Twitter has also helped me grow a closer relationship to creators I respect, and fans that are interested in my work. For my comic, the comments section (the section under the comic or a blog post where the reader is able to respond to a post) has been the large extent to where I’ve been able to interact with my fans. Now with Twitter, I’m able to market myself. While I have fans of my comic, a good half the people I run into on Twitter seem to be just as much fans of me (how very sad). I’m now able to count on “Superfans” to help me promote my comic through their efforts on Twitter. I’ve had a couple individuals advise me on how I need to integrate Facebook to help me market myself, for example.

Through Twitter, I’m now able to trouble shoot problems I run into with my website, much quicker. When I’m making updates to the programs that run my page, I’m able to get a response within minutes, not days. If I need someone to help me find out if my page is running properly on a different IP address, I don’t have to visit the library, I just send a Tweet and wait 3 minutes. There’s been about 3-5 times in the last couple of weeks (tonight included) where I simply didn’t know how to fix a certain problem. Now because of Twitter, I can more quickly improve my site (and therefore my business) and take more risks that I know are fixable because I now have an audience to help advise me.

 Twitter is an extension of the creator. Much like having a blog for a person’s comic, the use of Twitter allows an individual to market themselves with the additional goal of growing their fanbase. If you’re good at that, and have a personality that matches your talent, there is no ceiling to what Twitter can to for a person’s business.

 Well, since this has practically turned into a book, I’m going to seriously consider cutting and pasting this into a couple of blog posts, to add content to my site. As an online comic creator (and anyone that is looking to build a community for their website) one must look at every opportunity they can to give their readers a reason to visit your site everyday. This has been an example of one, but Twitter has been the single best individual move I’ve made as a comic creator to help build onto my online community. I’d Tweet about this, but I have no idea how to shrink this down into 140 characters.

-C.