Skip to main content

A Quick Guide To Twitter For Newby Authors

By
Independent authors are generally on their own when it comes to promoting their book. It's time-consuming work setting up on various social media, getting a presence on book-club or reader websites, trying to get people to like a Facebook author/book page, connecting with people and groups on Google+, developing your own website and possibly a blog too, and so on. In fact, the amount of work involved can seem very daunting, especially when it might only result in one or two extra fans or book sales. But persistence and patience are both required to make a success of your marketing plan. Hopefully, with a carefully thought-out campaign, and the ability to do all the right things whilst online, you should begin to build a following, increase your visibility and begin to shift a few more 'units' of your 'product'. Daunting as it is, there are many things you can do to make it easier to reach people. And one of those is using Twitter effectively. So, here's a few tips for using Twitter as an author for those who haven't yet taken the leap and for those who are still wondering what Twitter is all about.

Twitter is a social media platform on which users send and receive 'tweets'. A tweet is a short message of up to 140 characters in length. On Twitter you 'follow' other users and they may 'follow' you back. Tweets from users you are following show up on your 'feed' or 'timeline' which you can access through a webpage or on your mobile device. Your tweets show up on your follower's timelines and are also visible to anyone else on Twitter who looks at your twitter page. People you connect with on Twitter are often called 'Tweeps'.

When 'tweeting', Twitter users often include 'hashtags' which are short abbreviations or mnemonics used to label tweets so that other people can find them easily. Hashtags begin with the 'hash' character, #. For example, if a Tweet is about the Superbowl, it could be hashtagged with '#superbowl'. That way, anyone, even users who aren't following you, can find your tweet just by searching Twitter for the #superbowl hashtag. Hashtags are an extremely useful way of getting your messages (or tweets) to groups of people who may be interested in you or your work, or who may be able to help you promote yourself or your work.

Tweets can contain links to other websites or pages and can even contain images, but are always restricted to the 140-character limit. Luckily, Twitter itself will shorten long URLs (web page addresses) to 22 or 23 characters so you don't have to worry about this. Images attached to tweets will take up another 23 characters. Think of a tweet as a very brief information dump aimed at your followers, embellished with labels to define what your information is about.

You can respond to other people's tweets by 'replying', 'retweeting' or 'favoriting'. Replying will attached your own tweet to the other user's so that several people can hold the equivalent of a Twitter conversation. Retweeting means you will share the other person's tweet to all your own followers. And favoriting lets the original tweeter know that you like their tweet. It is a useful way of getting that person's attention, saying 'thanks' or simply endorsing something you like.

You can also direct your own tweets towards specific people by including their Twitter username preceded by the '@' symbol. So, if you want to directly refer to the President of the USA you would include @BarackObama in your tweet. You do not need to be following someone to use the '@' capability. But, beware, do not assume that celebrities will read your tweet, or even be aware that it exists, since they probably rarely (if ever) use Twitter themselves. Some do, of course! Being able to tag people in this way in your public tweets is very useful for an author. You can also send direct messages (which are like emails) to other users on Twitter and these are not visible to the outside world.

It's very easy to set up a Twitter account. You'll need an email address to link to the account, a profile picture (normally a photo of you, 400x400 pixels), a header or banner image (that appears at the top of your page, 1500x500 pixels) and a bio of up to 160 characters. It is a good idea to use the same or similar images, and the same short bio, that appear on your other social network sites (Facebook, Goodreads, Amazon author pages etc.). This means you are presenting a consistent brand image to the online world. Once you've set up your account you can link it to your other social network accounts and your own website/blog. This is important because you generally want your tweets to automatically appear on all your other social network sites.

How do you get Twitter followers? The first thing to do once you've set up your account is to search for and follow a few people/organizations that you like. These can be news websites, book blogs, other authors; anything that you have an interest hearing about and possibly interacting with. Hopefully these Tweeps will follow you back. Another option is to find an author similar to you and follow some of their followers and hope they return the favor. But, be careful; there are limits to the number of people you can follow in a day and if you aggressively follow thousands of users you run the risk of having your account suspended. Go slowly, add a few tens of people per day, stick to people that are relevant to you and be courteous and reasonable at all times. You can also 'import' people from your other social networks or invite your friends and contacts to connect with you by email.

