Write For Market: Developing a Social Media Network with Twitter

Posted on September 21, 2016 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Why Twitter?
  • How does Twitter Work?
  • Developing Your Twitter Profile
  • From Ethos to Activity
  • Developing Your Twitter Feed

Why Twitter?

As I understand it, Write for Market is focused on helping you launch your careers as creative writers, or to locate work in the publishing industry. Today, I hope to show you concretely how Twitter can help you grow a network that will help with those goals.

But I also want to stress that developing increased proficiency with social media can also help you land a job. Mediabistro lists 82 jobs (nationwide) for writers familiar with social media. While the requirements for those jobs vary, many of them are looking for people who can manage and grow Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin accounts.

How Does Twitter Work?

Unlike other social media networks, the first impression of Twitter is often “chaos.” This is understandable. A Twitter feed is much more chaotic than the feed for a Facebook or Instagram account. You often encounter bits of conversations (since twitter doesn’t necessarily present entire threads), and this can be disorienting (you often can’t tell if there’s replies to a tweet until you click on it). But with a little diligence (in who you follow) and familiarity, Twitter becomes a very useful resource for networking.

The basics. Every tweet is a short statement of 140 characters or less. Let’s look at the parts of a tweet:

First, let’s look at a tweet:

What do we see?

  • Header
    • Profile Pic
    • User Name [this you can change]
    • User Handle [this you keep]
  • Body of Tweet
    • a #hashtag
    • an @username
    • and a link
  • Footer
    • Time / Date
    • Reply
    • Retweet
    • Like

Ideally, every tweet should have a hashtag, since it is hashtags that file tweets into conversations.

When necessary, shorten links with tinyurl.com. Don’t shorten links if you don’t have to–many people are hesitant to click a link if they don’t know where they are going.

Developing Your Twitter Profile

Beyond the how-to and jobs, I want to talk a bit about the etiquette ethics of social media communication.

  • Think about your username–both your handle and your address. If you are going to market yourself as a social media specialist, then I highly advise you develop your personal brand. But this means you need to be vigilant with how you present yourself online
  • Your Facebook account is not private. It will be viewed by all and any potential employers. Don’t post anything to social media that you wouldn’t be willing to discuss with a future employer
  • Similarly, you will want to think strategically about both your profile picture and your header photo (quick demonstration for how to change both)
  • Increasingly, the same is true of your twitter account, especially if you will market yourself as a social media specialist or web content specialist. Be extremely careful how you represent yourself in these spaces (and, of course, in Linkedin).
  • If you want a social media account to be private, then make sure you create an account with a pseudonym, and make sure you use a pseudonym email to make the account.

Much of the work of rhetoric involves cultivating an ethos that appeals to your audience. Social media provides you a powerful opportunity to do this kind of work–to credentialize yourself. One of my good friends used to call this the art of faking it until you make it.

Follow the jobs you want to be when you grow up. Be strategic in who you follow. Be strategic about rewarding a follow with a follow (“standard” Twitter etiquette). Much of someone’s Twitter experience comes down to the quality of people they choose to follow (and unfollow). With a bit of early investment, Twitter provide both a feed of things you want to read and connections to a network of peers and professionals.

Before you create an account with twitter, you should make a few important decisions. Perhaps the most important is deciding whether to use your real name or to use a pseudonym. As a graduate student, I did all of my online writing under a pseudonym (insignificantwrangler), however, if you are using social media to enter into the creative writing community and develop a professional network, then you might want to use your real name. It is possible to create a handle that has no connection to your real name, and to set your user name as a first name. If you have a quality experience, then you can always change your username later.

Once you have developed your name and user name, you should set your profile picture (this is an ethos thing–no one follows an egg. Plenty of people are able to build credibility with a pseudonym, but an egg is a deal breaker. Change that photo before you start following people.

The next step would be to set up your description. Simply hit edit profile from your profile page. The twitter profile description has developed into a clear genre with traditional expectations. Here’s a local Colorado writer (I found in SageGreenJournal) using this bio in action.

Of course, many people play with these conventions. As a rhetorician, my advice is to pay attention to the authors you read and follow.

From Ethos to Activity

I really like Julie Pagano’s “On Twitter” and her follow-up “Twitter Guidelines.”

Mansplaining perfected.

Developing Your Twitter Feed

The quality of your experience on Twitter is directly tied to who you choose to follow. By selecting quality accounts to follow, we can turn twitter’s chaos into a productive network. To Google!

Your professional aspirations will probably inform who you want to follow. But were I you, I would start with a combination of publishing venues, active writers, and creative spaces. So:

How about a list of publishing houses here in Colorado, via the Colorado Poets Center:

These lists are starting points. How you develop from here depends on your interests. Are you thinking about applying to MFA programs? Then start looking for programs who have twitter accounts, like @PittWriters or Queens Univ MFA. Even better, look for individual faculty accounts, especially of (local) people with whom you might want to work, like @sukrungruang or Elizabeth McCracken (or any from this list of the top 50 Creative Writing Faculty on twitter).

There’s another trick. Let’s say you were thinking about going to Colorado State–then you might look at what accounts the Colorado Review follows.

But if you are thinking about getting into publishing, then there are similar lists of who to follow.

When Twitter Goes Right, When Twitter Goes Wrong

When approaching social media, it is very important to have a sense of the context of conversations, and to remember that sarcasm can backfire. It is also important to remember that you don’t always have control of conversations. Let’s look at a few examples of how twitter can go right and wrong.

Hijacking Hash Tags

Be careful when arranging conversations that you cannot control. Have a plan.

How to Handle Things When/If They Go Wrong

There’s a difference between personality and snark

Hashtags Are More Than Conversations, They Are Also Communities

Other Resources

4 Quality Handles Every American Should Follow

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