How Gail Came to Leave X. Because Everyone Wants to Know That, Right?

We're finally putting up my BlueSky info both on my website (done) and here at the blog (not sure when that will be happening) this week, so it seems like a good time to officially tell people I left X two months ago. And, yes, I'm on BlueSky.

For A Long Time, I Didn't Have a Big Problem with X

X goes up in flames. Pixabay at Pexels

I often heard people talk of ugly stuff going on on X, some of those complaints coming from people
who had never been near it. I didn't see a lot of attacks on others in most of my time there. I had to go look for that kind of thing, it didn't usually turn up on my feed. For example, I only know who catturd is because he(?) was trending once, and, of course, I'm going to go see why someone who calls themselves catturd is trending. (Can't recall now.) But just on my feed, I didn't see a lot of unpleasantness.

That was probably because of the way I'd curated my experience there. By the time I left, I was following around 1,500 people and had about 1,200 people following me. They were primarily children's writers, other types of writers, history people, litbloggers, librarians, literary agents, book people. Most of them were there, like myself, to promote their work. Evidently, they were not the type of people who engaged in name calling on social media. What I saw from them were announcements of new publications or reviews or that an agent or a journal was opening for submissions. I saw newsy type things about problems in publishing companies and literary agencies. This, for me, was legit water cooler stuff.

Additionally, over the last year or two, no other viable alternative to X was presenting itself. I'd see people talking on Facebook about joining this platform or that platform to get away from X, but they came to nothing and soon people were moving on to something else. I just couldn't spend time going from place to place. 

So I stayed at X where I could get info and promote my short-form writing.

A Big Change Came the Morning After the Election

The morning of November 6 an enormous change came to my X feed. It was like watching an on-line street riot. People were incensed, crazed over the outcome of the election. The two standouts for me were:

1. A woman who filmed herself shouting into a camera as if she were railing at Trump supporters, telling them what was going to happen to them because they voted for Trump. She wasn't threatening them. She was yelling that they had doomed themselves. Then she posted her rant on X. No, I don't know what she thought she was going to gain with that. The Trump people had won. What could they possibly care about what a random naysayer had to naysay?
2. A guy who announced that he'd just called his Trump-loving mother and told her that when her Social Security was cut because Trump was president, he was not going to lift a finger to help her. Maybe he got a lot of support for that. I don't know. I didn't stick around to look.

Was this politics? I wondered. What is politics, anyway? I looked the word up. It's either the workings of government or other institutions or discussion of ideology related to same. I guess telling the world that you've just bitched out your mother because of whom she voted for might fall into one of those categories, but, if so, it certainly lowers the level of political discourse.

Things calmed down some after 48 hours, but the place was not the same. I was seeing less professional discussion and more the-sky-is-falling kinds of things that were not necessarily well informed or offering any thoughts on how to move forward. I wasn't the only one who saw the change. I kept seeing tweets saying things like "Where are all the writers?" "Where are the writers?" "Did everyone leave?" "Is anyone left?" 

Writers, the people I wanted to see, were abandoning the place. I held on, though, because I wanted my publishing news and, in the past at least, my work had received some attention there.

AI Raises Its Ugly Head

Towards the end of the election period, we started hearing that X was going to allow AI to train on anything posted there. That sounded a little bit like urban legend to me. I'm big on looking things up and found that, no, it was not urban legend. I do take issue with companies helping themselves to the creative output of others in order to train a computer system to pump out its own bland and pretty much unnecessary "work." I have, for instance, stopped submitting to a Medium publication that uses an AI editor. (In addition to being AI, it's a pain in the ass to work with.).

Then, while taking a writing workshop, I learned that artificial intelligence uses tremendous amounts of energy, which I had totally missed. That was the straw that broke the X camel's back for me. I am not a major environmentalist. We're talking here someone who has a three-section compost bin and a pollinator garden, not someone who lives off the grid. But I don't see how artificial intelligence is doing anything at this point to justify that kind of environmental impact.

Maybe someday AI will be responsible for doing something in the area of science that will enhance human life. But for now, it is primarily generating mind-numbing music for YouTube to broadcast with those creepy fake pictures and allowing search engines to steal info from websites in order to form shallow answers to user questions. It allows poor writers to quickly generate more poor writing and flood the Internet with it. 

