7508/20437
The tweet about Putin got seen by about 700,000 people.
I don’t usually look at RTs to likes or the stats at all.I just send the tweets out into the ether and hope I won’t get into trouble. But I saw that one was getting a lot of comments and so looked at the stats. Most tweets, it seems, get somewhere around 25,000 people engaging with them - which is a lot, but makes you realise that the number of people who follow you is not the number of the people seeing what you’re tweeting. And as recent ticket sales show 25000 people reading your tweet doesn’t translate into much more than a shrug and them moving on to the next tweet. I should know that, because that’s what I do when I am looking at Twitter. I never like anything (only by accident because of my chubby fingers) and RT things that I think are funny or interesting. But that’s as far as it goes.
But still it’s a mini thrill to make 700,000 people shrug or blow air out of the side of their mouth as a lazy laugh. And 65 people followed me as a result of the tweet, so that will give them a time chance of seeing another of my tweets another time.
I’ve managed to use the internet averagely well and it’s almost certainly kept my career afloat over the years, so maybe I should be more concerned about likes and RTs and whether people are engaging, but I am not. Even if it’s a little bit of a jolt to see something take off a little, especially when you yourself preferred the Wat Tyler observation. Or thought flat hot coke might become a thing.
I have occasionally harnessed the power of social media. I was on Twitter early enough to occasionally create a mini-event (the Virgillio Anderson thing was fun) and the International Women’s Day marathons captured people’s imaginations at a time when it was also possible to capture some charity donations. And I think a few years ago tweeting about RHLSTP gigs did make a difference to sales. But it’s a different animal now, I think. A dying sort of animal. That is in pain but being kept alive. Or maybe that’s just me. It’s very hard to tell.
I was meant to be running a 10k this morning, but I was pretty exhausted from the London trip yesterday and hadn’t done quite enough training and decided to stay at home and chill out with the family instead. It was the right decision as we could barely build up the energy to go outside into the sunshine. I managed to finally get out and play a bit of football with Phoebe, but was spark out by bedtime. So right call. But I do want to get back into running again and continue to be annoyed about letting my health slide and my chocolate addiction rear its delicious head again.
