How do I Thank Thee?
self-portrait of Kat Caverly, Miss Twitter Manners
I have been active on Twitter since the beginning of September 2009. “Active” is putting it mildly! After lukewarm forays in 2008 and early 2009, I made tweeting a full-time effort starting on September 8, 2009 but first I had to figure out how to do it “right”.
The first thing I learned was that there are lots of ways to tweet and although there are “wrong” ways for sure, there seems to be many right ways to engage using Twitter. But there is one important social activity that I don’t know how to do well on Twitter yet; saying thank you to my followers for sharing and promoting @Greetums every day.
I, for one, am totally confused by tweets that are mostly just @usernames. This makes #followfridays a bit awkward for me and I have been desperately seeking guidance on how to really make a difference in other people’s lives on Twitter. I truly am grateful and I sincerely want to help promote other people’s projects and lives, but how do I do that in a way that is really significant for others?
I have over 3000 followers now and I understand first hand how much time just acknowledging retweets and mentions can take if you plan to do so individually. But how can you really thank someone or recommend them to your followers in any other way? There is a habit of retweeting anything that mentions your username, but this really seems odd to me and I often cannot figure out who said what and who said it first. Such tweets and retweets lose all meaning, but I want to acknowledge the thought behind it somehow. I think this acknowledgment is important.
Twitter is not a medium of conversations. It’s not real-time and often unless you make reference I won’t know what you are talking about unless I spend considerable time trying to figure out what I said that inspired your response. Personally tweeting feels a lot like performance art to me and honestly what you think about what I am doing, saying and tweeting means the world to me. The idea that I might have missed your message or not acknowledged you really upsets me but I fear that it happens all the time.
What do people who have tens of thousands of followers do? What don’t they do? There’s a never ending stream of lip-service done to “engagement” but often these same pundits do not engage. There is an amazing amount of kindness and sharing on Twitter, but I still believe the most important thing I can do is tweet content that has value to my followers. The second most important thing I MUST do is show gratitude to those who share my content and take the time to contact me.
If you retweet my content or contact me by including @Greetums in your tweet, I go to your profile and learn more about you. I am looking for your passions, and what you are promoting about yourself. My first acknowledgment will be a retweet of your content. But sometimes I find that the past 20-40 tweets on a profile are all retweets of other people’s content or personal conversations. So how do I thank these kind folks in a way that makes a difference to them?
Celebrities or wanna-bes just do the SHOUT OUT and it seems that many will retweet anything that has their name in it. But I am frustrated by this habit and I no longer retweet such mentions, partly because I see it being used by accounts that not only I do not follow but they do not follow me either.
I am interested in your lives. I am interested in how I can help you celebrate life! I want to bring you joy and make you laugh. I want to help you promote your latest book, peformance, song, art. I want to share with my world the wonders of YOU. And I find to do that well I must take the time to acknowledge each of you individually. But I will no longer retweet group shout outs, though I do appreciate each and every one of you remembering me and keeping me posted.
I will be using DMs (direct messages) to acknowledge you in some cases. To me this is the most personal of ways that I can thank you. Regarding #followfriday recommendations, I have built a special list Sweetums of tweethearts who have made me smile, who are engaging and witty and wonderful. I add to this list on a regular basis and from now on will post a link to this list on Follow Fridays. Otherwise every day is a day I want to link to something important to you. Please contact me any time. It takes time for me to get to know you and I do want to help you in every way that I can.