In Conclusion

Between my personal X echo chamber being shattered and X becoming part of the AI invasion, I just couldn't justify staying there or, yes, spending valuable time there. Also, leaving was easier, because what appeared to be a workable alternative had finally turned up. BlueSky.

So, I'm over there now, and at some point, I hope to do a post here about my experience skeeting. 

So This Is Happening In The Publishing World

Union employees of HarperCollins went out on strike yesterday. This is described as an indefinite strike, unlike the one this past summer, which was only one day. 

Among the people involved are those working in design, marketing, publicity, and sales. I mention this because I think a large part of the general public isn't aware of all the work done by traditional publishing houses to prepare books. Design, in particular, isn't considered much even by readers. Yet how text looks on a page is a huge factor in the readability of a book. That became obvious to me in the early days of self-publishing when some writers cut down on the number of pages they needed to pay to print by using narrower margins. What designers do matters a lot.

I'd also like to point out that I didn't learn about this through the news listings I follow or on Facebook. I learned about it on Twitter. I'd have to say that that is where I pick up on the bulk of the publishing news I hear about, even if it's just a mention that leads me to look something up to find out what's going on. This is why I'm sticking with Twitter for the time being.

Time Management Tuesday: Let Me Refresh You About Tweetdeck

This past Saturday afternoon I sat out on my deck with my laptop and watched Greg Pincus's Maximizing Your Social Media Presence and Effectiveness, which he conducted at the end of May for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. You have to be a member to watch the archived workshop, and it will only be available for a limited time. So I will tell you it was a very decent intro/overview to the major social media networks and how writers can use them. If you are a writer (or anyone else) new to social media and have a chance to hear him speak on the subject, it would definitely be worth your time to do so.

While discussing Twitter, Pincus mentioned Tweetdeck, which I am very fond of. I was reminded of my two-part Tweetdeck Time Management Tuesday arc from 2015 and decided I'd reconnect readers with it. Tweetdeck is a huge help with managing the time involved with using Twitter.

Managing The  Beast That Is Twitter With Tweetdeck, Part 1

I really get into detail here on how to use Tweetdeck, because I had to work out all these things when I was learning it. 

A couple of possibly random thoughts:

1. In his talk, Greg Pincus compared Tweetdeck to newspaper columns. In my post, I compared it to a filing system. Use whatever metaphor works for you.
2. In my post I describe how my nephew introduced me to Tweetdeck. He's still active on Twitter, but the last I heard, he wasn't using Tweetdeck anymore. Aunt Gail isn't giving it up until someone finds her something better.

Managing The Beast That Is Twitter With Tweetdeck, Part 2

In this post I described what I was actually using Tweetdeck for and how I was doing it. I'm still doing pretty much all those things. Additionally, I will set up temporary columns for topics that will be of interest to me for a short time. Black History Month and Women's History Month are examples. They both can generate a lot of Twitter information about books during the months when they occur. Whenever I take part in Pidmad, I set up a pitmad column so I can see what other writers are pitching and lend my support to those I find interesting by retweeting them. When these short-term events are over, I delete the column so I'm not overwhelmed with column after column after column.

Realizing you can add and delete special interest columns on Tweetdeck makes it incredibly flexible.

In rereading this I see that six years ago I was repeating tweets a few times a day to increase the chances of them being seen. I haven't done that recently, but now that I've been reminded that I used to do it, I'll start again with some of my tweets.

In conclusion, Tweetdeck is a huge help in managing Twitter both in terms of accessing the content there and posting your own. You can definitely do more with your time using it.

Time Management Tuesday: Managing The Beast That Is Twitter With Tweetdeck, Part 2

Last week I covered how-to related to Tweetdeck. This week I'll describe some of what I've been doing with Tweetdeck to make better use of time, to give you an idea of what you can try.

Increasing The Chances Of Your Tweets Being Seen By Scheduling Multiple Tweets

What You Can Do: There are thousands of tweets out there in the twitterverse, more than anyone can absorb. Any individual tweet we send out there has to compete with all those others. Most people using Twitter look at the tweets on the screen in front of them, maybe scroll down a bit. If you post each tweet only once, the odds of it being seen by many people are not great. Tweeting the same material a few times over the course of the day or even several days means you can reach more people. But who has time for that?

