please empty your brain below
the analysis has been done, and it's proven that (except if you're a Justin Beeber or Lady Gaga when people just follow you anyway), the best way to attract followers is to have a mix of personal thoughts, "Looks at this!" (twitpics), promotional tweets and Re-Tweets of other interesting people. it's all about balance.

also read an article once on how it's quite powerful to tweet regularly... then NOT for a few days, have a period of radio silence, and then come back again. people realise that they've 'missed' you and are far more likely to click on links in your tweets, even if you DON'T do the sensible thing of teasing what it's going to be. (i never tweet a link without a teaser)

i do wish you'd tweet more DG though. just now and then. but never linking us to your blog - like you say, you've got us perfectly trained for that already thanks.

geofftech | Homepage | 26.07.13 - 8:27 a.m. | #

If you go to the settings menu on twitter.com and scroll down to the bottom, you will find a big new button, 'Request your archive', which doesn't have the numerical limit. So you are safe not just up to 2017, but beyond.

And of course the people who read your blog without your touting it on twitter will carry on doing so whether or not you tweet the posts. But it is a way of making it easier to help people who are not already regular readers to notice stuff, applying your first category to yourself. And going from an average of less than one tweet a day to an average of about two won't swamp anybody. But I have 7,000 tweets in four years, so may be in the category of people you want to ignore on that.

marek | 26.07.13 - 9:28 a.m. | #

Surely the 2000th tweet has to be a link to this most profound post?

twit | 26.07.13 - 9:48 a.m. | #

I still don't see the point of it. I still consider it something of a waste of time. I still don't tweet.

Tim | 26.07.13 - 11:53 a.m. | #

Twitter is just made for this

https://mobile.twitter.com/common_squirrel

Antipodean | 26.07.13 - 2:18 p.m. | #

I suspect this post would have got more feedback if I'd engaged on Twitter.

There is now a 2000th tweet, 2012-related, if you're interested.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 26.07.13 - 7:04 p.m. | #

What I find particularly interesting about your Twitter use is that it seems there are users (me, for instance) whom you don't actually *follow*, but nevertheless somehow keep a broad awareness of the topics they're (we're!) tweeting about, so for instance you knew to tweet at me about the B12 (I shall treasure that @ all the more now of course ;) ), and shared my pics and #B12onSunday hashtag on your subsequent blog post.

I suspect this way of using Twitter is more unusual even than most of the things you highlight in this post as your diversions from current norms. But I have no evidence of that, of course!

Anyway, keep up the good tweeting and blogging - I reckon there's room for my frequency of each, and yours, and everything in between (we are surely near opposite ends of both those spectra from each other!) :)

Paul | Homepage | 26.07.13 - 9:26 p.m. | #

I find the twitter conversations the most engaging (but I work from home so it's nice to have folk to chat to). I think of it as a conversation in a pub - most people aren't listening but it's a public place and don't be surprised when someone else joins in.

disgruntled | Homepage | 26.07.13 - 9:50 p.m. | #

My Witchy Powers strongly suspect that that 2000th tweet was very carefully calculated ;)

Blue Witch | Homepage | 27.07.13 - 7:42 a.m. | #

But what about the 2012th tweet?

popartist | 27.07.13 - 10:01 a.m. | #

Don't start him off on that one popartist. Oh, wait... he's probably been playing that game unremarked for ages, hasn't he?

Blue Witch | Homepage | 27.07.13 - 11:35 a.m. | #

One blog-related thing Twitter would be useful for is alerting us to when you've made significant edits to one of your posts. Especially since you don't do post titles, so there's no obvious place to put a nice big '[UPDATED]' tag in. Training us to come back every day at 7am is all very well for seeing your new stuff, but what about the not infrequent occasions when the situation around one of your recent posts changes and/or it receives an official response, and you feel moved to write an addendum which almost nobody then sees?

swirlythingy | Homepage | 27.07.13 - 7:06 p.m. | #











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