About once a week, I load up my most commonly used writers’ hashtags on Tweetdeck, and I spend twenty minutes or so commenting upon, retweeting, and liking about 20 tweeters’ tweets. Most of these people I will also follow.
I call this my weekly Writer’s Twitter Surge, which is intended to say nice things about nice people.
Is it a productive way to develop more followers? Probably not. Sometimes I will sink into a Twitter rabbit hole, and an hour will fly—an hour that could be used for more productive activities, such as a new blog post, or work on one of my books.
Also, I’d estimate the follow-back rate is about 20%. Not bad, but not necessarily a great use of time if my goal is only to expand my digital footprint.
Regardless, that’s not why I do it. I do it because it feels good to digitally engage with nice people intentionally.
Bottom line: often Twitter is a negative psychological space; my weekly Writer’s Twitter Surge is a counter to this.