Thinking about Taking a break from Twitter? Laura Troyer from Eating Well Anywhere shares a few tips on how to do it.
I love Twitter, sometimes a little too much. I’m in the midst of a Twitter break and it’s … not easy. There may come a time in any Twitter user’s life—a big assignment is due, a baby’s on the way, it’s time to refocus—when stepping away from Twitter is both necessary and healthy. Whether you’re on Twitter for making friends or furthering your ambitions, there are a few things you can do to make the most of a Twitter hiatus and make it stick.
1. Leave a note.
Twitter boundaries can be wobbly, at best. Announcing an extended Twitter absence is simply the sociable thing to do. If that doesn’t work for you, consider image management. An aura of mystery is nice sometimes, but a languishing Twitter account can and will say a number of far less mysterious things—you’ve flown the coop, grown bored or lazy, or gone off sulking, among them—to current and potential followers.
Announcing your intentions also keeps you on task: if you say you’re taking a break to focus on work but start tweeting again three hours later, you’ll just look foolish.
2. Connect in other ways.
Letting TwitterFeed tweet your blog posts while you ignore your followers may feel like going out in the evening when you stayed home from school, but you’re far less likely to lose followers if you’ve already mentioned your absence, and those who stay on top of your blog posts via Twitter will be grateful.
As guest posting is to blogging, is guest tweeting the answer to being away from Twitter? Maybe. Is your Twitter account bigger than you (@ricksanchezcnn, for example), or is it a one-man (or woman) show? What is certain: always (always, always) be up front about it.
3. Now, take a break from Twitter.
Have you ever shown up to a pool party without a bathing suit and went home in wet clothes? That’s a little like “just checking in” on Twitter. Maybe you intend to make it quick, maybe you’re just going to watch, but before you know it you’re in the pool with everyone else. Stay away from the pool.
4. In the meantime, make a list.
Like great ideas that come in the shower where pen and paper don’t fare well, what seem to be your best tweets ever will come when you’re taking a break. Make a list—in a notebook with old-fashioned paper and pencil, in a text doc, or via an e-mail you keep forwarding to yourself. If it’s an important message (it’s a girl!) and it can’t wait (change of plans, can you pick me up at 8?), there’s always e-mail and the telephone.
5. Log out.
The first few times you type “tw …” into your browser—out of habit, or maybe from that nagging feeling that you’re missing out on the party—and land on Twitter’s quiet homepage you’ll feel … well, I don’t know how you will feel, but I felt a little silly. (TweetDeck users and users of other Twitter clients, please share your application-specific self-humiliation strategies in the comments.)
That Twitter home page won’t make you write the report or spend the weekend with your family, but it will remind you that the reason for your Twitter hiatus was, in all likelihood, a good and honorable cause. It all comes down to what makes you happy, what keeps you healthy, and what feels friendly. This is social networking, after all.
@mikenichols0
I haven’t had the
@mikenichols0
Oops! I haven’t had the need to quit Twitter for more than a few hours at a time yet. I use TweetDeck or Twitterific on the Mac, so I just disable the sounds and hide the app. Still, it is a problem when I come back and find a thousand tweets waiting to be read!
If I were to take a break, I would just close the app and not open it until the break was over.
Thanks for a great post.
@FriendlyMonster
Good advice. I think I’m going to go through Twitter withdrawls over the holidays with my parents’ shoddy internet, so I’ll keep these in mind.
@MatthewMetzger
I have just started using Twitter. I check in every few hours and try not to write more than 5 messages a day. I think Twitter is useful, but some people post too much.
@ktcosmos
RETURNING after the hiatus is tricky, too. There’s the urge to frantically go back, back, back and see what all you missed. It’s hard to step back into the middle of the ongoing conversation.
@phaoloo
Good advice, but it seems I am a twitter addict and can’t quit a minute if I can tweet something.
@AdsenseWench
Thanks for the article.
Maybe I’m fortune to be a hardcore introvert, because the odds of me spending more than 15 minutes on Twitter or doing anything social online (World of Warcraft aside) are pretty low. With my once a day (if that) updates, I’ll never be a popular Twitterer with thousands of followers, but at least I have an easier time than some staying focused on the work that really earns me money.
I do try to say something, at least, if I’m going to be gone for a week.
@johnhaydon
Great post – love the list part.
@meredithgould
Just what I needed to read tonight as I finished “just checking” Twitter and ended up on it for 30 minutes. Twitter and OCD are not a good combination…even when properly medicated!
@askmarc
Great advice. I’m (still) using Twhirl so I guess if I were to take a break I’d just close the application and remove the shortcut from my desktop
@hendrylee
As the holiday season comes, many people will take a Twitter hiatus, so what a timely post.
One additional thing that might be nice to have during hiatus is autoresponder for direct messages. When you are away for a week, you usually set autoresponder on your email. TweetLater doesn’t support auto-reply with direct message. Tell me if there’s a tool that allows me to do that.
But, if you have just queued a week full of blog posts on your blog, it is possible to use TweetLater to send automatic tweets some time after the blog posts are up there.
At least for some people this is better than going away without any tweets for a week or two.
Just my two cents.
@hectorhenry17
Great pots, i think in my cas eits hard to keep out for twitter but it worth it to try.
@storyboardlife
twitter is for the cool kids b/c the cool kids are seen as relevant. This way they can just show up when they want to and put their two cents in and people will stop and listen. Although, you have to create some coolness with your followers first.
@damnredhead
I have a very hard time taking a Twitter break. I can’t turn Tweetdeck off for some reason, so I instead go on what I call Twitter “diets,” where I consciously don’t tweet as often… maybe once every 3 or 4 hours or so, and if I have any @replies I’ll just reply to them as fast as I can all at once.
Of course, that doesn’t stop me from falling in the pool sometimes because sometimes time flies and then I feel guilty, but still … at least I’m trying to cut back.