What you can do with Tweetdeck is schedule tweets so they are automatically tweeted while you're doing other things. Yeah, writing, of course. On your Tweetdeck page you'll see a blue column to your left. The white box in it is for typing your tweet in. You can immediately tweet it by pushing the "Tweet" box below it. Or you can look down at the next three buttons. One of them says "Schedule Tweets." Yes. That's the one you want.

The blue column has its own narrow scroll bar. I mention that because, yes, I struggled with scrolling there for a bit. So once you've chosen the "Schedule Tweet" box, use the scroll bar to move down a bit to a calendar and squares with the time. You can hit the day and fill in the time you want your tweet to show up. Look above the calendar, and you'll see a box that says "Tweet at...whatever you told it to do." Hit that box. You'll find the tweet you just scheduled has moved to a column called--surprise!--"Scheduled."

Then you can do that again. And again.

What I've Been Doing: I usually do my first tweet in real time shortly before noon. Then I schedule at least two more that day, around two and four. I've read that noon and late afternoon are best tweeting times. People go onto Twitter at lunch time and after work. I'll change the write-up I use with each tweet so I'm not tweeting exactly the same thing, even though I'm tweeting exactly the same link. I may use different #hashtags to get the attention of different groups.

That strategy definitely increases traffic to my blog. I get a lot more views days I do that type of tweeting.

If you blog in the evening to save your daytime for other kinds of work, you can schedule your tweets for the next day.

Increasing The Odds Of Your Tweets Being Seen By Using Images

 

What You Can Do: Images attract attention on every platform. They're mind-bogglingly simple to do with Tweetdeck. The button for adding images is below your white text box, just as the scheduling tweet box is. You can use it to add any images you have on your hard drive, the ones you've used in your blog. Basically, if you can add images to your blog, you can add them to your tweets with Tweetdeck.

 

What I've Been Doing: When I tweet a reader response post, I add the cover image to my tweet. I'm going to experiment with other images from the blog as well

.

What I've Been Doing With My Columns

 

#hashtags: I got started with Tweetdeck because my nephew told me following hashtags had helped him build his Twitter following. I haven't had much luck with that. I may not be spending enough time going through the columns to look for people. I'm mostly scanning for interesting content at this point. The first two hashtags I followed, #kidlit and #YA, turned up a lot of tweets from authors promoting their own work. That's not particularly interesting content. Fortunately, it's very easy to get rid of columns. At the top of each one, there's a strange little two-line icon. Hit it, and you'll find "Remove" down at the bottom. I got rid of my #kidlit and #YA columns.

 

Now I have columns for #timemanagement, #Egyptology, and #MSWL, among other things. I think it's obvious why I'm interested in seeing time management tweets. (This is a Time Management Tuesday post, recall.) I'm following Egyptology because of that mummy book I'm working on. When I see something interesting there, I retweet it. My goal with that is to let my followers know that Egyptology is something I'm interested in. If that book ever gets published, I will have a little history with ancient Egypt. In fact, a couple of times my #egyptology retweets have been picked up in an Egyptology on-line publication that collects tweets on that subject.  The MSWL column is for "Manuscript Wish List," something agents and editors tweet periodically on twitter. I was not able to spend any time following that the day they did it this summer, so I created a column to collect those tweets, so I can look at them another time.

 

What I'm doing so far is using hashtags to pull subjects I'm interested in out of the flood of tweets. I've been able to do a lot more with this information than if I'd been hoping to see it racing by my screen all in one stream.

 

Lists. Whenever I follow new people/organizations on Twitter, I immediately add them to a list. We're talking agents, publications, writers, things like that. If you go back to the screen of options, you'll see that you can make a column with your lists. It's incredibly easy to do. List columns are another way to pull information out of your Twitter stream and put it somewhere you might actually see it. 

 

The lists have been great. I have a list of publications I'm interested in. Earlier this month, one of them tweeted that it was opening for submissions for a couple of weeks. So I submitted. I have a list column of Connecticut writers. One of them tweeted that she's interested in hosting guest bloggers this fall. I've made a first contact regarding that.