It's very easy to build up a huge list of people that you are following. This normally results in an increase in your followers as some of those people will 'follow you back'. But, at some stage you will realize that you are seeing the tweets from hundreds of people that are not following you. You should then ask yourself whether those people are important to you. Do you want to see all their tweets but them never see yours? If the answer is 'no' you should 'unfollow' them. A useful rule is to try and keep your number of followers more than the number you are following. And do not be tempted by the numerous 'get Twitter followers fast' scams that you will inevitably encounter. Adding 2000 people that have no interest in you or your product isn't going to help you one bit. It may make you look popular, but looking popular isn't your primary aim on Twitter (actually, neither is it anywhere else!). Getting real people to take a genuine interest in you and your work is what you are trying to achieve.

There are numerous websites/apps which allow you to manage your twitter account more effectively. For example, justunfollow.com allows you to see which of your followers are 'inactive' or which people you are following who aren't following you back. Use these tools to regularly manage your audience, cutting out people that aren't interested in you or your product and refining your list of people who are. Other websites, such as hootsuite.com also allow you to manage your Twitter and Facebook accounts simultaneously. Look into these if you are a bit daunted by the amount of work required to maintain an active online presence. They can connect your activity together and make it easier to manage.

Although Twitter will shorten URLs automatically, many other websites give you the ability to shorten web addresses that can then be put into your tweets. In fact, some (like bitly.com for example) allow you to archive lots of shortened URLs and also track how many times they are clicked on. This is an extremely useful tool which you can use to discover how the content of your tweets affects the number of people that click on your links. Marketing is all about letting the public know your product exists (or, more cynically, making them think they want something you can give them) and finding the correct formula to achieve this is half the battle. So, spend some time getting to know your public and make sure you are tweeting what they want to hear.

What do they want to hear? Well, it's a common mistake to think Twitter is there purely as a stage from which to blow your own trumpet. Constantly yelling at the world to buy your book will not get you very far. The key is interaction. Keep your promotional tweets to a minimum, perhaps once a day, but fill your timeline with things that will interest your followers. Give inspirational quotes, reveal snippets of your research, your thoughts on your work process, your 'eureka' moments, connect with key influencers, share where you are and what you're doing, give your views on stories of interest (remembering not to offend or insult other people's beliefs); all these things will make you a more interesting Tweep, engage with your audience and increase your visibility. Be authentic, be yourself, explore, have fun. Most of all, don't think Twitter is an enormous billboard for you and your work.

But, be sure to make those occasional promotional tweets effective. Your aim is to get attention, so get the information across quickly and with the minimum of fuss. If you're tweeting about your book, start with its title and your name. Then give the shortened link to where you want tweeps to go next. Then maybe a quick attention-grabbing phrase or quote followed by the hashtags. Always include the hashtags. For example, you might want to include #romance, #mystery, #YA, #books, #Amazon or any number of other things that label your tweet for people to find. If in doubt, search twitter for appropriate hashtags, see how they are used, or invent your own and hope they become useful on the network. You can also use hashtags that explicitly ask other people to retweet you. For example #IARTG (indie author retweet group) or #SNRTG (social network retweet group). Do some research and identify hashtags that may be useful to you. Here's an example of a promotional tweet that I might put out for my latest book;

The Bergamese Sect by Alastair Gunn amzn.to/1r8o40D SHOCKING MYSTERY-THRILLER #ASMSG #IARTG #SNRTG #ebook #books #thriller #mystery

There are many other things you should use your Twitter account for. Keep up-to-date on the latest news in the publishing industry and get tips and suggestions from other authors (and the reading public) on publishing practice and the writing process. Use it for research, both for your writing, but your marketing campaign too. You need to use it to learn how to use it effectively.

You can find me on Twitter here: @AlastairGGunn

Comments

Post a Comment

Feel free to argue with this post...

