How Authors Can Use Twitter Effectively
Writing a book
seems like the complicated part of the job for an author. Finding your
characters, developing your story, ending it with a boom and even thinking of
ways to continue it throughout more books can take up most of your time (if not
all). But do you know what the real struggle is for most authors? Marketing
their books!
Writers, especially
those who still can’t afford a publicist to do the job for them, or simply authors
who want to be involved in every part of the process, need to step up their
marketing game. Nowadays there’s plenty of options for audiences to read, and
you need to find a way to stay relevant for people and make them want to keep
up not only with you, but also with your projects. A great tool to accomplish
your author
marketing is Twitter. This platform has many advantages if you know how
to use it properly. Keep reading to find out how to make use of Twitter
effectively in a book marketing campaign.
Make a rich and complete profile
We can’t stress
this enough: if you want to be someone on Twitter you need to start by being
someone. What does this mean? Nobody is going to either pay attention to you or
take you seriously if your profile looks like a fake account made by a bored
fan. The first step for a strong author marketing game is to make sure people know who
you are and what you’re about. Set up a profile picture where your face is
visible, set up a cover that maybe has something to do with your latest book,
fill in all of the fields about you: where you’re from, what you do,etc. And
don’t forget to write a compelling mini bio, after all writing this should be
easy for you, right?
It’s not all about book marketing
This might sound a little confusing since the sole purpose of using Twitter is to do some book marketing (at least for some authors). But you might want to know this before you start your activity on this social platform: people won’t care about you if all you do is promote your work! Twitter is a platform made for interaction of all sorts: discussions, Q&A’s, retweets… It’s only natural that your fans want to learn a bit more from you asides from your work. Talk about your hobbies, your likes, and dislikes, maybe throw in some behind the scenes about your books… Any piece of information your fans might crave should be in your Twitter profile.
Interact with similar authors
A good -and
promising- author knows the importance of surrounding themselves with bigger
names that can teach you some valuable lessons. The best tip of author marketing
is to follow similar writers with a bigger career or at least a bigger number
of followers. Not only do you have to follow them, try to interact with them
and make subtle hints to your work. This will get the author’s fans to pay
attention to you and maybe even visit your profile. This point works wonders
because you’ll be reaching out to new audiences that you know are most likely
to be interested in your books.
Don’t be afraid to throw some hashtags
Remember that you
can enjoy using Twitter to express your opinions and talk about your work, but
don’t forget to do some book marketing also. In most social platforms,
hashtags are the equivalent of SEO; a way to position your content so that
people find it when looking for relevant topics or words. A rich tweet has to
include at least a few hashtags that relate to the field you work in and work
from the most general to the most specific. Example: #books, #scifi #UFOs.
Hashtags will be your best tool when you still don’t have a huge audience and
are trying to make yourself visible to others.
Ask your followers for some interaction
The cool thing
about Twitter is that it’s a two way street for communication. Just like you
can reach out to other accounts or respond to messages, you can receive
feedback from your fans, thus expanding your community. Don’t be afraid to ask
for interaction that can end up being very interesting for audiences. Create
polls to know people’s opinions on your books, ask them about their favorite
characters, you can even openly ask them about how they think your current book
should end. Getting interaction from fans is a great way to make them feel
close to you AND you’ll also get valuable feedback for your next projects.
Reveal details from your books
We don’t say you
spoil the ending of your new book, but a great way to do author marketing
and make people WANT to follow you is to give them exclusive sneak peeks from
your work. You can start from broadcasting the release dates of your new book,
giving tiny bits of information on the fate of some of your characters and
making a big cover reveal.
Use every inch of your profile to do some marketing
Remember every space in your profile is an opportunity to do book marketing. Instead of filling your feed with tweets announcing your books, which can end up being super boring for your followers, use all of the fields in your profile to do it. The space available for you to provide a link can (and should) go directly to an excerpt of your new book, your Bio can talk about the upcoming dates of your book tour, and the cover of your profile should be a compelling image about your latest work. Make use of every source available to boost your projects!
The last piece of
advice we’d like to share with you is to remember Twitter is a platform where
content has a very short lifespan. People like to talk only about the latest
topic so it’s important to keep your content relevant. Asides from your work
remember that people will want to feel connected with you as a person. So if
you don’t have Twitter create your account and start following our tips, soon
you’ll find yourself with a fair amount of faithful followers who love both
your work and your tweets!
The post How Authors Can Use Twitter Effectively appeared first on Slaven Vujic.
