How to Join Twitter’s #WritingCommunity

I joined Twitter in 2017 and found the #writingcommunity almost immediately. It is an amazing corner of Twitter—full of supportive, funny, and thoughtful writers. When appropriate, we cheer each other on with virtual hugs, memes, and pet pictures. Many will share cool resources and links to useful articles. The community is always ready to celebrate when someone lands an agent or gets a short story published.

Despite naysayers, I think Twitter is a great place to meet like-minded scribblers. Moreover, it provides an opportunity to build meaningful online (and offline!) relationships with word wranglers from across the globe.

If you’ve been wanting a no-cost way to network and connect with other writers, all you need to join the group is to open a free Twitter account.

Build Your Brand

If you want to join the #writingcommunity, the Bio section of your profile is important. No really. It’s the first thing most people will check before deciding if they want to follow you. If you’re trying to connect with the writing community, add something to your bio to let other people know you’re a writer. Words like writer, author, editor, book reviewer, poet, screenwriter, novelist, blogger, or word scribbler all work!

I keep my bio on the minimalist side, but people add flags, hashtags, emojis, and even favorite quotes!

Writing-Community Related Hashtags

When you’re first starting out, there are several hashtags you can check out to find other writers. The tags I used included:

• #writingcommunity
• #writingcommmunity (Yes, 3 m’s. No one knows why, so don’t ask.)
• #amwriting
• #amediting
• #amrevising
• #amquerying

Add a hashtag or two to your first couple of posts so other writers see them, but once you have writers following you, the hashtags aren’t as important. In contrast to Instagram, some people even think the more hashtags you add, the less visible your content is, so use them when you’re trying to connect with a specific group, but don’t feel you need to season every tweet with them!

Follows and Followers

Unlike other platforms, on Twitter you can interact with people you don’t follow and who don’t follow you. Some people get really wrapped up in the numbers, and will freak out about each follow/unfollow, but I don’t worry about it. Remember, not all “followers” are people (many are bots). Also, people unfollow for a lot of reasons. If you follow too many people too fast, you can get put into “Twitter Jail” where your account cannot follow anyone else until more people follow you. I think this is to prevent bots. When people get thrown in Twitter jail, they’ll often unfollow people who haven’t engaged with their posts to get out of jail.

Some people unfollow because they don’t like your content, or because you’re not putting out any content at all. This happens a lot when people don’t “say” anything and just retweet other people’s content.

There is a bit of one upmanship too—there are users who feel they look more “popular” if they only follow a few people but have several thousand following them. I don’t worry about it. If I enjoy seeing what they put out into the Twitterverse, IMO, there’s no reason to unfollow them.

Don’t be surprised if you get followers right away, and when you do, you can choose if you want to follow back.

Let me say it again. Follow backs are not required.

I don’t follow everyone who follows me, nor do I expect the people I follow to follow me. Note, Twitter sends notifications whenever someone follows you… but not when they unfollow.

Engage with the #WritingCommunity!

Nearly everyone tweets intending to start a conversation. So if you see someone in the writing community ask a question, express an opinion, or share a find, jump in and chat about it!

It’s not eavesdropping, I promise.

Also, I spend more time engaging on other people’s tweets than on composing my own, and that’s worked for me. Twitter may favor more frequent tweets, but the more time I spend on Twitter, the less time I have to read—or to write and edit my stuff.

The writing community often converses with emoji and gifs, so come prepared with your best game.

Respect Boundaries

If an account clearly says No DMs or No Tag Games, respect their choices. Many accounts display their preferred pronouns, so check the bio before you misgender them. Also, it’s considered poor form to retweet someone’s selfie photo.

Curate Your Feed

Twitter’s platform allows you to unfollow, block accounts, mute words, and mute hashtags. I use these tools liberally to curate my feed.

I also only follow and engage with #writingcommunity members who appear to be genuinely kind, thoughtful people. As a result, my feed is nearly all tweets from writers I like, respect, and admire. I see very few promotional posts or writer lifts, and virtually no negative or toxic content.

Algorhythm Woes

It’s easy to feel discouraged if no one likes or comments on your tweets, but don’t take it personally. We have little control over what the Twitter algorithms show. Add to that the 30-100 tweets per minute by the #writingcommunity, and it’s easy for your content to get buried in the continual tweet avalanche. Even accounts with tens of thousands of followers can post content that only gets a few likes. On the flip side, when a post gets popular, everyone will see it, so everyone jumps on with likes and comments.

If your posts continually get minimal engagement, make sure you’re not using too many hashtags or only talking about one subject. Remember, just as you can curate your feed by muting words, phrases and hashtags… others can as well.

Come Join the #WritingCommunity!

Twitter is a marvelous way to network with other writers. Through it, I’ve found some of my favorite podcasts and blogs. There are many accounts that share book recommendations and reviews, and others that promote writing-related conferences and workshops. I’ve also met beta readers, joined book clubs, and found out about contests like Pitchwars. Twitter is also how I met the Jamigos, two critique partners named Jami(e) who live in the Seattle area too!

Fair warning; there are some accounts in the Twitter writing community solely focused on pushing their books. These accounts are essentially spamming the community, and many of us mute them pretty fast.

While most of us writers are readers, and many of us buy books from each other, we are on the platform to connect, not to shop. However, if you become an active part of the community, you may find you get sales from writers who want to support you!

If you want to find me, I’m @jamifairleigh. Are you on Twitter?

Header Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash