We all know that you can’t just publish a book or a blog post and expect people to read it. You have to market your writing. Social media has made that a lot easier in some ways, but it can also be pretty darn confusing.
Take Twitter. I have writing coach clients who love Twitter. Not only do they tweet about their books and their posts, they have created a Twitter community and occasionally even meet their fellow Tweeters at Tweet-Ups. I don’t fall into that camp. It’s not that I don’t like Twitter, I just don’t really get it. So I thought I’d share the following tips on how to use Twitter to promote your writing in the hopes that they might help clear up some of the confusion.
- If you’ve sent out a news release, you can break it into 140-character (or less) tweets and hit a whole new audience. Remember to tweet out the link to your media release as well.
- Don’t have a media release? Find a news story or trend and use that as a hook for a series of tweets about your book or post (exactly as you would in a media release).
- Adding a hashtag (also known as the pound sign or #) in front of a keyword or phrase will draw the attention of people outside your circle who are searching for that topic.
- Do you blog? Make sure to promote those posts by tweeting about them.
- If you’ve created a video or trailer for your book, send out those links out on Twitter.
Just remember not to make your tweets all about you all the time. You wouldn’t do that at a cocktail party—people would quickly walk away. The same goes for Twitter. So remember to regularly add informative, educational or just plain-old fun tweets to the line-up. Comment on other books or trends. Share a laugh. Retweet someone else’s content. And when the time is right, definitely use Twitter to promote your writing.
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