Twitter Policy

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Since I have been gaining followers at an ever-increasing rate, I thought it might be prudent to list a couple of things about my “twitter interaction” so that we are all on the same page – and so that I don’t have to repeatedly tweet long strings of boring verbiage.

  • Yes, I use Twitter as a marketing tool. I will tweet links to my books, links to discount coupons, and notices of sales on e-editions and paperbacks among other things. Consider these the same as commercials during a TV program. Some of them you might even enjoy and talk about around the water cooler tomorrow.
  • I am at times a bit off-color. It comes with the territory, as I have a bit of a warped sense of humor. It’s also good to remember that I write books for a living so I spend my days cooped up in an office with imaginary people who rarely do what I want them to do, therefore it’s not unheard of for me to burp an expletive here and there.
  • I am often silly. Why? See the note above. I spend two-thirds of my day interacting with people who don’t exist, in a world that doesn’t really exist, and where horrible, terrible things happen – around and TO those people who don’t exist. If I didn’t blow off a little silly here and there I’d be a ward of the state and my wardrobe would all have very long sleeves and buckles in the back.
  • As a rule, I don’t “follow back.” This is for several reasons and I won’t list them all here. However, one of them is that I don’t really have time to follow too many folks and I need to be able to easily weed out the folks that I follow for research and the like. Having multiple twitter accounts is not the solution – I’ve tried it and it just made me crazier than I already am. The long and short of it is that I’m supposed to be writing books, not sifting Tweets. However, if I DO for some reason elect to follow you back and then you unfollow me, I will UNfollow you right back. I’m not on Twitter to help you “up” your follower count. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but refer back to the first bulleted point.
  • I really do Tweet. As in me, not someone else. It is not my publicist or my PA sending out Tweets from @mrsellars. Unless, of course, I suddenly become incapacitated, in which case I am sure my wife – or my publicist – will tweet something via my account.  So, when you see a Tweet with @mrsellars  in front of it, it’s really me (unless I get hacked.)
  • I DO make use of scheduled tweets in order to throw some of that boring marketing stuff out into the ether without me having to worry about it in realtime. So, here’s sort of how it works: If you see a Tweet from me that was posted via HOOTSUITE – 9 times out of 10 it’s a scheduled tweet that was set up anywhere from a day to 6 months in advance. However, if it is a “timely tweet” relating to current events or some such, it might well be me, as I sometimes use HOOTSUITE to post to Twitter and Facebook simultaneously (because I like the way it works in that regard). If it is posted via PING.FM, it is almost assuredly me, and I am away from my computer, therefore I will be unable to reply to any @ mentions, because I am texting in the tweet from my ancient, not so smart, but very reliable cell phone.  If it is posted via TWEETDECK or directly from the TWITTER web interface, then I am sitting behind the keyboard at that very moment, working up a giant case of swamp ass while writing or performing some writing related task.
  • And, speaking of the aforementioned @ mentions – I do my very best to answer @ mentions and direct messages should they be of a nature that requires an answer, even it if it is just to say thank you because you said something nice to, or about me. I don’t always manage to thank everyone for the RT’s and such, so here’s a blanket “thank you” in case I miss someone. HOWEVER, be it known that if the nature of an @ mention or DM is to “heckle” me, or “school me” because you disagree with something I have tweeted, don’t hold your breath waiting for a reply. Homeslice don’t play dat…
  • ALWAYS bear in mind what I said earlier… I am silly on Twitter. The vast bulk of my tweets are SATIRE or SPOOFS or OVER THE TOP sorts of comments. I am fond of PUNS and I scrawl them liberally across the vast dry erase board that is the world wide web. For the most part they are funny, to me and many other folks. If you don’t find them funny, that’s all good. I can’t knock ‘em all out of the park, and we don’t all have the same sense of humor (see previous bulleted point.) I will also RETWEET things that I find amusing, interesting, or otherwise noteworthy. If I run across something on the web while I am surfing, I just might Tweet it too. A comic, a link to an upcoming convention, a news story… Whatever happens to catch my attention that I feel like sharing.
  • If you tweet random stupidity to me, odds are I will go look at your page. If you are sort of innocuous and are just being weird, I will simply ignore you. If your timeline is filled with SPAMMISH Tweets punctuated by stupid, I will block & report you.
  • March 15, 2012 ADDENDUM: Following me, then unfollowing me, and then refollowing me (rinse, repeat) is NOT an effective strategy to get me to follow you back. In fact, it is a far more effect strategy to get me to block you for being annoying.

And there you have it… It is possible that I will amend this list with more at a later date, but I think that pretty much covers it for now.

Thanks for following…

Murv / @mrsellars

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