Yesterday I had a lovely day teaching How to Sell Your Book with several ladies from around the countryside. Thank you, ladies, you know who you are. Here’s what we talked about as regards Twitter.
Twitter is deceptively simple to use. It can be excellent fun and is a brilliant tool for selling your book because it has immense reach. And very little commitment is necessary. I love twitter.
All you need to do to get started is to sign up for a free account. You will need to upload a photograph and a brief profile. Make your profile as witty and interesting as you can. Be sure to use your writing name so that you can be found. Mention your book. You might want to have more than one twitter account, i.e. one for you and one for each of your books. But bear in mind this is more work – and probably not necessary.
Five things you should do on Twitter
- Keep your tweets short and snappy so that others can retweet them if they wish to.
- Always Include links to your books when you are promoting your book. Preferably Bitly links (see Bitly.com) as these can be tracked by you for statistical information so you can gauge their effectiveness.
- Acknowledge fellow tweeters if they engage with you and reciprocate if someone retweets for you.
- Use pictures –they are very popular on Twitter. You can use images of your book or find images in the public domain that are relevant.
- Tweet regularly – at least five tweets a day. Of these five, only one of them should be a direct selling tweet, i.e. a reference to your book. The others should be about something else, for example:
- A tweet that is funny – maybe a funny quote about writing – or your book’s subject if it is non fiction.
- A tweet that is inspirational. See above. Or perhaps an interesting fact.
- A tweet that is a retweet for someone else. (twitter is very reciprocal) or just chat.
- A tweet that is linked to your blog – having a blog goes hand in hand with twitter.
- A sales tweet – make sure it’s a good one and has links to Amazon or wherever you sell your book.
Five things you should NEVER do on Twitter
- Continuously tweet Buy My Book. You can of course ask people to buy your book, but you will need to be a bit more creative about it.
- Send new followers automated direct messages asking them to buy your book.
- Tweet details of your book at specific people – especially those you don’t know – asking them to buy your book, retweet you etc. (this is rather bad manners)
- Be offensive.
- Be unprofessional.
Happy Tweeting and please do follow me at DellaGalton.com
As a Twitter newbie, you twitter advice was invaluable. Thanks for a great course, Della – even if I did have writer’s block!
Was lovely to meet you Wendy. And thank you Sharon. I’ll make sure I’m following you back 🙂
Hi Della
Many thanks for the advice, I think we are following you are in twitter, I thanked you for posting the new That’s life! fiction guidelines on twitter.
I’m new to twitter too!
@KishbooMag.
Take care
Sharon.