A lot of people, including authors, are a little wary about using Twitter to promote their books. They do not know how to get started or how to build up a good number of followers and they aren’t exactly sure about how it will help with promotion of their material.
If you are wondering whether to get on to Twitter or not, here are a few reasons why you should start an account immediately:
- It is one of the biggest social networking sites in the world
- You will be able to connect to fans as well as those you look up to
- It is an excellent way to directly connect to people so that you know what they want
- The whole process will only take a few minutes every day
The Twitter Impact
You read about tweets going viral within a few seconds after something has happened. Well, this is the speed of twitter. There are a huge number of active members who religiously read posts on twitter as well as express their own opinions. It has been reported that there are over 200 million users on this site. Makes it a great place to connect with people, doesn’t it? So if you join this site, you will be able to directly talk to fans, to other authors and to like-minded readers. This will help you learn from them and expose you to an immense amount of information on the internet.
It’s Never Too Late to Start
There are new people joining every day. Just because you come across someone who has a few thousand tweets and a few thousand followers, you don’t need to be worried about getting on to this community too late. It doesn’t take time to build up a twitter network and every person can decide on how active they want to be on this site.
Building a Twitter Network
First of all, do a little research about what you want to achieve. You need to know what kind of readers you want to target and what you are hoping to get out of this whole project. You should also write down a list of authors, both established and upcoming, that you can follow on Twitter.
Next, you need to sign up and become a member of this website. Once that is done, write out an interesting profile description and put an original picture of yourself. The trick to getting a number of followers is for you to follow people. And you can easily do this with 5 to 10 minutes of dedication a day.
- Once you sign into your account, go to pages of authors that you would like to follow. Click on the button to ‘Follow’ them.
- After that, go to the list of their followers. Look for genuine fans and other authors on the list. Follow the relevant people from this list.
- The next day, choose another author and go through the same process.
Just by using this technique, you will be able to follow about 200 people in a week. The great part is, as long as you have an interesting profile and a few good tweets, you are like to have at least 100 of these people following you back! In this way, you can build your twitter network to a few thousand people within a couple of months.
Things to Keep in Mind on Twitter
Like all social networking sites, it is necessary to take certain precautions in order to build a good network. Especially for an author who is trying to promote a book or reach out to readers in order to get feedback, it is essential to regulate your account properly.
- Only follow people who have a proper profile and their own profile picture. Try to avoid people without profile pictures unless you know them personally.
- For famous authors, look for their verified pages.
- Avoid all business accounts and social media accounts.
If you want to make the most of your account, ensure that you visit it regularly and keep it up-to-date. Update your profile if and when necessary and make the most of social networking.
- Keep your account active and try to post a few tweets every week.
- Try to engage your followers by asking them questions.
- Try to answer queries that are posted to you.
Twitter is a very interactive website and it is a good way to market things with a personal edge. It is also a great source of information and feedback. Just by putting in a few minutes of work a day, you could create a large network of other readers and authors who can help you by giving you numerous ideas and supporting your work.
