the line and are there ways we can be more efficient at helping each other? 

It might be useful to point out of course, what’s really going on here (with any SMS) is a virtual uproar of the plaintive cries of human souls letting the world know how badly they want to be found, recognized and listened to for who they are.

Then we can wade into the commotion of this Twitter world and look more closely at strategy… not that I am one who pretends to know anything about marketing approaches in social media. I studied food marketing….

I happen to agree with many of the comments first of all – too much spam, too many DM’s, repetitive comments and adverts, blah, blah, blah. Same old stuff recycled over and over again ad nauseam. 

There are many complaints about repetitive advertising that I would have to agree with – this is annoying and not productive. Perhaps it is for the spammers, but, after a few of these ‘infoblurbs’ (it’s not just books) run down my screen, I am no longer paying attention.

I agree with a lot of what I am reading on the posts about direct messaging too, although the DM’s don’t bother me overly, I just ignore them. Even the spammers can be overlooked (well some of them anyway!) 

One of the things that I would say I have noticed and pointed out to people who ask me about my own take on Twitter, is the arrogance. It appears an utter lack of manners can be shown (by some, not all) in this Twitterverse stemming from a bad case of self-importance. 

Often these are not the people you see with 80 000 or some such number of followers. Those people are usually quite interactive, gracious and appreciative of the people they tweet to and work hard to maintain their following.

The people I am talking about here, are the ones who are clearly clawing their way to the ‘top’ – higher numbers? Those who make Twitter a game of follow me, I will unfollow as soon as I think you won’t notice. Or follow me – I don’t have to follow you because I am better, different, special, needy, weird etc. And then there are those who see everyone else who does anything remotely similar to themselves, as a threat. 

What I can say, is that when you are real, sincere and bonafide – consistently showing yourself to be who you are in good faith, your presence here will be both felt and known. No gimmicks required, just be yourself.

There is not much we can do about these ego tweeps, except perhaps to avoid them, pity works well for a time, but then they just become annoying. One of the reasons I don’t use Facebook anymore is because I did not want to be linked to someone who didn’t have the time of day for me in college. 

I am not interested in constructing a false reality on Twitter either – I want real time interaction, access to decent information and to share great banter with all sorts of people from all over the world. Twitter offers that and is brilliant at it. 

So, for me, as someone who enjoys using Twitter and wants to get the most from this experience I offer an outline of fair play -

Be gracious, thank people for following, retweeting and paying attention to your corner of the Universe. It should mean the world to you, it does to me.

Have a bio – about you preferably, that is always a great place to start or say something witty. But don’t leave it blank, because then I don’t know what to think and most often I don’t follow you. 

I like Twitter because I can get a message out there – without being intrusive. The last thing to do is be obnoxious, intrusive or overly repetitive, especially when it pertains to writing or anything you love doing.

Twitter also makes me laugh – a lot. I really enjoy people’s funny jokes, thoughts and sayings – they often hit a cord with me and my own experiences here. And provide comic relief at the end of a day spent mostly pursuing my own dreams- so please, keep them coming, you are a witty bunch! 

April