Popular posts from this blog

Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories

By
An engraving by R. Graves entitled 'The Ghost Story', circa 1870. In his first full-length novel, The Pickwick Papers (1836-1837), Charles Dickens gave us a peculiarly Victorian view of the Christmas tradition. The host of a Yuletide gathering, Mr. Wardle of Dingley Dell, informs his guests that “Everybody sits down with us on Christmas Eve, as you see them now — servants and all; and here we wait, until the clock strikes twelve, to usher Christmas in, and beguile the time with forfeits and old stories”. So begins a long association of the traditional ghost story with Christmas-time; a tradition that has largely died out, but one that should be revived. Of course, the tradition of telling spooky stories at Christmas is much older than Dickens. It was already well-established in the early nineteenth century. In Old Christmas (from The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent ., 1819), Washington Irving describes a busy Yuletide fireside with the parson “dealing forth strange a...
9 comments
Read more

The Fastest Things In The Universe

By
Gravitational waves can't actually be seen as in this simulation. When gazing at the night sky from here on Earth, it’s easy to picture the Universe as calm and unhurried. But in reality, out there in space, things move fast – really fast. Putting aside particle accelerators and the like, the fastest-moving man-made object was the Helios 2 spacecraft launched in the 1970s. It reached a top speed of 68.75 km/s (153,800 mph) on its mission to the Sun. But this was just a leisurely stroll compared to the fastest things in the Cosmos. So, where do we find the real speed freaks of the Universe? Here’s a run-down of the top five. 1. Expansion of the Universe Speed: Greater than the speed of light! The Universe is expanding. But the Universe isn’t filling up ‘empty space’ as it expands because it is ‘space’ itself which is expanding. Although the laws of physics say that two objects can’t move faster than light speed with respect to each other, there is no such restricti...
8 comments
Read more

Black Holes 101

By
Artist's impression of a black hole. With new blockbuster movie Interstellar now in cinemas, there's a flurry of interest in black holes and wormholes. Theoretical physicist Kip Thorne was a scientific consultant for the production and insisted that the depiction should stay within legitimate boundaries. Apart from the odd bit of artistic license, of course! Black holes are scary, right? They suck in everything in their path. They devour whole planets, stars even, ripping them apart like mere wisps of smoke. They condemn anything that confronts them to an unknowable oblivion. It’s the stuff of nightmare, or at least a bad disaster movie. But I think black holes get a bad press. They are misunderstood, misrepresented. The truth is they are fascinating creatures, if confusing, and not a little bit weird. So, relax for a moment while I give you my quick and dirty guide to black holes. The Black Hole 101, if you like. Let’s start with a simple definition of a black hole...
Post a Comment
Read more

Flat Earth Fallacy

By
I'm an accepting kind of person. I generally allow people to think what they want, believe what they want and (pretty much) say what they want, within reason. But occasionally an opinion is so far-fetched, insulting or incorrect that it debases human intelligence (all human intelligence, not just mine). And then I feel I must speak up. One such 'opinion' is the belief in a 'flat' Earth. Although this topic has a substantial history (see for example Christine Garwood's Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea ), it has so far not been publicly contested in any great depth. Even Phil Plait, author of the ever-popular  Bad Astronomy Blog , declined to give such a preposterous proposition any real air-time. And I don't blame him. It really is the most absurd idea. But it should be denounced, for any number of reasons. The basic premise of the 'flat-Earth' protagonists is that ancient cultures were right, the Earth is flat , a circular disk bo...
10 comments
Read more

American's Guide To Pronouncing British Place Names

By
You all know there's some minor (though understandable) differences between British and American spelling. For example, we have 'colour' for 'color', 'favour' for 'favor' and 'harbour' for 'habor'. We have 'centre' for 'center', 'fibre' for 'fiber' and 'litre' for 'liter'. And so on. These don't usually cause us any problems, especially since they are normally pronounced the same (although with differences in accent, which is an entirely different subject!). But, British spelling idiosyncrasies go far beyond these simple examples, and never more so than in our emotive and quaint place names. British place name spelling is about as intuitive as the 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics - for the non-scientists among you, that means 'not at all'. Actually, it's not the spelling that's odd (they usually retain a perfectly logical spelling based ...
2 comments
Read more

Are Indie Authors Destroying The Market?

