Wednesday Wing #TwitterTips Change your Twitter Handle, catch all tweets @AlisonW_Editor #wwwblogs

Posted on June 1, 2016 by Rosie Amber

Are you catching all tweets relevant to you? Do you wish you could change your Twitter Handle?

Alison Williams explains how an easy to find name, set up correctly, REALLY is useful.

Changing your Twitter username – easy steps

When I first braved Twitter I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Social media in all its various forms has been a huge learning curve for me. And as time has gone on, I’ve realised that I got some things wrong.

One mistake I made when I set up my Twitter account was with choosing my twitter username/handle. I wanted to use my actual name and unfortunately I have a really common name, so Alison Williams wasn’t available, and neither were any variations using numbers that weren’t far too complicated to use. So I decided to use a capital ‘i’ in place of one of the ‘L’s in Williams. Sorted.

Problems arose however when I was tagged in a tweet. For example, a book reviewer reviewed my novel and posted the review on her blog. She tweeted the review and included my username in the tweet. But she assumed that my twitter username was @AlisonWilliams. Of course, it actually wasn’t. So I didn’t see that tweet and therefore couldn’t retweet it. This means I lost out on sharing that review with a lot of people. The same thing happened when an editing client tweeted how pleased she was with the work I did for her – she asked me a few days later why I hadn’t retweeted. I lost out on some free advertising there.

I realised that I needed to change my username to something that, first of all, people could spell correctly, and secondly that would lead people to me on Twitter. So I decided to change my username to @AlisonW_Editor

This means that people tend to copy and paste the username when including me in a tweet, meaning that it can’t be spelled incorrectly. It also means that anyone looking for an editor on Twitter is more likely to find me.

Changing your username is really simple to do. Just go to your Twitter profile, use the drop down menu to select ‘settings’, and change the username listed in the username field. Click ‘save changes’ and you’re done. It doesn’t affect anything on your account; you keep all your followers, and all your past tweets, favourites and lists are still there.

The only issue I had was with my WordPress blog. My account is set up so that when I publish a new post, a tweet is instantly generated. Despite me disconnecting and then reconnecting my Twitter account, the old username refused to budge. It was time to call in some extra help – my twenty-year-old son! Who worked it out in a couple of minutes.

As with a lot of things on WordPress, the simple things are often the hardest to find. So if you have a WordPress blog and want to connect your Twitter handle or have changed your Twitter username, here’s what you need to do:

Go to WP Admin
On the left hand side under ‘Settings’ you’ll see ‘sharing’ – click this
Scroll down until you see: ‘Twitter username to include in tweets when people share using the Twitter button’
In the box alongside this enter your new Twitter username.
Save changes

And you’re ready to go.

Tip: Make your Twitter Handle as close to your “Author” name (or Business Name) as possible so fans can easily follow you.

Here are links to ALL our Wednesday Wing Posts http://wp.me/P2Eu3u-7Lw

Wednesday Wing – #TwitterTip Part 3 Retweeting and Post Sharing #wwwblogs @TerryTyler4

Posted on May 4, 2016 by Rosie Amber

Here on Wednesday Wing we bring you useful Tips and Notes.

Today @TerryTyler4 continues her #TwitterTips posts

Twitter Tips

Part 3: Retweeting and post sharing

Twitter is a fast moving, constantly changing site. It’s said that the average life of a tweet is around 18 minutes, after which it fades away into oblivion. However, if you are only able to tweet once a day, building up a good network of people with whom you retweet regularly will mean that your posts will get exposure not just for hours but possibly for days to come.

Here’s how to make retweeting work best for you:

‘Pin’ a tweet to the top of your page. This makes it easy for anyone who clicks onto your page to retweet (RT) you. To do this, click on the three little dots at the bottom of the tweet, and select ‘Pin to your profile page’.
Change your pinned tweet frequently, at least twice a week; if people have already RTd it they might just click off your page without looking for anything else to RT. Also, it’s good to vary your posts.
Retweet with discretion. Retweeting rubbish, out of date stuff or random conversation is a fast way to lose followers. Although it’s nice to return a favour, RTing any old thing just for the sake of reciprocation is pointless. When I first started on the site I thought I had to return every one and used to do three daily sessions—it was ridiculous, took two hours out of each working day. Then one day I thought, this is crazy, and stopped. The world didn’t end (and I didn’t sell any less books).
It’s not all about you. Just because something doesn’t interest you, it doesn’t mean it won’t interest your followers. I RT quite a few ‘mummy blogs’, for instance; I have zero interest in parenting but that doesn’t mean that my followers wouldn’t like to read them.
Overkill: don’t do 100 RTs at a time. This makes it look as if you’re doing it via an app, and it can annoy followers who don’t want to see hundreds of tweets from people they haven’t chosen to follow. I think doing a few sessions during the day of around 5-10 is a good plan, though of course this isn’t always possible.
Thanking people for RTs: Most long term Twitter users agree there’s no point, and getting loads of ‘thanks for the RT’ tweets can get on people’s nerves, especially those ones that say “Thank you for RTing the amazing new review for Fabulous Book, Part One of The Best Selling Chronicles” ~ it just looks like a final grab at a bit more promotion. A RT back is thanks enough. Remember, a RT is better than a TY!

A word about Retweeting Apps: Just Say No.

Some people use a retweeting app called Roundteam. How do you spot those who use it?

Somewhere high on their timeline they will have a tweet advertising the app.
They will RT you the moment you post a new tweet, or tweet a certain word.
Their timelines consist of hundreds of retweets and little else.
If you make a comment to them via tweet, they don’t reply.

