Using Twitter to Promote

What? You’ve never taken a journey into the Twitterverse! Here’s a YouTube
for Twitter beginners https://youtu.be/xfPmf-iMJbo #Twitter

The line above took 134-characters (including spaces, the YouTube URL, and the Hashtag). A Tweet is up-to 140-characters so it certainly would fit — and the Tweet caught your attention (opening with a question), provided information the YouTube video, and includes a hashtag to help searches find it easier. It’s that easy to send a targeted message to all of your followers or anyone who searches for the hashtagged topic.

What is Twitter? It’s little micro-blogs of 140-character Tweets (messages). You’ll find trending and newsy items, promotional messages, occasional jokes, inspirational quotes and sometimes even quick rants. Yes, it can be abused… do you really need to hear how many times someone clicked channels before finding something to watch on TV? Also it gets annoying to get barraged with constant sales pitches. But send out a catchy tagline from your book, promote an interesting blog post, share a micro-review of a new movie, or announce an in-person event and your followers will read your news.

A good way to build your followers is to start following other people. Don’t just randomly click follow on everyone, use the Search to find specific topics of interest (such as #author) and names will come up with Tweets that contain that phrase; click on the name of senders to see their profile and decide if you want to follow them. Talking about profiles, make sure that you write an interesting and inclusive profile for yourself. If you are an author or writer, make sure that shows in your profile. Try to use a simple or recognizable handle, this might be your name, or a form of a word logo which people will associate with you. (BTW, when people follow me, I follow back IF I can see they are writers/authors; my Twitter handle is @ChelleCordero) 

Interact with other people in the Twitter community. ReTweet messages. LIKE them, and mention them (using their handle) in Tweets. People want to know that you read their comments and know that they are real people, it’s a form of mutual respect. It’s hard to keep up with everyone’s Tweets, but you can make Lists so that you can scan Tweets from specific groups of people. I belong to a small press publishing house with a small group of other authors, I have a list labeled VHP and I can easily keep up to date on their latest Tweets. Twitter permits multiple lists per account.

You can preschedule Tweets through dashboards such as Hootsuite so that even when you go away on vacation, you won’t disappear from the Twitterverse. Another handy shortcut that will help simplify your busy life, you can set Twitter to post to Facebook, or set your blog to post to Twitter, etc. And finally you can post pictures with your Tweets which will catch more people’s attention, but be careful as pictures use up some of the 140 allowed characters.

So, what are you waiting for, get Tweeting! You can find more helpful info on using Twitter at https://support.twitter.com/articles/215585   and   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/fauzia-burke/personal-brand_b_1735390.html

Writing Exercise:  Write at least ten stand-alone Tweets about your writing, your expertise or Trending topics. Make sure that you do not use more than 140-characters including spaces.

Writing Prompt:  Make a list of search terms that are relevant to you.

Challenge Assignment:  Write a back-cover summary for your book of 2-3 short paragraphs; write a book blurb of 2-3 sentences (this might be the book description used on an online retailer; write a catchy Tag line, a phrase or short sentence; and write a Tweet (up to 140 characters) about your book, be sure to include a URL for people to click on.