1. Use keywords. When setting up your Twitter account, you’ll want to ensure you reach the right people (as in, those who may already have an interest in your book), so use keywords to target potential customers. And consider using your real name (or pen name, whatever is on the book) for added credibility.
2. Follow others. The best way to get followers is to follow others and get them to reciprocate. So search for other Twitter accounts that fit your aesthetic and sign on for updates. This is a great way to form new friendships and build up a circle quickly.
3. Build a community. It’s not just about getting as many followers as you can. You want to include people who have a vested interest in your success, so start with friends and family, have them bring in their friends, and work to build up a group of followers that appreciate your work and want to pass it on. Try to make an effort to keep up personal communications and you may find that followers are willing to promote you to others.
4. Give updates. Let fans and followers know when you’re making appearances, doing book signings, or posting new passages on your website. Reach a vast audience in moments with very little effort on your part.
5. Use Twitterfeed. If you have a blog, this handy app will send an auto-update to Twitter whenever you upload a new blog post. It’s a quick and easy way to keep followers informed without having to remember to tweet every time you post new content.
6. Send out teasers. Drum up some interest in your literary content by tweeting good one-liners from the text each day. Have a friend help you choose some intriguing or humorous lines from you book that will hook people in and bring them to your site for more.
7. Add links. Twitter makes it easy to add links when you send out tweets, so include pathways for people to see excerpts of your work on your Facebook page or business website. This is a great way to give interested parties access to your material and offer them the opportunity to purchase your complete book.
8. Offer special deals to those in your circle. Although you no doubt have other avenues in place to bring traffic to the website where your book is being sold, you can reward those who follow you on Twitter, specifically, by offering discounts, special postings, or other deals to those who get the tweet.
9. Avoid spamming. It can be tempting to send constant reminders to followers that your book is, in fact, for sale. Or you might find it easier to simply send links to your work. But this is pure laziness on your part, and no one will appreciate it! You are likely to lose followers and alienate friends if all you can muster is a lot of spam.
10. Get creative. Make no mistake: Twitter is nothing more than short-attention-span theatre. If you want to gain followers and get people hooked, you’re going to have to give them a taste of what they’re in for with your grandly worded tweets (and you only have 140 characters to do it). So make sure anything you send out is snappy, concise, and full of wit. Added value will keep people tuned in to your channel and coming back for more.
Sarah Danielson writes for The Best Degrees where you can find information on tops schools and find out which fields offer the highest paying jobs upon graduation.
A good friend of mine just published a book on her climb of Mount Everest. She’s doing a good job of marketing, but she hasn’t joined Twitter yet. I’m sending her this link.
I have been following your website since I was planning to write my first book on surviving infidelity. Since I have completed it I was wondering what will be my strategy to promote it. I will consider these points though I don’t use twitter very much.