By
You're probably aware that we are drowning in an ocean of mediocrity. Yes, I know, there's mediocrity all around us; the TV, the music business, in fact everywhere you care to look. But I'm talking about mediocrity in 'literature', as if that term actually means something these days. Once upon a time, not so long ago, 'literature' was a respectable part of the art world. Authors were mysterious intellectuals, removed from society, tortured souls poring over their foolscap notepads with quill in hand. They were just names, often widely-known ones, like A-list celebrities with no public face, controversy or paparazzi. The authors' agents, dark figures sifting through their ever-growing slush pile of tales, held sway over a global industry from behind locked doors. The authors' publishers were equally elusive, a forbidden realm for those with literary aspirations, with the ability to put their clients names right into the homes of the reading public...
14 comments
Read more

Who Was Ghost Story Writer "Mary E. Penn"?

By
The identity of Mary E. Penn, a late-Victorian author of ghosts stories and crime and mystery tales, is a complete enigma. Scholars of the macabre have been unable to discern any details of her person, origin or character (assuming she was indeed female). We only know that from the 1870s to the 1890s this author published a number of stories in periodicals, most commonly in The Argosy (Ellen Wood’s monthly publication). Some of her early contributions were anonymous (later attributed to Penn in The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals ) and her name only appears from 1878 onwards. Her first story, At Ravenholme Junction , was published anonymously in The Argosy in December 1876, but was later ascribed to Penn on stylistic grounds by eminent supernatural fiction scholar Richard Dalby. Her other ghostly tales were Snatched from the Brink ( The Argosy , June 1878), How Georgette Kept Tryst ( The Argosy , October 1879), Desmond’s Model ( The Argosy , December 1879), Old Vanderhav...
1 comment
Read more

Are We Alone In The Universe?

By
Are these guys hiding at the bottom of your garden? Today, in a rather long blog post, I'd like to speculate a little about the possibility of life existing elsewhere in the Universe. Since I get asked about this topic just about every time I walk into a room, I’d like to tell you what science currently has to say about life in the Universe and what we’re doing to investigate the possibility. The belief that we are not alone in the Universe is of course as old as humankind itself. The idea that there are other worlds populated by other-worldly creatures is a common and natural trait of our species. I think it was an inevitable idea once we had conceived of our own self-identity. But, the concept of life-forms existing elsewhere in the Universe, in the modern scientific sense that we all understand today, is also not new. Many ancient Greek philosophers, including Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus and Plutarch, were of the firm belief that other worlds existed and some even spec...
7 comments
Read more

Is Amazon Ripping-Off Independent Authors?

By
The advent of indie publishing has had the same effect on writing as streaming has had on music. As a reader, you have a bewildering array of books to choose from, by established as well as back-room authors, from all over the world, in all genres, at all prices, and many for FREE. There's an awful load of rubbish in this global digital slush-pile, but there are also many excellent independent authors writing some top-notch books. That word, used above, - FREE -, is a matter of contention for me. Amazon run an author program called 'Select' which allows authors to discount their books (or make them available for FREE) for up to five days during a 90-day sign-up period. The philosophy is that the spike in downloads increases the book's Amazon ranking (and hence visibility) resulting in more sales once the book returns to its nominal price. Cynical ploy? The disadvantage of the 'Select' program is that you, the author, give Amazon the exclusive right to se...
7 comments
Read more

15 Ways To Make Your Band Believe They Are Going Somewhere

By
It's a struggle being in a band. You spend all of your spare cash on equipment, room hire and studio time. You spend all your free hours practicing, writing songs, trying to hone your skills and come up with stuff that you are happy with and that you hope other people will enjoy. It's hard work, and often the only return you get is a few people nodding their heads in appreciation of your live set. But, given all this hard work, what do most bands want? They want to be recognised, taken seriously, successful even. And how do they measure that success? By playing sold-out shows? Selling enough merchandise to keep them in guitar strings? Having three people download their EP? Headlining Glastonbury? The measure of success is different from band to band. But, after many years spent in the regional 'music scene' (if there is indeed such a thing), I find it easy to spot those bands that don't have any measure of success (or talent), but make the mistake of trying to g...
5 comments
Read more