Twitter Late Adopter

I joined Twitter a while back, didn't get the point, and cancelled my account.

Since then, a couple of different people (Alec Shobin @alecshobin and Miguel Sternberg @spookysquid) told me, "Dude, you've got to have a Twitter account."

Alec said I needed one for PR.

Miguel said I needed one to touch base with the game art community.

So, fine, fine, I got one: @happionlabs. I figured, I'll get one, but I'm hardly ever going to read my feed, because I won't have time.

Turns out I read my feed all the time. And I've learned and discovered useful stuff. It's definitely a time sink, but maybe worth it? One thing I've done differently this time is follow a whole bunch of people.

So now I'm on facebook, linkedin, G+ and this. How do you decide what to post where?

EDIT: That wasn't a rhetorical question! Really - how do you decide?

Comments

[Jeffool]

Twitter is a beast of a tool, and the bastard child of RSS and IM. A lot of people won't be following your RSS feed; they'll follow your Twitter. And it's a useful asynchronous chatting tool.

Whenever you post something you want interaction on (like this), or could be considered "of weight", mention it on Twitter. "New blog post: How do YOU judge what to post on which social network? - ?" You can use url shorteners that help track clicks, as well, if you're into that.

G+/FB, well, they seem a bit redundant with a blog. Or at least insofar as marketing/PR go. If anything, they seem to be about redundancy for the sake of catering to different possible fans. (Some will only use Twitter, some will only use FB.) To that end, it doesn't hurt to have both be exactly the same (and you can redirect them to do that auto-magically.)

And use your own in-post Tweet/Share buttons to do so. No no one ever wants to be first. It often seems like people are more likely to click an upvote for something with a dozen upvotes than something with none.

[Chris Chapman]

Easy! :-)

Personal stuff goes on Facebook.

Instant-thought or status updates about work go on Twitter.

More complex work thoughts with pictures and/or links go on Google+. Sometimes if interesting conversations arise these get promoted into blog posts and get more though.

Replies go out on the same medium they came in on.

I've had to make a conscious decision to make Facebook personal and Google+ work related, but there's some cross-over where work people set up Facebook pages and so I get involved with those conversations.

If I were trying to set up a community for promoting something, I'd probably admit that Google+ is not as healthy a medium as Facebook, and make a FB page.

[Miguel Sternberg]

I haven't done any heavy metrics or anything so my approach to twitter isn't heavily optimized but it works well enough. I gain more followers then I lose... currently around 1300 total with a constant trickle of new followers every day or so and a big boost any time I put out a new trailer or get posted on a popular blog.

My twitter is a mix of personal and business stuff. Some people separate the two but I feel that's too much work and it hasn't appeared to cause me any trouble retaining followers.

If something is important (say a good preview or some new screenshots) I'll post about it a few times over two days (people miss stuff and use twitter at different times). If it's really important (game release, new trailer) I'll also ask people to "Please RT" in the initial tweet. But I use that very sparingly since it's basically asking for a favour. It's important to return the favour and re-tweet interesting stuff friends and colleagues are making.. twitter works best when it's reciprocal and everyone shares their audience a bit.

I used to worry that getting into conversations and using twitter like a public chat client would lose me followers, but I've found it actually helps me gain followers. Conversations are just another way that people can discover you.

I also use twitterfall with a whole bunch of search terms to catch any chatter about my games that doesn't include @spookysquid in the tweet. I then re-tweet messages where someone says something particularly nice or links to one of my games.

I've got a FB page for They Bleed Pixels but keep it very topical use it only for links to trailers, articles, interviews and fan art for the games. It's very much just there for redundancy since some folks prefer it.

I'm currently trying to decide whether it's worth having a tumblr. It seems like it'd be best for viraly spreading screenshots and such.