 

Flexibility. Because columns are so easy to make and delete I can change them depending on my needs and interests. Oh, wow. That makes them situational, doesn't it? You can adapt them to whatever your situation is at any particular moment.

 

My Tweetdeck experience began because I was talking shop at a family gathering on the Fourth of July. At a family member's rehearsal dinner, I was talking shop with the best man who got me interested in Instagram. I'll look into that this fall.

Time Management Tuesday: Managing The Beast That Is Twitter With Tweetdeck, Part 1

Social media is important to writers, whether it really works or not. It takes up a lot of time, whether it really works or not. Soon after getting started on Twitter, I looked into one of the programs that's supposed to allow users to schedule tweets because that's supposed to help with the time part. It looked so complicated, I thought it would just be easier to keep doing what I was doing. Whether it really worked or not.

This past Fourth of July, my nephew, who is part of a group blog and a Twitter user, told me about Tweetdeck. What interested me was that in addition to using it to schedule tweets, he said he used it to check out interests/hashtags and find new people to follow. Following others is a way to increase your own followers. I thought, Who doesn't want more followers? So I decided to look into it.

It took a while to get the hang of it, but I'm loving Tweetdeck now. It is a time saver. Additonally, I can save you some learning time by explaining what I did, so you can do it without dealing with my struggles.

Twitter page--Masses of tweets lost in one column

What Is Tweetdeck?

Tweetdeck page--Masses of tweets in multiple columns by subject

Like everything else in life, all the information the Tweetdeck people give you makes sense, once you understand it. Until then, think of Tweetdeck as a way of organizing your Twitter stream. I go further and think of it as a filing system. I understand filing. Good filing makes a difference in managing time. When you have hundreds of pieces of paper, if you can break them up into categories and organize them that way, you can find what you want. When you have thousands of tweets, if you can break them up into categories and organize them that way, you can find what you want. Or more of what you want, anyway.

Getting Started

Quite honestly, when I went to Tweetdeck the first time, my Tweetdeck page came up with columns called "Home" (which was my Twitter feed from my regular Twitter page), "Notifications," and "Messages." "Notifications" and "Messages" were the same "Notifications" and "Messages" that appear in the drop down menu on a regular Twitter page. (Twitter owns Tweetdeck now, you might have guessed.) They were just in columns so I could see them immediately without having to make any effort.

So Tweetdeck gave me my start. My starting point was what I had on my traditional Twitter page, but organized in columns.

Building On The Start

Look for the black column on your left

To build on your start, you're going to want to add more columns. To do that, all you have to do is go over to that narrow black column on the far left that I've done such a poor job of copying for you. Look for the + sign. You know, + as in add. 

When you hit that, you get a screen full of options  that you can, indeed, add to your Tweetdeck page. They are all different kinds of columns.

Remember, the Home column is your traditional

Screen full of options

Twitter feed. If, like me, you removed your Home and Notifications columns, you can easily put them back up. If, like me, you put everyone you followed on Twitter into lists the moment you followed them, you can make columns for any of those lists. You can make columns for any of the subjects you see here.

Hit one of these options, follow the instructions. Be sure to hit "Add Column" at the bottom of the screen. (That's right. I didn't do that at first and couldn't understand why nothing was happening.)

But What About Hashtag Columns, Gail?

Now this is where I can really save you some time. I had to do some hunting to figure this one out.

To make a hashtag column, you select "Search" from that screen full of options. Ta-da! In the little box that pops up, you type #whateveryouwant. By that I mean whatever hashtag you want to make a column for. Once you do, you'll get the box to your left. I ignore everything in it and hit "Add Column."

Now, what if you want to cut down on the number of columns by including two hashtags in one of them instead of one hashtag in two of them? Bless you, Alice Keeler at Teacher Tech for 'splaining how to do this, because I really wanted to give it a go.

This is one of those things that is mind-bogglingly simple, once you know how to do it. In that little box that pops up when you select "Search" you type both the hashtags you want to search for separated by the word "OR." As in:

#graphicnovels OR #comics

Whatever you do, don't type:

#graphicnovels AND #comics

If you use "AND," you'll only get tweets that use both hashtags. OR means you'll get tweets with either hashtag. This OR vs AND  thing is supposed to have something to do with Boolean logic, whatever the hell that is. But it's a cool term to use, and this is probably going to be my only chance, so there it is.

