Best Accounts to Follow on Twitter

by | Apr 16, 2018 | Articles | 0 comments

Recently I wrote a blog post about how many writers struggle to find interesting topics. It occurred to me that, for those of us who are writers and/or entrepreneurs, one good topic for this blog might be Best Accounts to Follow on Twitter.

Of course, this is totally subjective, and part of the problem is your reason behind following someone. Are you looking for inspiration? Entertainment? Advice on business, marketing, and more? All of these? That might drive you to follow people I don’t follow, or drive you away from people I do follow.

So rather than make this a one-category post, I’m putting it out there as a sort of catchall. I follow these accounts for a variety of reasons, including inspiration, entertainment, and education.

Here are my top ten Best Accounts to Follow On Twitter, in no particular order.

  1. Open Culture – The great thing about Open Culture is that they provide interesting cultural content of all kinds. From a story on a teacher turning Beatles’ songs into Latin to a link to Jorge Luis Borges’ favorite novels, Open Culture is cool…and eminently shareable. No wonder they have over 400K followers.
  2. Maria Popova – Like Open Culture, Maria Popova offers a plethora of cool cultural postings. Much of them are of a literary or philosophical bent, so thinkers and lovers of the arts should really check it out.
  3. Frances Caballo – Social media strategist Frances Caballo found a great niche: authors. I’m a fan of her work as well as a follower, and was more than pleased the day I saw she’d followed me back.
  4. Josh Elledge – When it comes to PR in general, syndicated TV/newspaper expert Josh Elledge provides advice for anyone looking to get more press in a way that journalists will love. He and I follow each other, too, and he’s proved a valuable resource in boosting my profile.
  5. Real Marsha Wright – If you want a lot of eyeballs on a Sunday tweet, check out the #ThinkBIGSundayWithMarsha hashtag as featured by Marsha Wright. I’ve often gotten several THOUSAND impressions from one of these tweets, so it’s a great way to get your name in front of more people who might not be part of your normal audience.
  6. Anne R. Allen – A true writer’s writer, Anne R. Allen is a Top 10 blogger for authors. She’s witty, smart, and retweets great content. Check out my guest post on her blog here.
  7. Joanna Penn – Best-selling British author Joanna Penn has become known as a resource for other authors on publishing, entrepreneurship, and more. She’s also down-to-earth enough to follow you back if you’re putting out great content. So, as in the case with Frances Caballo, I was pleased when she followed me back!
  8. Novelicious – Novelicious posts beautiful images with cool writer quotes. Nothing wrong with that. I like to retweet about once every day or two, both for aesthetic and inspirational reasons.
  9. Gary Wilbers – Gary is a business coach and keynote speaker, with over 4,000 followers on LinkedIn. He’s just building up his Twitter following. He’s got a book out called Positive Cultures Win. Check him out here.
  10. Mixtus Media – Run by Jenn dePaula, Mixtus Media is huge on Instagram and Twitter. If you’re looking for book marketing tips, she’s got great content, too.

There are quite a few other Twitter accounts I follow and frequently retweet – including Kim Garst, Regina Kenney, and fellow author Jay Lemming – so if you’re looking to build up your Twitter, these are all great folks to follow. Some of them might even follow you back!

advance reader copy

Does An ARC Have to Include A Cover Illustration?

One of the most confusing concepts in publishing is that of the Advance Reader Copy, or ARC. I call it confusing because there appears to be no universal agreement on what those initials actually mean. While some sources refer to an ARC as an Advance Reader Copy,...
presidents

Presidents’ Day: Crappy Holiday Or The Crappiest Holiday?

“The buck stops here.” —Harry S. Truman “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” —John F. Kennedy “I don’t take any responsibility at all.” —That guy   I’m old—so old I remember when we celebrated George Washington’s...
robot

When Will the Robot Overlords Replace Us?

I’ve been writing about machine learning and artificial intelligence quite a bit lately for work. Evidently, you can now use AI to organize all your files, create marketing and advertising, and perform repetitive accounting tasks. Oh, by the way: you can also use it...
LCCN

Do I Need A Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN)?

This week I promised to write about one of the most often overlooked items in the publishing business - the Library of Congress Control Number, or LCCN. I'm going to write about it a bit today, but my thinking on the LCCN has changed to some degree over time.According...

