"love to hear the robin go tweet, tweet, tweet"
in october of 2009, i decided to join the twittersphere. i simply tweeted "can't wait for alice in wonderland". okay. i'm bored now.
then, sometime in june 2011, i was on the phone with queenie and the subject of twitter came up. we had both been tweeted by one of our birds. we spent an hour learning the ins and outs of twitter. queenie became obsessed with getting re-tweeted by celebrities. she was pretty successful. if you consider pauly shore a celebrity.
i was in the midst of moving south so didn't have time to keep up with queenie. as soon as we were settled, i was determined, not only to get celebrity re-tweets, but bigger and better celebrities than my bird.
FLASH FORWARD august 15, 2011
i had noticed that alec baldwin was really good about tweeting his fans. i also noticed that most of these fans asked the same questions. "what's you're favorite movie?" "what's your favorite book?" "dude, you are so funny in schweddy balls!". i wanted to be different. i wanted alec baldwin to laugh at my tweet. after days and days of opening up my twitter and not tweeting i finally just said screw it, and tweeted "should i or shouldn't i?" i had no idea what i meant by that. no thought went into it at all. within seconds i had a re-tweet. a re-tweet from THE alec baldwin!! he said "you should. but then feel slightly guilty". O...M...G...THAT. IS. AWESOME!!!! queenie is gonna be sooooo jealous. seriously. that was my goal all along. but then the tweets kept coming. people i didn't know were getting into the conversation. it went on and on all day long. then queenie called. before i could even tell her i got re-tweeted she knew. q "bish, what did you do?" me "huh, what do you mean?" q "you're tweet is the top tweet!" me "what? i don't even know what that is?" well, it's exactly what it says it is. my tweet was the number one tweet for that day. alec baldwin even made it a favorite (sadly, when he left twitter for awhile, he unfavorited it...is that even a word?). SUCCESS!!!
FLASH FORWARD today
i have had some other celebrity successes. ben and jerry's ice cream liked a tweet so much they sent me jimmy fallon's book "thank you notes" and two coupons for free ice cream. and bruce campbell (burn notice and the evil dead trilogy) re-tweeted me when i asked him what i should do in the north carolina woods that were eerily reminiscent of the evil dead ("say the words correctly this time"~you understand if you are a fan of the trilogy. i am.).
i am not an expert on all things twitter (i only have 63 followers because i am neither a high school girl nor a celebrity), however, i would like to offer three pieces of twitter advice.
don't be set to private. the whole point of twitter is to see what is going on with the rest of the world. if you are a private user you limit your voice. why do that to yourself. worried about spam? i check my followers periodically and block all the porn stars and spammers.
think before you tweet. too many times people put out thoughtless tweets. they think that, since they mention no names, people won't know who/what they are talking about. actually, then, EVERYBODY thinks it's about them and EVERYBODY gets their feelings hurt. i always ask myself "is this something that really needs to be out there?"
don't be offended if you don't get a re-tweet. i've had so many people tell me that "blah blah blah is a jackass" because they didn't get a re-tweet. let's face it, celebrities are busy people. and celebrities are getting 45,000 more tweets an hour than the average person gets in a year. there is no way they can re-tweet everyone. how did i get alec baldwin, ben and jerry's, and bruce campbell, you ask? well, ben and jerry's asked their followers to tweet something they are thankful for. and, they have someone to handle their social media (i think. or it's just ben. or jerry. 'cause wouldn't it be hard for both of them to run the same twitter account?). alec and bruce were tweeting when i sent my tweet. if you see that a celebrity's last tweet was an hour ago, they aren't tweeting and therefore your tweet is going to get lost in 45,000 other tweets. increase your chances of a re-tweet by waiting until your celeb is actually online.
have fun and happy tweeting.
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in march of 2009, queenie and i were planning her migration east. it was decided that her friend, bird, would tag along. bird and i had never met but facebook conversations made it obvious we would be great friends. i wake up one morning to 45,000 facebook notifications. what? i've been asleep for at least 8 hours?!! and i'm pretty sure my status is not that interesting?!! bird had an entire conversation with a guy i went to high school with. a guy that i had seen once in the past 27 years (although he did console me during the infamous pink hair incident...yet another happy accident). in june she would fly to ohio and meet him for the first time. she would also meet my mother before i had even met her (bird). this is not fair!! he would fly to california, in july, and meet queenie before i even got to reunite with her. THIS is really not fair!! tommy and bird had fallen in love. completely by accident. on my facebook status. serendipity.