In case you hadn't noticed, you need to cap the OR.

So this is the how-to portion of our program. Next week I'll cover my positive experience with Tweetdeck once I figured out this stuff. I'll include scheduling tweets and attaching images.                                       
                                                                                        

 

Promo Friday: Working On Twitter

Okay, I've done a little more snooping about Twitter.

Basics

I'm not going to do any "First, choose a name" things because you can find that all over the place. Agent Molly Jaffa does that in The Writer's Guide to Rocking It on Twitter, reprinted at Backspace. She does a little something extra by suggesting appropriate tweet material for writers--your writing and, additionally, your reading.

Then What About Followers?

Pragmaticmom (who I sort of know through Google+, not Twitter) has an interesting post, Twitter Tips and How I Got 55,000 Followers. Mia has a great deal of information here, but the point that really popped for me was the one about following and unfollowing people to increase your followers. Scroll down to the comments, and at the end you'll see I asked why to unfollow. Well, Twitter only allows you to follow so many people at a time. So you unfollow those who don't follow you back so you can follow others.

I think you have to consider what your goal is for Twitter. I originally joined for content, so whether or not people were following me back wasn't that great an issue. I was more concerned with cluttering my stream with content I wasn't interested in, keeping me from getting to the stuff I was. But rereading Mia's information about finding an audience niche and following hashtags has made me reconsider what I'm doing there.

Speaking of Hashtags

My understanding of hashtags is that they can increase your reach beyond your followers because anyone who is interested in the topic/hashtag you've added could end up finding your tweet in their stream. Feel free to correct me on that, readers.

You can find lists of hashtags related to various fields. Twitter Hashtags for Authors and Book Marketing Pros is one of them.

How Much Am I Liking Tweeting?

 

Ehh. I don't dislike it. I can even get into quickly sharing an article I've enjoyed reading. But I'm finding learning how to best use Twitter a little time consuming.

Promo Friday: What's With Twitter?

I'm not entirely sure. I'm going to be working on Twitter for a while.

How To Deal With All The Tweets

I read quite some time ago that Twitter users only read what is on the screen in front of them at any particular time. Otherwise, all the material the people they're following tweet all day is pretty much lost to them. That's my experience. I'm probably not seeing a fraction of what's in my stream.

In Twitter Tips for Beginnings: Everything I Wish I Knew About Twitter When I Started Kevan Lee advises putting your followers into lists. Then at any one particular time you can call up just one list and read tweets in an organized way. How often are you going to do that and how far back are you going to read? I don't know. But it's a way to do some reading, anyway.

Do You Really Want To Follow Everyone?

Lee also suggests following anyone who follows you in order to build as big a following as you can. Some of his commenters disagreed, suggesting focusing on quality rather than quantity. I've read that it's considered good manners to follow anyone who follows you, but you shouldn't expect it of those you follow. I'll follow friends and interesting writers and bloggers who follow me, but I avoid people who are marketing products for writers or hardselling their books. I really am interested in content. Remember, it's hard to keep up with all the tweets, anyway, so you don't want to make your job harder by filling your stream with sales pitches.

What About Hashtags##??

Quite honestly, I was going to cover hashtags, but I read something today that suggests that I may not have a real good grasp on how to use them. My Twitter life is evolving. I'll cover this again another Friday.

I'm On Twitter. Now What?

Last Friday I had an opportunity to get some Twitter advice from a family friend and made the jump. User name gail_gauthier  I have a list of links to Twitter articles in my journal to read. I've only managed to get to What's the Best Way for Authors to Use Twitter?  Among the suggestions there? "Post an inspirational quote or message." I'm afraid the Twitterverse will wait a long time to hear something inspirational from me.

Should A Writer Do The Same Thing On All Platforms?

Oddly enough, earlier in the week I was involved in a brief discussion at the Writer Unboxed Facebook page about writers sending blog posts out over multiple platforms. A few of us were not at all crazy about that idea, because many receivers end up getting that post several times. Most writers keep joining more and more social media sites believing that each new one is going to be the one that brings them to a large audience. In reality, though, we're finding the same people at each site. Therefore, if we post the same message everywhere, the same people get it. How does this duplication happen?

Let's use Gail as a case study, shall we?