Communication? Keep It Simple, Sweetheart

Last week’s blog post was all about business. This week, I’m still going to talk about business a little, but really it’s more about writing. And if there’s one lesson we should take to heart in writing – in fact, in all our communication – it’s Keep It Simple. Today...
censorship

Write Whatever the @#$% You Want

I’ve been stewing on this for a while. It’s been brewing for quite a while. I could probably write a song about it (how about a rap?), but I don’t think I will. This is more of a blog post topic, and it might even deserve a series. And that’s the title and topic of...
giving

Why I Think Giving Your Work Away Is (Mostly) A Bad Idea

​Free books—who doesn’t love that idea, right? Me. I don’t love that idea. In fact, I think it sucks. Now, you might wonder: why, Mike, are you so against free books? I mean, don’t you want more people to read? You’re not against libraries, are you? No, I’m not...

Miles of Files: Where Did It Come From?

I wrote my third novel between about 2007 and 2015. I can’t say it took a full eight years to write – I got stuck in the final third for a couple years – but it was an ambitious project. I’d gone from a third person novel to a first person novel, and now I was going...
track

Back on Track With a Work-In-Progress

Last week’s unusually short blog post was entitled Closed for Maintenance: Me. Between my busy freelance schedule and other commitments, I didn’t have time for myself, much less for the blog (which is, after all, an unpaid avocation). Today's post is about getting...
technophobia

Technophobia: A Writer’s Confession

To today's computer-savvy readers, "technophobia" might sound like a quaint leftover from the 20th century. You remember, right? Back in the 1980s, guys like me wrote poems of dismay about the invasion of technology into the arts. I still remember the words I penned...
self-promotion

What’s The Problem With Shameless Self-Promotion?

While I still find it somewhat hard to believe, I've been on Twitter for almost eight years. I know this not only because Twitter shows Joined March 2015 on my profile but also because, even if they eliminate that feature, I use a tracker called Who Unfollowed Me? If...
MLK

MLK Day 2023

Here’s wishing everyone a safe, sane Martin Luther King Jr. Day. For many of us, today is always something of a day of mourning: not only mourning the loss of a great civil rights leader, but also mourning the turn our great nation seemed to take in recent years....

Twitter Tips for Authors in 2023

If you follow my blog, you probably connected with me via Twitter, whether you’re a fellow author or not. In 2020, I wrote a post about Twitter for fellow writers that got a good response. Three years later, the landscape has changed, but some Twitter best practices...
rails

Going Off The Rails (But Not On A Crazy Train)

Last April, I wrote a blog post called Back on Track With a Work-In-Progress. Part of that post was to talk about the difference between a “plotter” and a “pantser” (and to describe myself as a hybrid of the two, a “plantser”). Another, less obvious motive, was to...
French

Those Tricky French Authors and Their Obsessions

Today’s blog post was originally going to be Write Whatever the @#$% You Want, Pt. III. However, after seeing parts I and II lined up, I decided to call an audible and make it something less repetitive. Somehow the SEO gods have gotten into my head. As I’ve mentioned...
scared

Write Whatever the @#$% You Want, Pt. II

In last week’s post, I mentioned a pretty well-known author who has publicly reported his publisher “wouldn’t touch” a new release, in part because a character in his novel referred to herself as “fat.” I heard this story on a podcast, and I remember thinking, “Wait...
censorship

Write Whatever the @#$% You Want

I’ve been stewing on this for a while. It’s been brewing for quite a while. I could probably write a song about it (how about a rap?), but I don’t think I will. This is more of a blog post topic, and it might even deserve a series. And that’s the title and topic of...
gratitude

Should Every Month Be Gratitude Month?

When I was a kid, I loved Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. I read it daily and collected nearly every paperback volume of the cartoon, so I could see what I’d missed since the comic strip’s inception in 1950.  Certain things stuck: quotes like “happiness is a warm puppy”...
robot

More Thoughts On Robot Writers and The Tech Dystopia

A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog post here called When Will the Robot Overlords Replace Us? Apparently, I’m fairly obsessed with this stuff, because every time I come here and empty my brain, it seems to come up again. Today is no different. Part of the reason,...