Twitter Fail

Okay, so maybe the failure is actually mine, but the truth of the matter is, I loathe Twitter. Trust me, I know that many people—Violets included!—find it a useful tool but I have to say, I am simply overwhelmed and unimpressed. Perhaps it’s because I suck at small talk. Or maybe it’s because between SVP, Facebook, and my own blog, I simply don’t have time for one more social platform without sucking too much time and energy away from my writing.

I’ve been feeling pretty wormish about this, as if the letter with the Twitter Loser stamped across it will show up on my doorstep any moment. And then two things happened.

One, I remembered to practice what we preach here at Shrinking Violets. As introverts, we have to conserve our energy. Especially our outbound energy. We also have to pick our strengths and play to those. The truth is, I really do suck at small talk. Hell’s bells, I haven’t even managed the art of short and punchy blog entries, neither here nor on my author blog. I can wax on for 1500 words on plotting or voice or the needs of an introvert, but chit chat? Not so much. Not even cyber chit chat.

The second thing that’s helped me is this post from marketing guru Seth Godin; two of his blog posts in particular.

The first one, Scalejacking, perfectly explains how I feel about Twitter. My favorite quote from the piece:

"The internet is about who, not how many. The internet lets you take really good care of 100 people instead of harassing 2,000."

And that pretty much sums it up for me. I'd rather write at length for people on craft and being an introvert, than pepper them with short, small tweetful attempts at pithy. Mary does pithy well. I do not.

Seth's second post that really resonated with me is called, How Big Is Your Farm? Take away quote?

"If you own a lot of acres but just have a few bags of seed, you might be tempted to spread out what you've got and cover as much territory as you can. Farmers tell me that this is wasteful and time consuming. You end up with less yield and more work.

Marketers face the same dilemma."

I'm an introvert, which means I have even fewer seeds than other people. So I want to think of each seed as a magic bean that I can grow into a great, big beanstalk. (How's that for mixing metaphors!). I can choose to focus on what I do best, writing books, and in depth blog entries, workshops etc. or I can spread myself too thin.

So my hat’s off to you, all you Tweeters out there. Especially you introverted ones. I am in awe of how you make twitter work for you and congratulate you on your tweeting success. However, it is not for me. Not now anyway. It may be in two years, when the technology is old and gray, it will sound interesting to me. But for now, it’s a time suck. Even worse than that, it depletes my energy and resources. And the truth is, as much as I’d like to believe otherwise, those are finite.

And so I share this with you all, not because I enjoy being negative: I don’t. (Trust me, I’m squirming even as I write this. (And notice how I brought in the Big Guns to make myself feel better about my decision.) But sometimes certain approaches or avenues just aren’t our cup of tea. And I need to remind myself that that’s okay. And I thought I’d say it out loud in case any of you needed to hear it too.

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I also want to take a moment to give a shout out to all the great new Shrinking Violet books featured in our sidebar this month! You guys are aMaZingLy talented!!