twitter Archives - Addicted to Writing

How (Not) to Get Followed on Twitter: 13 Tips

Posted on March 27, 2018 Written by Pinar Tarhan

I’m not a celebrity. I’m, however, a social media enthusiast and expert. I’ve been experimenting with and reading about these things since 2007. Yes, that’s a very specific date: That’s when I started using Facebook. I remember because it was a year after my year abroad as a student. I was deeply missing my friends and being bored out of my mind at an internship. I had the technology, particularly no responsibilities (I tried to get them, believe me!) and tons of free time.

Then came blogging, Twitter and Linkedin.

Exceptions: We are friends offline, and I already know who you are. Then none of the below matters. For strangers, take note:

– Write your profile in another language. If I can’t understand what you say, I won’t follow. Simple. I’m trying to learn other languages, but English and Turkish are my only fluent ones at the moment.

– Treat it like content mills treated articles. Don’t make it a keyword dump. There should be some words without hashtags.

– Ignore all the logical advice I happily give.

– Have the picture of an egg.

– Just put a picture of you in your underwear. Really? Unless it’s the cover of erotica fiction you wrote, and it’s not your picture. Then it is fine. Still…do think twice.

– Tell me your marital status, number of kids, what sect of religion you belong to or which prophet you love before telling me what you do and who you are (and no, I don’t think “you” begin with your marital status, number of kids or religion). It’s okay to put them in your bio somewhere if you have to, but I really don’t think they should be the first things I should know about you.

– Don’t be genuine.

– Don’t give any links I can check out.

– Name all the brands you are endorsing.

– Just have an account to offer to get x number of Twitter and/or Instagram accounts for free. Anyone who has spent like a day or two learning about social media will know paid followers mean nothing.

– Follow me, get followed by me, and then drop me because…well, if you lose interest in my work or awesome personality, fine. But unless you are one of my favorite artists, writers or fantasy mentors, I will return the favor. I understand there’s a follower to following ratio. But if you sacrifice me, I’ll do the same. How do you think I remembered to add this here? I’ve just unfollowed people who unfollowed me after following me first.

– Don’t follow me. I’m a rational person. I don’t expect to be followed by Chris Evans, but if you are not him or you’re the editor of Cosmopolitan, I might unfollow you after a while. I’m just saying.

– Never post anything about you.

That’s it. It’s not that hard, but even marketing needs some personality. And believe it or not, you can be professional and personable at the same time. Try it, and you’ll have more followers that are human beings. Maybe one day they will even turn into fans. For more useful tips on social media, please check out my post Social Media Mistakes Writers Can Avoid on the awesome blog Write Naked by Tara Lynne Groth.

9 Productive Things Writers Can Do When They Have a Cold

Posted on June 18, 2011 Written by Pinar Tarhan

funny pictures chipmunk asks you to-go-on — Yep, that is exactly how I react when I have a cold…:)

Catching a cold can come in any season. You know the symptoms: dizziness, lack of energy, and low fever. I typically get sick during unstable weather, through a combination of the temperature differences between outdoors and indoors, and the differences between indoors with air-conditioning and indoors with no air–conditioning. Combine it with all the open windows and all the others getting sick and voila: you have a writer with a cold, trying not to vaporize and writing despite a headache.

And while I, unfortunately, discovered that there is no way I can be as productive as my usual healthy self, there are still a lot of productive and not-so-exhausting things I can do. Here is how you can work through a cold if you want to or need to:

1) Facebook: Facebook is a great way to catch up with your friends. And since you are sick, it is OK to start replying to your received messages, as opposed to replying when you are totally healthy and supposed to be doing something else.

But it is not all. You can also promote your old & recent articles. If you are well enough to log on to Facebook, you are well enough for some mindless article promotion. And since you are already active there, browse through groups and fan pages, join the ones you like, join some communities. If you already have a bunch of communities you joined before, converse and leave your own relevant links that will bring value to the conversations. Also, leave links in your messages to your good friends. And don’t neglect to copy-paste your article links to your profile.

Worry not. There is no need to overdo anything. 3-4 article links to your Facebook profile/news update within some hours between them is great for exposure and give your friends time to digest and all.

2) Twitter: Yep, you can tweet about your sickness, but while you are at it, why not post some good links? It can be your old or new article links, friends’ articles, or links to stuff you are promoting. If you can turn on your computer and log on to Twitter, you definitely owe this little activity to yourself.

3) Social Media of Your Choice: Are your readers on Pinterest? Dying to get better results on Instagram? Is it time you experimented with TikTok? You don’t have to take photos or videos when you are sick. But you can play around with hashtags and look at other creators’ content for inspiration. And when you get better, you will realize you’ll have gotten rid of some of your promotional chores for a while. At the very least, you will have conducted some market research.

