Apr 10, 2016

"In the right light spiders are seductive, all those legs, some furry, soft. But they’re poor suitors, scuttling into darkness, taking me with them." 

I use  social media—Twitter & Facebook—less to promote my books than to exercise my writing muscles in  a gentle way, especially  when I’m  stuck" on a project.  I find Twitter particularly helpful for this, as the discipline required to convey a thought or emotion in 140 characters is great  for  learning to keep prose crisp and clean. (And accomplishing that in a post is sometimes just the confidence boost I need to  go back to work on a difficult passage in my book! ) Also, Twitter has strong real-time analytics that help me to see what "lands" with readers and what does not. I can immediately view the ratio of those who saw the tweet as it  passed by in their feed ("impressions") to those who clicked on it and actually read/thought about it, if briefly ("engagements")! 

Yesterday, I tweeted the headline that you see at the top of this Update. I built it into that 140 character tweet  from a random thought that occurred to me upon waking. 

Surprisingly (VERY SURPRISINGLY) the engagement ratio on that  tweet was  the highest on anything I’ve ever tweeted!!  That’s not to say more people saw it than any other (impressions). When I’ve been fortunate to have  someone with hundreds of thousands of followers  retweet something I tweeted  the # of impressions was sky-high. But for this little scrap of writing, the engagement ratio was >;;;;1, that is,  more people  engaged (or some engaged twice)  than were exposed to it!

If you are an author, an aspiring author or an avid reader and don’t already have one I encourage you to consider opening a twitter account.  I find it takes much less time than FB  to keep up with and is more valuable to me. (While you can "like" something  it’s more about you quickly  gaining information than about connecting  with the writer of a post).  If you prefer you can open your twitter  account  anonymously (without using your real name and without a photo). And there’s no need to post any  of your own tweets, yet you can still be active! I use Twitter in my "day job"  account  as my news source on politics, the economy and health care since many who tweet offer a link to an article;  following them provides  timely, concise  headlines and content on things I need to know about. 

Of course, if you’re "building a brand"  as a writer or in some other way you  will want to reveal your true identity to all when you tweet, as I do!  Speaking of which, if you are  on twitter now or if you join I would  greatly appreciate it if you would  consider following me @kcalvinHQ!   The number of followers  I have helps those who go to my account  know that I’m a "real author" and  (presumably) that I have something of interest (at least occasionally) to say! P.S. if you  follow someone  on twitter but don’t want to see their tweets in your feed, you can click on the gear icon above their name and "mute them"; they don’t know you’re doing it and  following them still helps them out!

 I’m at 190 followers now, I hope you can help me pass the 200 follower mark this week!  https://twitter.com/kcalvinHQ  

Thanks for everything, happy reading and writing!   Kris

KRIS CALVIN, Inkshares Author of ONE MURDER MORE 

"An irresistible political thriller...reminds me of House of Cards"—Robert Dugoni, critically-acclaimed Amazon #1 best-selling author   

"Crisp and Entertaining...Kris Calvin is a writer to watch" —John  Lescroart, author of 19 New York Times  best-selling mysteries and thrillers, millions sold worldwide!