Using Twitter can be a great marketing tool for authors and writers, as long as they understand how to use it to market themselves correctly. Below are a few simple, yet very important tips:
1. When you set up a Twitter account, always use your real name or the pen name you are known by. Using your real name will give you more credibility than if you use a silly or jokey name. People who want to follow you are more likely to be able to find you if they search for your real name and your account comes up straight away. As a writer your name is also your brand, so using your name promotes your brand!
2. In the same vein, as using your real name, always use your real picture. Most people decide to use just a headshot, rather than a full body shot because headshots are still perfectly visible when they are shrunk down. Twitter will shrink your picture to tiny proportions (only about 1 centimetre squared) so it can be incredibly difficult to identify a person if they were far away from the camera when the picture was taken. It is important to make sure you are easily recognisable, so your followers do not end up following a college student in California with a similar name to yours.
3. Post interesting content associated with your books, areas of interest and topics which are relevant to you and your followers. You can occasionally branch out and talk about current events, but do not use your Twitter as a sounding box for your political views unless this is your field of expertise. Likewise, do not tweet every time you eat a slice of bread. Tweets like these can be massive turn-offs for followers.
4. Brevity is one of the main features of Twitter, so learn how to say what you want to say in as few characters as possible. This is one of the hardest parts of tweeting for some writers, as words are their livelihood, but Twitter is not the place for lengthy prose. If you do need to say something longer than the allowed number of characters, use a shortened URL to link your followers to an external blog or site. Never run your message across more than one tweet, because it may not be viewed in the way you intended and could be misleading.
5. Learn how to use hash tags. Adding a hashtag (#) to a keyword will mean that your post will be visible to all the people who search for that keyword. Words or phrases after hashtags don't include spaces, so once again, brevity is the key. People are not likely to search for long streams of words, so do not use #HashTagsLikeThis, unless you are trying to make a joke, because it is unlikely that people will search for that combination of words.
6. Include your Twitter ID (and links to your other social media sites) in the back of your book or at the end of your work. This can help to increase the number of followers you have and this means that any publicity you post on Twitter will be seen by even more people.
Using Twitter as a marketing tool can be simple and effective for authors or writers. Following these six tips can help to set you on the road to successful tweeting.
Marketing your book via social media is an ongoing process. In order to properly market your book and yourself as an Author you should consider using a third-party service or if you're a new author you should read the book, "Publish It Now! From Blank Page to Bestseller", available at Amazon or http://www.publishitnow.com.
Erik N Bowman is the best-selling author of Ultimate Marketing Secrets: Social Media Marketing, founder of Authr.com and the best-selling author of "Publish It Now! From Blank Page to Bestseller"
