My Twitter Retweet Policy

I wrote about this topic a while back, but I thought it was time to revisit my policy regarding Twitter retweets. I am very fortunate to have a great many followers who retweet my posts. So many, in fact, that I often find it difficult to consistently reciprocate. Part of this is due to volume, part is Twitter's fault. You see, if someone retweets a post I made the day before, Twitter will list the new retweet along with all the other retweets that have already been made about that post. It's easy for someone who retweeted later than all the others to get lost in the shuffle.

That being said, I do try to reciprocate for those who retweet me or mention me and my books. However, if I miss you, don't hesitate to send a directed tweet for me to retweet. Here's how to do it:

Make your tweet as normal, say, "My novel is #free this weekend, please have a look! (LINK)." Then, at the end of the tweet, add "#RT @MichaelKRose". This will send the tweet to my "Connect" timeline where I see all retweets and mentions of me, rather than the general timeline where all Tweets made by those I'm following appear. As soon as I see it, I'll be happy to send out the retweet for you. I would ask, however, that retweet requests be limited to the topics I generally focus on: books, writing, speculative fiction, etc. These are the things my followers are also interested in.

Thank you to all my Twitter friends who have helped me so much over the past year and a half!

Best,

Michael K. Rose

Why I Won't Follow You on Twitter (with Lame Jokes)

A while back I wrote "My Twitter Manifesto (with Jokes)." I had to append that with "A Difficult Decision Regarding Twitter," which explains why I don't personally thank you for retweeting me. It's not because I'm a narcissistic jerk, either. I am, but that has nothing to do with it. Well today, I release the third installment in my never-ending quest to figure out how to most effectively use Twitter without going mad in the process.

First of all, I have to admit that the title is a bit of lie. (No, not that part. The jokes are lame). But if you're reading my blog, chances are I will follow you on Twitter. But when one gets a certain number of followers, a lot of the leeches come out to play. So for them (and for your amusement) here are the reasons why I won't follow you (but probably not you) on Twitter.

1.You do not have a profile photo. I realize that not everyone wants to reveal their mugs to the anonymous world, but put something in there, a picture, a cartoon, something. I don't follow eggs.

2. You have no information in your bio. You need not tell me where you live, where you work, what your children's names are or what debilitating diseases you're suffering from, but give me something that indicates you're a person I want to connect with. Something like—oh, I don't know—"I like books." Or "I am a sci-fi nerd." 

3. You lead off your bio with a sentence containing any of the following words: marketer, marketing, entrepreneur, consultant, optimization, mentor, coach, e-commerce or followers. I reserve the right to add words to this list.

4. You call yourself a "guru."

5. You are the Twitter account of a business completely unrelated to what I do or in a location that is not easily accessible to me (sorry, dry goods store in Topeka, Kansas).

6. Any other damn reason I want. Seriously, though, I'll probably end up following back most of those who follow me. If you're into writing, books, sci-fi or speculative fiction in general or anything else in the realm of nerd-dom, I'll probably want to connect with you. If I have not followed you back, send me a Tweet and I'll rectify the situation. I would also suggest that if you think I'm an interesting person to follow, check out the people I follow myself. I don't go through and just follow random people, I try to find those who I would genuinely be interested in talking with. I think it's only fair that if I will not follow back those who have nothing to do with my interests, I shouldn't follow someone who mentions, oh, nothing but chainsaw sculpture in their bio just to increase the number of my Followers. Actually, chainsaw sculpture is kind of cool. I probably would follow that person. But I think my point is clear. I hope that together we can make our Twitter community a community of value. I'd also like to make a quick plug for the #BuyIndie hashtag. It's the brainchild of Benjamin X. Wretlind; search for it if you like to support other indie writers.

Best,

Michael K. Rose

A Difficult Decision Regarding Twitter

When I first began on Twitter, I was stunned that there were people out there who not only wanted to follow me but were also willing to retweet my book announcements. I've now reached the point where I have over 5,000 Twitter followers and wake up every morning to dozens of retweets. I get dozens more during the day and what I used to do was thank each person individually, click over to their Twitter stream and retweet something of theirs.

As my list of followers grew, I found that this was taking up more and more of my time. I started a list, "People I like to RT" and would go through that every day. Then I started thanking people in batches for their RTs and mentions.

Now even that is becoming too overwhelming. On top of that, Twitter, for some reason, is really sketchy about sending me the email announcements when someone RTs or mentions me, so I'm missing tons of people in my "thank you" Tweets.

All the time I spend putting people on "thank you" lists, searching for tweets of theirs for me to RT, and just generally trying to manage everything going on on Twitter is just taking too much of my time. So beginning today, I have decided that I am not going to send out the "thank you" tweets any longer. If you do RT or mention me, know that I am, of course, thankful for it.

