Re-tweet those who re-tweet you

Do you as an author help people who help you? I do. I keep track of those who help me and make darn sure I help them. Here's how I do it.

Keep an eye out for those who re-tweet posts useful to you. Those tweets you make which lead to your books in some way. Pick out and re-tweet posts they make which will help them – you owe these people and you’ll want them to continue to support you.

Here’s how I keep track of this – I use the Thunderbird email client (It’s free) However most email clients will allow you to do this so you don't have to use Thunderbird.

How to keep track

Every time someone re-tweets you Twitter will send you an email (if you have not turned this off in settings). I set up an email filter to collect all these tweets in a separate folder.

Periodically I step through the emails in that folder and pick out those tweets which mention my books or blog posts and add a star to them.

I don’t add a star to those re-tweets which won’t help my book promotion. For example news items I tweet or quotes.

Use #FF Follow Friday

On a Friday I then sort my folder of re-tweets first by sender’s name and then by star by clicking the column headings. This sorts everything and I can easily see who has helped me the most. At the time I wrote this here are my top Tweeps who re-tweet my promotional tweets the most.

Of course I make sure to repay the favour and these people are the ones I add to my tweet list for regular re-posts.

Of course that’s not to say I’m not grateful for all the other re-tweets since anyone re-tweeting my posts helps grow my following. I often re-tweet other people's posts like that which I have found entertaining. Sometimes I'll add those too to my tweet list.

Does this seem a little calculating? Perhaps not in the spirit of social media? Perhaps, but if I don't do everything I can to promote our books then they'll remain unknown, no matter how good they are. If that means I must help others because of profit rather than altruism then so be it. .oO(...but it does make me feel good to help others where I can.)

What do you think? Is preferential  re-tweeting the promotion of those who help you being too mercenary?