3 ms·

If you post a well-shot picture on Instagram you'll immediately get a bunch of random (but not spam) Likes and maybe a comment or two (I assume people search th

by pkamb 10y ago

If you post a well-shot picture on Instagram you'll immediately get a bunch of random (but not spam) Likes and maybe a comment or two (I assume people search their interests via hashtag: "#architecture" or "#cars" or etc.). Same with Reddit or Hacker News; post a comment and you'll often get an upvote/reply/comment/banter in return. On Facebook your IRL friends will Like your stuff. Without a meaningful number of followers, on Twitter you get nothing. Hashtags eat into your 140 characters, and are mostly used ironically or for singular events/causes, which aren't really appropriate for the majority of tweets. So no one's going to find it via search or hashtag. There are no communities/topics/forums/subreddits to join. No way to tweet at all the other people who like this one thing. So to get any kind of notice/interaction with a Tweet of your own you're left to tweeting at someone else, which feels wrong/argumentative/pushy for all the reasons this article laid out. Infinitely more intrusive than a comment reply. Hoping that they either retweet you or reply to you, which gets your tweet those precious views, favorites, and replies enjoyed (and dreaded) by the most average tweet of a well-followed account. Those metrics (and lack there-of) either lead you to not tweet yourself and only follow [celebrities / internet-celebrities / news] or constantly [reply-to / tweet-at / annoy / troll] those same high-profile accounts. Which is better for Twitter?

visakanv 10y ago
My tactic is this, and I've used this in several different circles – look for people who are moderately influential in a field, but not super famous (say less than 2k followers). Then follow them, and tweet positive things at them, or ask genuine questions, and contribute. There's usually a group of people who all talk to each other, and you can gently get into the conversations if you're careful. Once you do that, and you've made decent contributions a couple of times, they'll typically follow you. Now I can "ask Twitter" a question and get interesting responses from dozens of people. But it takes time and effort, which I suppose most people aren't willing to spend.

by pkamb 10y ago

visakanv 10y ago

My tactic is this, and I've used this in several different circles – look for people who are moderately influential in a field, but not super famous (say less than 2k followers). Then follow them, and tweet positive things at them, or ask genuine questions, and contribute. There's usually a group of people who all talk to each other, and you can gently get into the conversations if you're careful. Once you do that, and you've made decent contributions a couple of times, they'll typically follow you. Now I can "ask Twitter" a question and get interesting responses from dozens of people. But it takes time and effort, which I suppose most people aren't willing to spend.