Lessons on Tweeting, or, Why Writers Should Love Twitter

I joined Twitter two years ago, but for a long time I didn’t get what it was good for. I tweeted at my favorite musician, Beck, and got no reply. I read my friends’ tweets, which were mostly funny things their kids said, or random thoughts they were having while standing in line at the grocery store. I linked my blog to Twitter, but I had no followers.  How was this going to help me as a writer?

I’d heard that Twitter could help me build my author platform, as in make people aware of me and what I write so that when I have a book with my name on it, I’ll have a ready-made audience to sell it to. But I wasn’t sure how to gain followers, and I didn’t understand what made Twitter better than facebook or blogging.

It wasn’t until recently that I learned the secret: before…