Mistakes I Made Building A Following Of Over 30K on Twitter
Some are predictable, others not so much
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I first joined Twitter in 2009, but I had a few different accounts before I settled on the one that I stuck with since 2011. I had various reasons for this, ranging from losing passwords to wanting a fresh start for my writing to being so irritated with the platform during a bout of post-partum depression that I deactivated and didn’t go back for months.
Haven’t we all been there?
As I write this I haven’t been regularly active on Twitter for a few months and that’s because I got discouraged by the number of people who were leaving. Five years ago, my following was over 37k and now it’s down to 30k. Now that I’m on Medium and have some work to promote, I might return. I wouldn’t rule it out because I have learned a lot since joining and most of those things I learned were down to mistakes I made. Here are what I personally consider the top five mistakes I made when building a following.
I followed mostly writers
This is my biggest issue. There’s very little variety in my feed. Everyone’s talking about writing and that’s a problem for a few reasons.
Firstly, they’re all trying to sell me something I don’t really want. I don’t tend to buy books based on someone else talking about their own book on Twitter. I buy them based on what I like, what I see my friends reading, what other people have enjoyed and sometimes, what’s on the shelves of my local Sainsbury’s while I’m shopping. It’s really that simple. No amount of Twitter promo makes me buy someone’s book, no matter how much I like that person.
They’re not all writing in the genre I like to read
I’m personally a “Jackie Collins novels by the pool” kinda girl (although I’m 42 so “girl” is stretching it a bit). I make no apologies for that, and I get shamed by the intellectuals of this world for my reading choices, which is grossly unfair. All that matters is that I read and I enjoy what I read. The world would be a better place if we all just accepted each other’s harmless choices and didn’t criticise.
Also, Ms. Collins was one of the world’s most successful and best-selling authors of all time. Just saying.
My profile pics were poorly chosen
This could be a controversial one, but I stand by what I’m saying here. I started off using my own picture with my face in it because I know that people connect better with real people and real faces. Then I saw no point in using a cartoon, or a book cover or a generic pretty landscape like I’ve seen some people doing. I was already out there. Too late to hide.
People do judge by appearances and I quite often get dismissed by other writers (who made up about 95% of my followers), especially since in one of those pictures I was wearing thigh boots. Apparently you can’t be smart and wear thigh boots at the same time? Who knew…
Some were selfies, all were me and none of them made me look like a “serious” writer. People of Medium… I am up at 5am every darn morning to write. Every morning in life, no days off and I can tell you, the people of Twitter who see me in thigh boots in my avi might not think I am serious but the exhaustion I feel is serious.
Follow for follow
This wasn’t like the controversial churning practice that some people employ. I just followed anyone who followed me, so long as they looked like a real human. I only ever unfollowed if they were posting offensive (to me) material or if they were trolling someone I knew. I also unfollowed anyone who had been inactive or hadn’t tweeted for more than six months, which I think is fair. My reason for this was simple: if someone thinks I am interesting enough to follow, I want to hear what they have to say. I think that’s respectful.
However, when you do this, you put people into your timeline who aren’t really interested in you. They’re interested in selling to you or criticising you or simply trying to get a follow back. If I could go back and start again, I would only follow people I was genuinely interested in.
Responding to everyone
It’s ironic that one of the things that helped me maintain a large-ish Twitter following is also one of the things I regret most. Like I stated previously, if someone thinks I am interesting enough to follow, I want to hear what they have to say. Naive for someone in 2023, but you have to remember that back in 2009 when Twitter was new, most people still had manners and decorum. I like to think I was one of those people. If someone spoke to me, I responded, and I kept that going for many years. It’s uncomfortable for me to get a message from someone and not respond.
We all know now that Twitter is not a kind place and when someone speaks to you, it’s not always chit-chat or networking. It can be sinister, to say the least. I used to respond to absolutely everyone who sent me a message. I still respond to 90% of people who do, but I absolutely regret it because it was draining, pointless and didn’t help me progress as a writer at all.
I really want to write a post now about all the things I did right when I was building that Twitter following. My imposter syndrome tells me that I’ve lost a large chunk of that, so who am I to advise anyone but I still amassed a following twenty times the number of people living in my town, so I think I’m doing alright.
If anyone reading wants to share their own Twitter-related wisdom, I’d love to hear from you.
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