4) Registering and signing up for useful sites: You may have come across links to register for social media sites, sites that pay for your content, e-mail newsletters you find useful, etc… Registering to multiple sites take time. Since you have time now, use it to sign up for useful stuff.

5) Read blogs and articles: If you are well enough to read, take this time to read friends’ and other’s articles and blog posts. If you can comment, please do. If you don’t have the energy, just help spread the word about the article and let the author know you did this.

6) Check and clean-up your e-mail inbox: You may not feel good enough to study newsletters or apply tips that you are getting from them, but you can always clean out spam and other unwanted stuff. The cleaner your email inbox is, the more productive it will be for you to use it when you feel healthy.

7) Organize bookmarks: How many bookmarks do you have? The idea for this article came to me while I was trying to organize an enormous list of bookmarks. Most of the time, we run into a useful resource, we bookmark it so that we can come back to it later. But since this happens with a lot of sites, we barely ever have the time to go back. Sometimes it is even hard to remember we had a list of websites to visit in the first place.

Do yourself a favor by organizing them. Get rid of the ones you don’t need. If you run into some beneficial stuff, remember to stumble them up, and/or write them down on a Word document, so that you will remember them easily.

8) Take advantage of your entertainment. And if you do watch excess amount of movies and TV shows, remember to write about them later. I once devoured 7 episodes of Supernatural on one sick day. I later wrote a lot of articles on them.

If you have done general reviews for that movie/tv show/whatever already, you can come up with comparison articles, collection of best episodes, list posts and many more.

9) Jot down ideas. When you are physically inactive, your mind can go into overdrive. Make use of these ideas: write them down so you can use them later.

So above are things I do when I am not feeling well. What are your tips for “sickness productivity”?

Recommended Articles on Productivity & Time Management

Intelligent Productivity for Freelance Writers by John Soares

How to Use Our Email Accounts Productively to Avoid Procrastination

How to Turn Procrastination into Productivity: 7 Fun Tips for Writers

4 Reasons Why Every Writer and Blogger Should Use Twitter

Posted on June 3, 2011 Written by Pinar Tarhan

Twitter is important for your business. It is not about regular Joe’s or Jane’s online popularity although it might be a indication of it. But it is mainly about how you make use of social media, how strong a personality you are online, and how well your business is making use of the web. Sure, twitter isn’t the only micro-blogging platform out there but it is still one of the most popular and influential. Books are written and e-books are published every single day about this medium. This article is about the reasons why writers can’t afford not being in tune with it either.

1) Promotion. You have a blog and/or a website. Or maybe you have a website with a blog, or maybe you are running several blogs. Whatever your situation is, if you are writing, you need to have a Twitter account.

You also should personalize that Twitter account by providing a relevant & attractive background image, a full profile and relevant Tweets. If you don’t want to deal with tweets every time you post an article, there are tools for automating the process. However, you can’t neglect to reflect your persona, and your expertise on your Twitter profile. Like-minded people will follow you, retweet stuff that they enjoy, send you messages…In short, Twitter is a great medium to share your business, opinions, posts and passions with others. The traffic (and the relationships) you acquire through Twitter are great perks.

2) (Brand) Image. It is of course much more essential and practical to have relevant people (and/or companies in your list). But to the untrained eye, 2000 followers look better than 200. On a similar note, 20.000 followers look even better. Are there bloggers you like? Follow them. How about writers? Entertainers? If you are in advertising, following advertising blogs and companies is a good idea. Because more often than not, people follow you back. Not only you look more popular and important, but you also have a whole new medium to catch up with the events and industries you are in. Instead of skimming a whole website of news and ads, you will read tweets. You are not allowed to write more than 140 characters so you can choose to be informed about the most interesting stuff.

3) Improving the ability to write better. As mentioned above, you have 140 characters you can use, including a link if you need to use one. Since you have such short space and an impatient audience, you are forced to write better in shorter forms. What better exercise is there?

4) Making connections without much effort. I told you needed to work to promote yourself, but the beauty of Twitter is that others are trying to socialize or get their names/brands out there as well. So people will start following you too. It is your call whether to follow them back or not, but it feels good that your list might end up growing even when you are not actively working on it.

Yes, a lot of people are using Twitter for unnecessarily insignificant updates about their lives. So? Don’t follow them. But don’t let your prejudice about twitter block your success.

I tweet @zoeyclark. What’s your Twitter handle? Share away in the comments.