Welcome to Wednesday Writing Wisdom where I talk about what I've learned while trying to get my books into publisher's hand. In the past I've posted about Writing Retreats, The Q&D to Promote your Book, Sagging middle and others. I hope you havee enjoyed those and there are other little golden nuggets that I have in store. Today however I will be talking about Twitter. If you want to jump into the future of Storytelling or perhaps get into the New Age in Marketing your book. I say use Twitter to generate buzz for your book. Don't know much about Twitter let me help. I will be talking about those other in more depth in later WWW.
I have searched around to find informative information to present on my blog aimed to help myself and other authors navigate through the pitfalls of writing, editing, publishing and marketing our work. With that in mind, I have recently got a Twitter account because I have found that numerous best-selling Indie authors, as well as traditional authors, profit off their ebooks each month simply by twitting. Some have said it is the source of practically all of their sales and fan base. Wow, right?
What about Facebook, you ask? Well, I have noticed that author's Facebook pages aren't set up really for book sales. I mean, the reader and authors get to interact on Facebook, but little else as far as selling books are concern, at least not in a substantial way. I have a page on Facebook, but little traffic comes my way since I've started my page, no matter what I do. I heard someone quote about Facebook, which I thought was spot one. "Facebook is your dinner party, but Twitter is your Billboard to the world."
I'm not saying that once you open a Twitter account that your book sales will jump through the roof, on the contrary. It's just like anything else in life. You have to work hard at it before you get proficient. But what I am saying is that once you decide to put forth the effort and time to build your Twitter presence you will get more readers.
So you went and got a Twitter account but you only got the five members of your family following you, what do you do? Well the true value of Twitter is the hashtags#. If you tag your tweets promoting your books with your genre or format, like for my book Between I often use # drama, #kindle, #ebook, whatever your genre and you will reach hundreds of thousands of readers looking for a book just like yours.
I would like to also suggest you preset your tweets in bulk, becasue who really has the time to tweet every day every few minutes. OMG! Luckily, Socialoomph.com is a site that can do that for you for free. Twitter has a limit to how many people can follow you so here is another free site that can help with that, JustUnfollow help you find those useless spammers. You will want to add links to your books as well, but have you seen those long links? Gez. Twitter only gives you 140 characters, so you need to make them count, use Bitly to resize that link.
Well now you got your 2,000 or more followers, but there is a problem. There are author's in the mix too. I have to be blunt here, if you are following an author most likely you are going to be chatting each other up over your books or marketing things ..etc. That's not good for either of you. If you're an author wanting readers and fans, get them as followers, not authors. You can follow them on Facebook. So Sorry my dear author friends :)
There was this publisher who saw a certain tweet and decided to read one of the tweeter's ebooks. He loved the book so much he offered the author a book contract and as they say, " the rest is history." Do you really want that space ocupied by an author? Just saying?
So why Tweet? If you are wise, it will not only be your billboard to the world, but it will be the way to establish your brand and grow your fan base steadily over time. After you have made the contacts and gained a huge fan base, then you can go over on Facebook and have a party or post your pictures on Pinterest for your friends and family. But Twitter should be your first social network stop.
Copyright © 2013 Glynis Rankin
I have searched around to find informative information to present on my blog aimed to help myself and other authors navigate through the pitfalls of writing, editing, publishing and marketing our work. With that in mind, I have recently got a Twitter account because I have found that numerous best-selling Indie authors, as well as traditional authors, profit off their ebooks each month simply by twitting. Some have said it is the source of practically all of their sales and fan base. Wow, right?
What about Facebook, you ask? Well, I have noticed that author's Facebook pages aren't set up really for book sales. I mean, the reader and authors get to interact on Facebook, but little else as far as selling books are concern, at least not in a substantial way. I have a page on Facebook, but little traffic comes my way since I've started my page, no matter what I do. I heard someone quote about Facebook, which I thought was spot one. "Facebook is your dinner party, but Twitter is your Billboard to the world."
I'm not saying that once you open a Twitter account that your book sales will jump through the roof, on the contrary. It's just like anything else in life. You have to work hard at it before you get proficient. But what I am saying is that once you decide to put forth the effort and time to build your Twitter presence you will get more readers.
So you went and got a Twitter account but you only got the five members of your family following you, what do you do? Well the true value of Twitter is the hashtags#. If you tag your tweets promoting your books with your genre or format, like for my book Between I often use # drama, #kindle, #ebook, whatever your genre and you will reach hundreds of thousands of readers looking for a book just like yours.
I would like to also suggest you preset your tweets in bulk, becasue who really has the time to tweet every day every few minutes. OMG! Luckily, Socialoomph.com is a site that can do that for you for free. Twitter has a limit to how many people can follow you so here is another free site that can help with that, JustUnfollow help you find those useless spammers. You will want to add links to your books as well, but have you seen those long links? Gez. Twitter only gives you 140 characters, so you need to make them count, use Bitly to resize that link.
Well now you got your 2,000 or more followers, but there is a problem. There are author's in the mix too. I have to be blunt here, if you are following an author most likely you are going to be chatting each other up over your books or marketing things ..etc. That's not good for either of you. If you're an author wanting readers and fans, get them as followers, not authors. You can follow them on Facebook. So Sorry my dear author friends :)
There was this publisher who saw a certain tweet and decided to read one of the tweeter's ebooks. He loved the book so much he offered the author a book contract and as they say, " the rest is history." Do you really want that space ocupied by an author? Just saying?
So why Tweet? If you are wise, it will not only be your billboard to the world, but it will be the way to establish your brand and grow your fan base steadily over time. After you have made the contacts and gained a huge fan base, then you can go over on Facebook and have a party or post your pictures on Pinterest for your friends and family. But Twitter should be your first social network stop.
Copyright © 2013 Glynis Rankin
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