How do you use Twitter for your blog?

[AnotherHastyNameChange]

OK. I've signed up to Twitter (@thetwistedyarn). I've tweeted my first tweet. But I don't really understand what I'm doing. Should I be using it to make contact with other bloggers and promote their work? Should I announce my posts? Repeatedly?

Also, at what stage do you set up a Facebook page specifically for your blog?

Any advice appreciated! TIA. www.thetwistedyarn.com

Unless you are very famous, 'in the public eye', or have some other special claim to fame, then I don't know if Twitter has much to offer you.

I have been on for several years, and joined originally when Lily Allen was bringing out her first CDs as I had hoped to make personal contact with her. I follow her Tweets (most of which I don't really understand) but have only had ONE reply from her, which was when I informed her about bad info being circulated, but she said she already knew about it. When she had her daughters I had hoped she might tell her 4 million fans about them, but she seems overprotective of them. We get to see pictures of Prince George, but the only shots I've seen of Lily's girls, features have been pixilated out!

Your best bet might be to 'follow' others in a similar line (if they are on Twitter; I know they have websites) such as Kaffe Fassett or Jean Greenhowe; I assume you know their work. You might be able to make contact, or gain access to their 'followers'.

A few singers who are successful professionals, but less well known than Lily Allen, I have made some contact with, but nothing to get excited about.

As far as I know, Tweets are only seen by people who are 'following' you, and unlike MN, you can't 'Message' people unless they are following you. (That is as I understand it, but I am prepared to be corrected by someone more expert than me). This is why I much prefer MN, as you can actually make contact with people. I only posted replies to queries on Primary Ed for years (I'm a retired TA, having worked in schools for 25 years) but now I reply on all sorts of things.

My wife is a keen knitter, and has done many Jean Greenhowe dolls, to a high standard, over the past 25 years, a stand-out one being Great Uncle Angus, with his bagpipes!

I don't know who does them, but there are patterns for Eddie Stobart trucks I believe, though the pictures I saw weren't that impressive.

Good luck, and I'll have a look at your Tweet sometime.

I have an account for work. Firstly put a link on your blog 'follow me on twitter' so readers can follow you. Then you can follow them back, see who they follow and follow those people too.

You can look around other peoples blogs and see if they have a twitter link and follow them via that.

Dp did most of my twitter stuff for a while as I couldn't see the point in it. But it's a very good way of driving traffic to a website or blog once you get some followers, you can write tweets announcing your latest blog post. My niece has a fashion blog and tweets about it all the time.

I think the trick is you have to follow others first then they and their followers can follow you. And build it up gradually that way. I have come across other local small business owners in this way and we can message each other about networking groups etc.

Also, after a very short time, twitter will send you info on people you might want to follow, based on your followers and followees. I haven't tweeted anything for a couple of weeks over Xmas so you've reminded me to find something interesting to tweet about on Monday when I get back to working.

Oh and you can pay some organisations to instantly find you several thousand followers but as these people haven't chosen to follow you it's doubtful whether your tweets would even be of interest to them.

Good luck its an interesting thing to do but be aware it can be a bit of a time suck!

I'm just going to follow you on my personal one. Right now 10.51pm. I have hardly any contacts on that one yet but a few of them are yarnie people and I'm wondering if I already know you from another social forum....

Can not get the Follow Me on Twitter link to work. Are you using the Wordpress.com Twitter widget? I think it was discontinued. Try using the Twitter Timeline Widget instead.

Twitter generally I find is useful for Local things and for keeping in touch with what others with a similar interest are doing. So find other knitting blog writers and follow them on twitter if keeping things business like. If using it more for general, then follow local people (find them by searching for posts about a local town/village, postcode area - especially if it snows as people may report snow conditions using #uksnow tag) plus knitters and mumsnetters.

Love the twin jumpers.

The follow me link is har to spot. Put it up with the follow me on email bit.

Thank you all! Advice much appreciated. I'll have a re-read and a bit more of a think in the morning.

Filbertyjibbet, maybe we do know each other? You could always PM me.

Nannynick, I'll sort out the 'follow me' thingy in the morning. Thank you for your tweet! Is it ok and appropriate if I tweet an appreciative reply? Honestly, I have no idea of the etiquette here.

Sure, tweet back. I will try to find a twitter guide for you... will tweet you the address as not sure I can put it on here given it's on a blog.

Looks like you are using the Twitter Timeline Widget, so with luck it will update. If it does not, then check the settings as maybe it has not linked correctly to your twitter account.

Did you refollow me on twitter? then I can message you directly on that, I am not sure how quick the pm thing is on here, it used to take about a day for mntowers to forward pms. Plus the email addy I used to sign up for here.... well I can't remember the password so we haven't accessed it for ages!

nannynick what is the twitter timeline gadget please? I need a twitter thing on my website, so far I just have a link of the word 'twitter' which does not look very professional.

Flibbertyjibbet - see here. It is a widget for blogs hosted on Wordpress.com

If using wordpress hosting elsewhere there are twitter plugins. I did use one but I took it off my blog as sometimes I tweet often, other times it can go months without a tweet.

2AnotherHastyNameChange
It actually depends on who your audience are. Some favour Twitter or chat-like systems. the other - Facebook and alike. It's worth to have several. At least FB and TW. And on both - be interesting. Don't just post links to your blog. Post something your readers like. The last thing - it will come from your own experiments and experience.

Some other things. You don't actually have to follow first. Being interesting works better. You have to post when your readers are active on line. Otherwise they might miss your tweets. Pay attention to what people retweet, it will show their interest and help you to find things to post. Check the traffic from twitter. See what posts in your blog are more popular then write about similar stuff. Or tweet about similar things,even if it's not in your blog.

Hello @thetwistedyarn,

Twitter is both personal and generic, which is a bit of an oxymoron. You need to interact with people i.e. you can't just post your own links and 'talk to yourself' all the time, unless you are super interesting and infamous and, perhaps, have your own stalkers. :p

Reply to your followers, retweet them and anything interesting you see, include 1-2 hashtags to make tweets easier to find, etc. If you start a tweet with @ then it's visible to the person; if you start a tweet with any other character, e.g. .@ then it's visible to everyone. If you want to DM (direct message) someone, then you must be following each other. If the gap between followers and following is too big, then you will be restricted from following additional people. (The actual figure is about 2,000 but many people have a policy of following back everyone, to get around that restriction.)

Twitter jail! Be aware that if you send too many tweets (about 100 per hour or 1,000 per day), then you will be put in 'Twitter jail' and temporarily banned from tweeting.

If you (or anyone else) would like to follow me, I'm @fcknits and I follow everyone back. ;)

I've also added you to my 'yarn' list; if you'd like to take a peek, I've got quite a lot of yarnie types on there and you might like to follow or retweet some of them.

Most importantly: have fun! GL xx

Oh, and as for Facebook, set up a page whenever! Do remember to set it up as a 'page', not as a personal profile. People are willing to 'like' a page but not necessarily willing to 'add a friend'. Also, you are technically not supposed to misuse personal profiles in that manner - you are meant to only have one personal profile but as many pages as you wish.

Fcknits, thank you! I've only just seen your posts. Still getting my head around this whole thing. Blogging itself takes so long, it's hard to find time for all the peripheral stuff...