Social media and promotion are not my favorite thing but I've accepted it as part of the business of writing. If you want people to know about your books you must get the word out. One of those ways is on Twitter. You'll find lots of advice out there, some good and some not so good. As with most promotion, you need to find your comfort zone in how you use the tweet verse. And remember what works for someone else might not work for you. Take all advice including mine with a grain of salt.
At one of my local writing groups we had a speaker who shared some expert advice on using twitter. She strongly suggested that you don't connect your twitter account to your Facebook account. People on Facebook don't like the short, sometimes confusing 140 character tweets. It also makes you look lazy.
This same speaker also said you should do at least four tweets per day to promote a product. But not all tweets should be about your product (book). Share funny things or interesting links. Be careful to not get involved in political debates.
Plan your tweets ahead of time. I spent a little time each weekend writing down some tweets about my books. Then it only takes me a few minutes each day to tweet about my books. Every time you write a new blog post, tweet about it. Read an interesting blog or news article, tweet about it with a link. One of your friends tweet about their blog or a book? Retweet for them. Someday they may retweet for you.
Follow people who have the same interests as you. Hopefully, they follow you back. Perhaps your publisher makes it easy to tweet an announcement about your book. Use the easy link they provide. Be careful not to get sucked into spending hours on twitter. There are so many interesting links posted there you can end up exploring all day long.
Don't forget to get your post ready for the IWSG book. And visit the IWSG blog for another great post. Maybe even tweet about it.
Follow me on Twitter if you're not already. Do you tweet? Do you plan ahead of time? Any advice for using the twitter verse for promotion?
16 comments:
I should plan ahead, but usually I just jump on there and either re-Tweet or respond to others. And most of the time, I forget to do any promotion.
"Experts" are always saying not to funnel tweets through Facebook, but honestly, it's not a big deal.
I don't hang out on Twitter so sometimes the only time I see some of my friends from Twitter is when their tweets show up on FB.
If I happen to see the same post in more than one location, it's easy enough to ignore it and move on.
I have a hard time tweeting; it's so short! But I know I need to do it more *sigh*
haha I'm always a month ahead on tweets too, program them to run and then I don't have to worry about it. Retweet a few here and there and then tweet out each blog post a day, easy peasy.
Good advice.
I try to plan ahead by scheduling tweets but it doesn't always work out. My Untethered Realms group has a Facebook page where we store our tweets in a file. Then we're all assigned a day when everybody tweets them. It's nice because you don't have to toot your own horn.
I plan ahead then randomly tweet here and there. LOL
Just dropped in to see what you were up to today. I don't have anything to bring to this topic party, but wanted to say boogie boogie, just the same.
I like the idea of planning the tweets, because I never know what to say!
I've never planned tweets, but that's a good idea!
I enjoyed that speaker we had too. She had some useful info.
I've been thinking about looking into scheduling tweets. I just can't find the time to research it!
And I'm proud to follow you. Missed you at the last meeting!
Hi, Susan,
Thanks for the advice. I need to spend more time on twitter and tweet more... I do retreats and answer tweets and promote fiend's contests and books. But I should do some promoting for my blog, since I have no book published yet to tweet about...
I don't spend enough time on Twitter. I need to set up Hootsuite or something.
Excellent advice. I originally had my Twitter connected to Facebook, but I didn't like it at all. So now the two aren't linked. They are two very different outlets.
I'm not as good about using Twitter as I should be (not even close). However, I'm not promoting a book right now. I retweet when someone RT's me, because it reminds me, and then I go through and look for stuff to retweet.
Good advice. I tweet, but I don't spend much time on twitter--like you say you can really get sucked into it. Same with Facebook.
Lee
Tossing It Out
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