Annette’s Paper Trail

The question of the day: What are you doing? It’s simple enough to answer–but you can only use 140 characters to do it.

That’s the premise behind a growing social networking phenomenon at Twitter.com.

The posts are called “tweets” and they allow you to let friends and colleagues know what you are doing at times throughout the day (or night). It’s fast and easy microblogging that is much like an instant message that can be sent from your computer or your mobile phone.

But, what is the point of adding just one more thing to do to an already overflowing social networking calendar? That’s a question you will have to answer for yourself. There is only so much time in the day to research, write, market, pursue publication, and…oh yeah, have a life.

What can you do to make Twitter a productive social networking choice for you?

• Meet and network with fellow writers.
• Follow posts about topics or people of interest.
• Promote your own book, blog, or articles.
• Post mini lessons or tips that help establish your brand.
• Keep track of trends.
• Reach out to your audience.

And my personal favorite: keep yourself accountable for what’s on your to-do list. Nothing will keep you on task like announcing what you are working on to the entire list of your followers!

Take a peek at who is saying what on Twitter. Go to Summize.com (bought by Twitter). Type your topic into the search field and you can see who is talking about writing, blogging, book promotion, parenting, cooking, gardening, relationships, etc. It’s a great way to have an immediate finger on the pulse of your topic.

Some Twitterers to follow:
Peter Shankman – HARO/Help A Reporter – http://twitter.com/skydiver
Seth Godin – Unleashing the Idea Virus – http://twitter.com/SethGodin
Penny Sansevieri – Red Hot Internet Marketing – http://twitter.com/Bookgal
Denise Wakeman – The Blog Squad – http://twitter.com/BlogSquad
BloggersBlog – News and Trends in Blogging – http://twitter.com/bloggersblog
Pete Cashmore – Mashable – http://twitter.com/mashable

If you sign up, look me up: http://twitter.com/AnnetteFix
I’ll be the one talking about Jen’s cat’s banana addiction.

Here’s a great Twitter tutorial (tweeted by fallenrogue, one of my tweeps):

Tweet to you later…