Twitter 101: Tweet Marketing

Twitter Tips:

Most of you probably already use Twitter. If not, you really should be! Some of you may be wondering: what's the big deal? The potential for selling your book is only surpassed by the potential for making great relationships with readers―ones who will spread the news to all their friends, and they'll tell 100 friends, and so on and so on…

Author John Locke, a publishing sensation, credits Twitter as largely responsible for his success. He's the first independent author to sell over 1 million ebooks on Amazon. And there are only 8 authors who've achieved the million ebook mark. Maybe you'll be the next.

So how do you use Twitter to market your ebooks? Simple, you create relationships. You get to meet people from anywhere in the world. There are some pretty cool people out there. By showing a genuine interest in people, you'll gather more followers. Eventually, some will read your book. Maybe they'll tweet about how much they enjoyed it. Maybe they'll write a review. Maybe they'll suggest it to their book club, or to a producer they know. This actually happens.

There are a variety of ways to find readers on Twitter, some of them quite obvious, I think.

1. Search Twitter for:

Kindle suggestions

Kobo suggestions

Nook suggestions

#books

#fridayreads

#amreading

#ebook (s)

#bookclub (s)

Don't just pitch your book to them, create relationships. Read their profiles. Read their last few tweets. Talk to them at least once before pitching your book to them. Ask them what genres they like? RT one of their tweets. Ask them questions. Answer a question. Yes, you can suggest one of your books, or give them your website, but do try to either answer their question about a suggestion or get to know them.

2. Search for your genre:

#romancenovel

#fantasy

#western

#historicalromance

#thriller

#mystery

#mysterynovel

#technothriller

Look for tweets where people talk about your genre in a positive way. Add to the conversation. See above tips. Always get your URL in there. 

3. Search for authors you think people would compare your writing (for your novel) to. Chat first unless you're already friends with them online or unless they're asking for suggestions.

When pitching them, say something like:

I saw you liked (author). Me too. In fact, he inspired me to write (name of novel) (Amazon URL shortened)

Or…

Since you enjoy (author), I think you may like (name of novel) (Amazon URL)

Using Amazon customers with Twitter:

Step 1: Go to your book’s page on Amazon and look in the Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought section.

Step 2: Make a list of the book titles that appear. These are titles YOUR customers have also bought. This means they like those books, plus they think they’ll like yours. This means anyone who likes those other titles may also like yours.

Step 3: Go to twitter and search for those book titles one at a time. When you find someone who has liked that other title, tweet them and say that they may like your title too since they liked ____.

Step 4: Word your tweets differently each time, make them personal, and include link to your ebook on Amazon. Use URL shortener like TinyUrl...or I highly recommend you get Hootsuite. You can then schedule tweets. Huge marketing time saver!!!

If someone says they prefer another genre other than yours, recommend one of your author friends or another author you like. Be helpful. What goes around comes around. :-)

Twitter is a leading, successful social network for one reason: it's social. From personal experience, I can tell you I've sold more ebooks via social networks in the past two months than I have doing 80+ book signings for 2 years. And I've met more people; maybe not face-to-face, but they're still quite happy to meet me on Twitter and buy one of my books. 

And don't forget to follow me: http://www.twitter.com/cherylktardif and http://www.twitter.com/imajinbooks

Happy tweeting!

Giving Away Books in Contests Can Promote Your Novels

If you’ve ever won a contest or lottery, you’ll know that soaring sensation you get when you’re proclaimed to the world to be a “winner”. We all love to get something for free, don’t we? Some of us also love giving things away, and I’m one of them. Authors, like me, have found many opportunities to give away their ebooks, print books or gift certificates, and by doing so we’re creating relationships with fans and readers, which in turn help me to promote my books.

Over the years I’ve witnessed many ingenious contests held by authors and I’ve learned some things along the way. People don’t really want to just ‘enter’ a contest, they want to participate, interact, be part of the action. If a contest asks them to do more than submit their name, they tend to take more of an interest. So if you’re holding a contest, make it entertaining and interactive.

