Great copywriting does more than get your message out there. It combines that message with your best qualities to create copy your readers can relate to. They'll feel the difference between you and your competitors and be compelled to act.

Twitter For Copywriters – I’ve Signed Up, Now What?

As a copywriter and online writing coach, Twitter has become a priceless part of my day and a lifeline to the outside world. Getting there, however, isn’t quite so easy.

You eagerly sign up and the next thing you know, you are presented with a blank screen. You set up your profile, sit there, and wait for all the wonderful things to start happening.

And you wait.

Then, you post a ‘hello world’ tweet, and wait some more. Hmmm, now what?

Start Showing What You Are All About

It sounds funny to start tweeting when no one is listening, but it can help you get a better start. You get a chance to get familiar with the site and how it works without feeling awkward (well, at least you have a  chance to continue tweeting to bump a bad comment off the bottom of the page so it’s less noticeable ).

Send out some tweets before actively searching for friends. This will help show others what you are all about when they click on your profile to follow you. What do you post? Talk about posts you’ve found on the web you found interesting, give a few thoughts on the latest news, and answer the question ‘what are you doing.’

Don’t Be Shy

No one is more guilty of this than me. I’m what I like to call a ‘twalker.’ I often spend a lot of time just sucking in information from others if I don’t force myself to jump in on topics and make myself known. It’s just who I am. When someone follows you, say hello and introduce yourself by typing an ‘@’ followed by their id and your message. For example, @AngsCopywriting Hi there! It’s a pleasure to meet you…

Maybe I should rewind for a second. I always look to see who that person is. Twitter has attracted a lot of spammers and garbage in the last while. I look at their feed and if I see a string of “I made a million dollars in five minutes and you can too” followed by a URL, I don’t follow them back. If their stream interests me, I follow.

I find that I have become a little fussier lately. If the first thing the new follower does is try to sell me something, I automatically skip the follow. I think that if that’s what that person feels is the best first impression, it probably isn’t someone I will find valuable in any way. As far as I’m concerned, that’s spam. (Unless it’s a business such as Amazon deals and I’m interested in their sales.)

Finding Friends

You do have the option to search for contacts in your email accounts, but if you’re anything like me, you keep your contacts in your desktop email program making this feature pretty much useless.

I wouldn’t recommend sending invites to everyone either — I’d rather use that as an excuse to contact each person separately rather than fill their inbox with things they’ll likely never read.

You have three main choices for finding friends in Twitterland:

You can access the public timeline by going to http://twitter.com/public_timeline This is everyone’s tweets crammed into one place.

Twitscoop, located at http://www.twitscoop.com/ is another option. This tool gives you a live tag cloud of the most popular words tweeted at that very moment. Click on a word that fits your interests or type a word into the box in the upper-right to find people talking about your favorite subjects.

The best way to find copywriters and great friends on Twitter is to do a Twitter Search. Located at http://search.twitter.com/ , you type in words associated with people you want to talk to and you get a great overview of who’s who in those areas.

For copywriters, I would recommend words such as:

copywriting
Online writing
Writing jobs online
SEO
Online marketing

This is just the very start of Twitter for copywriters online. Don’t limit yourself to these by any means. Tons of tool exist and are coming into existance every day. (Tweetwasters, which measures the amount of time you spend online, told me I had wasted 4.4 hours. I was shocked. Tweetwasters told me I was boring and suggested I get a cat. Apparently, 4 hours isn’t a lot. ) Feel free to come back and let me know how it goes!

(Pic by darkmotion)

December 14, 2008 at 5:43 pm | For the Writer | 2 comments

2 Responses to “Twitter For Copywriters – I’ve Signed Up, Now What?”

1. Diana Scimone says:

   December 15, 2008 at 4:31 pm

   Great post with lots of helpful suggestions for newbies and not-so-newbies alike!

   Diana Scimone
   http://www.peapodpublishing.com
   http://www.dianascimone.com
2. angie says:

   December 15, 2008 at 4:42 pm

   Thank you Diana!