The people who use these apps rarely appear on Twitter in person, so they don’t see your tweets, your comments, your blog posts, your book promotions; they just programme certain accounts, key words and hashtags into the app, to be retweeted whenever they appear.

Don’t be tempted to use these apps; this isn’t social networking, and your timeline will be nothing but a stream of retweeted promotions for people like me who never return the favour. I retweet people, not robots.

NB: There are a few exceptions, ie, people who use Roundteam and appear on Twitter as well; one very generous lady I know, for instance, has medical problems that prevent her from sitting at a computer for a long time, so such an app means she can help her friends. You usually discover who these people are because they talk to you now and again, too!

Above all, don’t get bogged down with the retweeting thing. A while back a friend said to me that she came to dread the daily RT session, as indeed did I. It’s nice to do your bit, but if it becomes a chore it’s just daft.

Post Sharing

This is when you actually share someone else’s post via a tweet of your own, rather than just retweeting it. Most people do it via the share button on a blog; I don’t, so don’t know much about it, but Rosie has given some tips about it here:

Just 2 clicks to Twitter

Social networking is about generosity; if you read a good blog post, it’s a great idea to tweet saying ‘Excellent post by @username about blah blah’, with the link. I love it when people share my posts, I feel so pleased that someone has liked one enough to do so!

A few tips on post sharing:

Don’t forget to tag the author in the post with their @username, so that they know you’ve shared and can RT your tweet.
Don’t automatically share every single post that comes into your email inbox. Check them out first to make sure it’s something you actively want to share.
Overkill: if virtually all your tweets are shares of others’ posts, be aware that these will get retweeted rather than tweets about your own posts/books, most of the time. If you’re happy with that, that’s okay!

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Twitter Tips Part 1 Getting More Followers http://wp.me/p2Eu3u-90C

Twitter Tips Part 2 Expanding your reach http://wp.me/p2Eu3u-936

Wednesday Wing – #TwitterTips Part 2 Expanding Your Reach by @TerryTyler4 #wwwblogs

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Rosie Amber

Here on Wednesday Wing we bring you all sorts of post and tips to do with blogging, marketing, and writing.

Today we’re looking at Expanding you Twitter Reach

Thanks To @TerryTyler4 for this post.

Twitter Tips

Part 2: Expanding your ‘reach’

Last week we looked at how to get more followers, http://wp.me/p2Eu3u-90C and today I’d like to offer some ideas about how to expand the ‘reach’ of your tweets, and thus your blog, if you have one, too (my personal blog has had 336,778 views since I started it 4 years ago, and my book review blog 82,392 views since I started it 16 months ago; I daresay some get tons more than that but they’re quite respectable numbers, so I hope these tips help!). Please note that this post is orientated towards writers/bloggers, but the same principles apply whatever your area of the Twittersphere.

Say at the moment you’ve got about 3500 followers, and have built up a great community of writers, bloggers, book reviewers and some faithful readers. You’re all sharing and reading each others’ blog posts, taking up book recommendations, etc; it’s good. What may be happening, though, is that you all have a similar active following (bearing in mind that all followers are not active), so you all tend to see much the same posts going round and round, staying more or less in the same tiny corner of Twitter. If you’re happy with that, fine; many people are content to stay within the community they’ve made on social networking sites. But if you want to break out of that corner and step out into the wider world, how do you do it?

Try some of these ideas

If you’re a blogger or writer, you probably know about the blog sharing hashtag days, such as #MondayBlogs, #TuesdayBookBlog, #wwwblogs, #SundayBlogShare, #ArchiveDay, #FolkloreThursday, etc. You’ll already know that if you just click on the hashtag, you see posts from people you know, and a few from other familiar names; Twitter’s algorithms work to make you see the posts from the people with whom you have interaction. However, if you click on the hashtag and then on ‘Latest’, you will see all the other posts on the hashtag, from accounts with whom you’ve not yet had any connection. If you retweet/follow some of them, there is a good chance that they will retweet and follow you back, thus putting your posts in front of all their followers, too.
Use high traffic hashtags on your tweets:#NewRelease #BookReview, @UKBlog_RT (a profile that RTs for you), #bookbloggers, #bookworm, #writers, #writerslife, #selfpub, #amreading, #amwriting, #FridayReads. You can find more relevant hashtags for your particular area of Twitter simply by having a browse around. Don’t use more than a couple per tweet, though; tweets that are too hashtag-heavy get overlooked.
There’s a whole world out there! As well as using those high traffic hashtags, click on them, too, and retweet others who use them—yes, people you’ve never seen before! When you’re doing your following back (I click on my followers list every couple of days and follow back any new ones that interest me), make a note of any people whose bios particularly appeal to you. Go to their page, RT something by them, or just say hello.
Go onto the general feed now and again, and RT any random stuff that you think looks interesting—or comment. Everyone likes confirmation that their tweets have been read/enjoyed/laughed at for the right reasons (!), and there’s nothing like the personal touch on Twitter; it shows that not everyone just thumps out tweets via Hootsuite.
If you’re an author, don’t only tweet about books and writing. Share posts relevant to the rest of your world, too; you might want to make a general comment about a TV show you’re watching, or something in the news that interests you. If it’s a topic of current interest, hashtag any likely looking words. If the main purpose of your Twitter account is to promote your books, it’s worth remembering that if you only follow, talk to and retweet other writers, your posts will only be seen by writers – lovely for networking, but only a few will be the target market for your books.I hope that’s given you some ideas; next week I’ll be talking about RETWEETING ~ because the power of Twitter lies not just in the tweet, but in the retweet!