Friday, February 10, 2012

to tweet or not to tweet

Lately I have been recieving email after email about reviewing things on my blog. When advertisers start coming to you to review products, you know your blog is doing well! Well enough that people are noticing it! It is a huge morale boost for me. But it also means that I am being tested. Is this an opportunity that the Lord is giving me to reach others for Him or is this a distraction by the devil to turn the blog into self praising instead of God praising! Finding the line between my story and God's story in this blog is sometimes difficult, and I am sure that I cross the line all the time. But I truly believe that God gave me this platform to share what He is doing in my life and those around me.  It's an age old fight within God's church on whether technology should be utilized to reach others for Christ. I am a firm believer in utilizing tools that bridge the gap between us and non believers, the way that Christ bridged the gap between us and God. But I also see the other side where it can be a distraction and turn us away from God's message. Like my issue I think it's a fine line. Setting boundaries is always a good way to make sure that we are using technology in the way God wants us to! Also having people hold us accountable is a good way to keep us from misusing and or over using these tools.

Since my blog isn't a product review blog I believe that doing product reviews would be against my vision of improving my families quality of life, unless of course the product directly affects achieving one of my six goals. In that case I might make an exception.

Now most of you know that I am all for book reviewing. I love to read and am very proud that I have been accepted to review certain books at my choosing. I  certainly don't post a review on every book I read and I don't just post reviews on books that are given to me for that purpose.  I am an equal opportunity reviewer. :-)  I have been asked to join Net Galley which is a premiere website for book reviewers. I have the opportunity to review books that are brand new in many different genres. I am in the process of reviewing a new version of the Bible that you will see me get the pleasure of reviewing all too soon. But one of the things that the publishers look for in choosing me to review their book is if I have Twitter. Now I consider myself to be very internet savvy, after all I not only taught myself how to use iPhones, Bluetooth, iTunes,Facebook, Pinterest and most of my electronic gadgets, but I have taught others too. But! I have no idea what this tweeting is about or how to use it!

So for those of you who do tweet or twitter about, what are your thoughts on it? Do you think it would be a good tool to get my blog, God's story out there? Does it take a considerable amount of time and energy, therefore decreasing my quality of life? Is it worth the trouble? I appreciate your thoughts on the matter and will cherish your comments! As for keeping the integrity of my blog I just want to say thank you to my readers. It is very gratifying to know that you all care about me enough to be a part of my story, God's story. And I always giggle over having comments to read and engage over. I want you to know that I love you and think very highly of my readers. You not only help me continue on my path towards God but hold me accountable when I stray. I count on you!

3 comments:

  1. I Tweet! Oh, do I tweet! I find it so much easier to tweet than to use facebook. It takes up less time, IMO. You can connect to people/companies quickly. You do get as much "junk" cluttering up your feed, like with fb. No game requests. No photo albums clogging your feed. Sure, you can get spam and spammers, but you can easily tell and delete. You can post pictures (one at a time) on your updates. You can post links. You can update your "followers" with status updates whenever you choose.

    You can't "like" statuses, so if you use that to delurk yourself and show appreciation like I do on facebook, you won't like that about twitter. You can comment on updates by sending the original poster a individual comment. Not many long, multi-person conversations there. You can send (short) private direct messages to people. Using hashtags (#[word]), it's easy to find people to connect to with similar interests.

    I love twitter so much more than FB. You can check out mine if you want (@jemini602). If you choose to try it out, let me know and perhaps I can help you out!

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    1. Wow you make it seem irresistable Beth! Maybe you can show me on Skype on your new Tablet, :)

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  2. Eh. Twitter. I can take it or leave it. Honestly, it's a HUGE time sink for me because I tend to open up a bunch of links that people have tweeted and then I end up spending SO MUCH more time on the internet reading stuff. It's good and bad.

    I prefer Facebook which is much more deeply rooted in relationships for me. I do like Twitter at times, but it's not my favorite.

    (Also, I tagged you in a meme! http://www.sortacrunchy.net/sortacrunchy/2012/02/11-things-on-the-11th-.html)

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