1. First social media site. I decided a couple of years ago that I wanted a Facebook page. I just wanted a professional-type page to do short bursts of professional-type writing, similar to this blog but much, much shorter. After looking into the situation, I decided I wanted what some people call a fan page these days, because those pages turn up if someone does a Google search of "Gail Gauthier." The personal pages, according to the information I could find, could only be accessed by people who were members of Facebook. That is a finite group, whereas the whole world can use Google. I couldn't see spending any time at all on a Facebook page that could only reach a finite number of people.
2. Second social media site. However, at the time I was doing this, my understanding was that I couldn't get the "professional" fan page without first having a personal page. I've been told by others since then that this is not the case. Still, this is how I immediately ended up with two social media sites. With the personal page, I could start Friending people. With the professional/fan page, I had to wait for people to Like me. I told the Friends at the personal page about the professional/fan page.
3. As a result, almost half the followers of my professional/fan page are friends at my personal page. If I routinely post the same information at each page, those people have to endure getting the same message.
4. Third social media site. I joined Goodreads. Guess what? There's a connection between Facebook and Goodreads. When you join Goodreads, a bunch of your friends from Facebook automatically become your friends at Goodreads. If you send your blog posts to both your Facebook pages and to Goodreads, those poor friends are now getting the same message three times.
5. Fourth social media site. A couple of friends invited me to become active on Google+. A lot of people I know are also on Google+, so if I've been sending my blog posts to my other three social media sites and start sending them to Google+, too, we now have people being hit with them four times.
6. Fifth social media site. When you join Twitter, who do you suppose you're going to find there? That's right. Your friends from all your other social media sites. Send your blog posts there, or any message that is the same, and you now have the potential for hammering the same people five times.

Now, media people will tell you that individuals need to hear a message a certain number of times before they remember it. But they don't necessarily mean the same exact message from the same person. This is why people do blog tours and hope to get reviewed at journals. They want readers to hear about their books multiple times, but the multiple times are coming from different sources. That's buzz. When it just comes from you, that's painful. Tedious. Hard sell.

A Social Media Protocol

I've developed a sort of protocol for my social media efforts.

1. Original Content--Short-form nonfiction on writing and literature and promotional material related to my work.
2. Professional/Fan Facebook Page--Professionally-related material. The blog is not linked to it. I include blog posts occasionally if there is information I want to get out--a new publication, for instance. I post links to my professional reading. Rarely do I post the same material that I post at my personal page.
3. Personal Facebook Page--These posts project me personally, but only in relation to personal creative activities and some travel/fitness. I include blog posts occasionally if there is information I want to get out--a new publication, for instance. Rarely do I post the same material that I post at my professional/fan page. I Friend other writers, litbloggers, family members, and nonwriting friends.
4. Goodreads--This is specifically about reading. I do have a blog there, Gail Gauthier Reads, but it is primarily about reading, including my nonchildren's book reading. If I want to include some promotional material there from the blog, it is a total rewrite. I rate books I've discussed here at Original Content, using quotes from here and a link back to that post. I also friend new litbloggers I've found, not the children's litbloggers I've known for years, in order to create a new base of people.
5. Google+--Original Content does get published directly to the Google+. What I'm trying to do there is reach new people, building circles of still more new bloggers and developing a self-publishing circle. Google+ is about new people.
6. Twitter--What? I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do here. The blog is not going to be automatically linked there, I'll post my own links occasionally. I also plan, at this point, to keep Twitter extremely professional. No pictures of cakes I've made or trails I've biked. I'm going to share reading I've liked, such as the Salon article I wrote about here last week. Twitter would be a place to share the article, Original Content would be a place to discuss it. Since I don't have a giant audience at my Professional Facebook page, I feel pretty comfortable using reading links from there on Twitter, especially since at the Facebook page, I can make a brief commentary about them, making what goes there a little different from what goes on Twitter.

Yes, I have given this an enormous amount of thought. And, once again, there are no metrics for determining the value of social media, so this may be time and effort for which I will get very little in return. However, it just seems so incredibly wasteful to have all these platforms, to refuse to use them mindfully, and to send out the one message everywhere, risking turning receivers off, because they keep hearing it over and over again.

Okay, I'm off to Twitter!