This is a difficult decision for me because it causes me great distress to think that someone might find me rude or unappreciative. It is simply not the case, and that is why I am writing this post rather than just stopping the thank yous and RTs without notice.

But in compensation, I am doing something now, which you may have seen me Tweet about before. If you want me to RT something specific, just add "#RT @MichaelKRose" to the end of it (without the quote marks) and I will RT it as soon as I see it. I will try to do this without fail to anyone who adds that to their tweet, assuming it is a Tweet relevant to the interests of my followers and not vulgar or crude in any way. I'll also be occasionally sending out this tweet (or one like it) so everyone knows how to get an RT from me:

Writer friends, want me to #RT your book? Just put "#RT @MichaelKRose" (without quote marks) at the end so I'm sure to see it!

I'd like to again thank everyone who has been so helpful and generous. I will, of course, continue to chat with people who tweet to me, and I hope that many of you will add the "#RT @MichaelKRose" tag to your tweets so I can continue to return all the kindness so many have shown me.

Best,
Michael K. Rose

My Twitter Manifesto (with Jokes)

or A Public Declaration of Intent Regarding My Use of the Social Networking Site Twitter.

Article I. On Following

To paraphrase Mr. Alfred Doolittle in Pygmalion/My Fair Lady: I'm willing to follow you, I'm wanting to follow you, I'm waiting to follow you. That is, assuming the following criteria are met:

1. You have followed me and continue to follow me. To be blunt, I despise those who go through and follow hundreds of people a day to get follow backs, only to unfollow them the next day and repeat the vile process.
2. You are a real person. I can't tell you how many lonely, attractive women wanting to "chat" or "fuck" have followed me. I should only be so lucky! These immediately get reported for spam and will have no help from me in building a list of schmucks to exploit. I also report for spam any account whose tweets consist of unexplained links to websites with an .ru suffix.
3. You are a real person who posts things relevant to my interests. If you are a writer, I will follow you. Period. Post as many links as you like to your books, your blog posts, etc. These are the things I want to see! However, if you're just trying to shill accounting/home business/advertising services on me, look elsewhere. As no one I've ever known has said, "That dog don't hunt."

Providing you meet the above criteria, I would love to be your Twitter friend. If, for some reason, you are eligible for my Follow but I haven't followed you, let me know! Contrary to what I've written in "The Cult of Michael" Handbook ($29.99 + shipping and handling) I am not perfect. I miss things. Also, believe it or not, Twitter isn't perfect either! I know! Sometimes it decides that I shouldn't be following certain people. I might think otherwise, but it doesn't really want to give me a say in the matter, so there you go.

Article II. On Mentions and Retweets

I love it when people mention me or retweet me. It makes me all tingly inside. So if you do one of these things, do so knowing that I am grateful for your support. I will do my very best to thank you and retweet something of yours in return but it is not always possible. Sometimes, it is just a matter of me not having the time and by the time I do have the time, assuming I haven't lost track of the time, I won't remember the time you took the time to help me out. It happens. Sometimes. So, if you have been sending out a stream of tweets saying how wonderful I am only to be met with cold, disdainful silence, I apologize. I really do try and if you don't hear back from me it means nothing other than I am busy and/or lazy.

Article III. On Self-Promotion

I do a fair bit of self-promotion (get the exciting SciFi/Horror short story Sleep for only 99 cents!) but I try not to be obnoxious about it. I balance tweets about my books with tweets about books by other writers and links to useful blog posts (like this one). So, I am not one of those who will huff and click the unfollow button if you are spreading the good word about your latest masterpiece every five minutes. I have found many wonderful books via such shameless self-aggrandizement. Not that you're doing that. No, I'm sure your book tweets and humble and self-deprecating. But if they aren't, I don't mind! I love supporting Indie authors and if you follow me on Twitter, that's what I'll be doing! Get used to it. Run, jump, shout and scream about your book. I might just join in the revelry with a retweet or two. If such enthusiastic drum-beating about how great my writer friends and I are bothers you, you probably don't want to follow. But if you want to read some great books (like Sullivan's War: Book I) then I'm your man. If you want me to retweet something, let me know! Tweets are sometimes easy to miss, so send me a DM if there's something in particular you want me to share. As I said, I love supporting fellow Indie writers and if I end up reading and liking your book, watch out, because the world is going to hear about it.

Article IV. On Friendship

I have met many people on Twitter that I now consider friends. It is a great forum for self-promotion, sure, but friendship is an even greater thing than that. I am very liberal in who I will consider a friend and if you share some of my interests, there's a good chance I'll consider you one. I love joking with people and chatting about books, science fiction, classical music and nerd stuff in general. Feel free to chat me up any time!

You can Follow me on Twitter by going here:
https://twitter.com/#!/MichaelKRose

I look forward to engaging with you!

Best,
Michael