Bear with me. This is an impromptu blog. I’ve had another one of those crazy weeks. Last week my cat became ill with a bladder infection and to add to all the craziness, my mother broke her foot. Then over the weekend, my cat’s illness worsened and morphed into an outrageously priced emergency visit. At least he’s on the road to recovery. Wish I could say the same about my bank account.

But on top of the craziness, I’ve found that I’ve become addicted. No not caffeine. No not chocolate. I’ve become assimilated by that crazy social networking site known as Twitter. How cool is it to know what my favorite author is listening to in her iPod. How cool is it to get mentioned by that same author. I can now die and go to heaven.

Social networking is an excellent way for an author to build their reader base. It puts your name out there. It shows you care for your fans. I think the thing that appeals to me about Twitter is that the updates are in realtime. You don’t have to visit a profile page to see updates of those people you follow. So it’s a great place to network and keep up with trends as well as keeping your fans up to date. But there are drawbacks. The world sees EVERYTHING you tweet, so you need to be careful what flits out of your little fingers. I’ve come up with a few suggestions to make your twittering experience a pleasant one.

1. Think before you type. If you are hemming and hawing whether or not to post an update, then sit on it a bit. Your updates are available to the entire world, including that potential agent or editor you have your eye on.
2. Do not tweet your bodily functions. Seriously, no one wants to know that you just… well let’s not go there.
3. Don’t diss your peers. Respect your fellow authors. They’re trying to make a living just like you.
4. Eat all your vegetables… What? how did that get in here?
5. Be careful of the words you use when you tweet. Strange people will follow. Although I’m still trying to figure out where the hemorrhoids followers came from. I will admit the MLB baseball followers were kind of neat.
6. Most importantly. Have fun

Catch you in Tweetsville! Follow on twitter at www.twitter.com/arianna_skye and Facebook at www.facebook.com/ariannaskye

Cheers!
Arianna