We were excited when we discovered Twitter and learned how to use it to promote our material. We’ve “met” a lot of terrific friends there and connected with fellow authors and readers alike. Since we started, we’ve developed our own method for using this wonderful social tool. Here it is in a nutshell:

When we get a new follower, we read the profile and then scroll down through the timeline. If we see they regularly retweet others, we follow them back and add them to our private list of retweeters. Then, when we go onto Twitter each day, we first choose tweets from that list to retweet. They deserve it because they are generous enough to RT others.

Each day, we also attempt to RT those under certain hashtags because we like them, and because we know they will return the favor down the line. The top hashtags we favor are #asmsg, #teamretweet, and #click1. But there are others geared specifically to authors as well.

And finally, if we see something we think our friends would be interested in, we will RT it.

Our personal approach to etiquette:

We do not ask anyone to RT for us unless we are willing to RT for them. Any other approach would be selfish on our part.

We try to keep at least one of our tweets near the top of the timeline so our followers do not have to scroll through tons of tweets to find one of ours to RT. We want to make it easy to retweet us, should anyone be so inclined.

We try to return each RT for an RT. This is our way of saying thanks to someone for taking the time to RT one of our tweets. We realize many people don’t do this, and that’s fine, but it is how we have chosen to express our gratitude for an RT.

Thanking us for an RT is very nice, but not necessary at all. A return RT is always appreciated, though! When we RT someone, we look for a tweet about the tweeter's project or interest; if we can’t find one of these, we send a thank you for the RT.

We try to respond to all mentions, but we may miss a few. We truly appreciate every kind mention, shout-out, and FF.

We avoid RTing anything offensive or divisive. Our Twitter account is strictly for enjoyment and for the promotion of our books and those of other authors, or helpful/entertaining information. Of course, every person’s definition of offensive is different, and this should be taken into consideration.

Follow us on twitter @WodkeHawkinson