I’ve held 2 main contests that have been quite successful:

My ‘Create a Corpse Contest’ asks entrants to send in a name (could be fictional or their high school bully or boss or ex-friend) and I “kill off” the character in a novel. In my romantic suspense Lancelot’s Lady, you’ll be meeting one of the corpse winners--Winston Chambers. Trust me, it’s not only amusing to enter this contest, it’s very therapeutic.

My ‘Become a Character Contest’ has entrants submit their own name (or someone else’s) and their character gets to live but might be a good guy/gal or a bad one. In Divine Justice, a thriller my agent is pitching to publishers, you’ll meet one of the winners--Deirdre Dailey. The incentive for people to enter is that they get to choose a novel character’s name and I often give them a free copy. How exciting is that?

How do these contests benefit me as an author? First, they give me something cool to announce, something a bit different from the norm. They appeal to people with a sense of humor--or those who want some secret form of revenge. You can bet they’ll be talking about it, telling their friends. Word of mouth advertising is still one of the best ways to get the word out about virtually anything. Imagine if your best friend told you she was going to be a corpse in a new suspense thriller.

I’ve also held contests on Twitter. Here’s a great way to get your name out, get people re-tweeting for you and create some excitement. I asked other authors to sponsor the prizes. In exchange, I promoted them on my contest page on my website. Twitter is basically “live”. Get their attention now and get them interacting by asking for a reply, something very specific. Limit your winners. In a recent Twitter contest, I gave away free ebooks and asked people to email me if they wanted one. First three to reply won.

How does this benefit me? First, I’m creating a sense of excitement--and we can all use excitement in our lives. I’m also creating “winners”, and who doesn’t want to be one? I’m getting my name out there. People re-tweet my contests to more people “and they tell two friends and so on and so on and…” Plus, I’m building up my email data base with people who are interested in future novels.

Other authors see the value in giving away free books:

“I think the giving away of books for free can be a useful tool as long as it is part of a smart, focused, targeted promotional activity or event,” says Anthony Bidulka, author of the Russell Quant Mystery series.

Betty Dravis, author of the celebrity book Dream Reachers, says, “Giving free copies is a great way to reach out; the more exposure, the better. I mostly give free copies to reviewers and the print media, but blog contests are another good way of reaching more readers.”

“Offering a book for FREE is a good and rewarding idea when you are building readership,” states Edward C. Patterson, author of The Jade Owl. “It should be a temporary measure to stimulate readership or to introduce readers to a series. The exception, I find, is when you are providing information to a specific community, other authors for instance, where it can become an information service and builds into your brand. The other time FREE books are important is as a community donation, such as Operation eBook Drop, where you donate your titles to the men and women in the Armed Forces.”

Next time you need a little buzz and excitement, try an innovative, creative contest that invites your readers to participate. Promotion is hard work, but it should be fun too!

http://www.cherylktardif.com

http://www.cherishdangelo.com

And follow Cheryl on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/cherylktardif

Twitter 101: Tips on tweeting, DM, RT, hash tags and more

Looking for tips on how to use Twitter? Well, you've come to the right place. Here are some links to quick tips and explanations for the very basics of the Twitterverse. You'll learn how to message people publicly and privately. You'll learn how to make lists of your favorite Tweeple.

Soon you'll be tweeting to your twits or tweeps, and RTing your favorites, DMing and using hash tags (no, that's not that bad thing that involves smoke!)

Twitter 101: How to send messages on Twitter

Twitter 101: What the heck is a hash tag?

Twitter 101: Creating Twitter Lists

Twitter 101: Using the new Retweet feature

If you follow me on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/cherylktardif), you'll become one of my Twalkers (Twitter stalkers...aka Twits or Tweeps or Tweeple) also learn about Twoogles, which would make you a Twoogler while you're Twoogling.

So, Tweers to you all! Have fun tweeting!

Twitter 101: Using the new Retweet feature

Retweeting is a social way of acknowledging that someone's tweet has value and should be shared. When you see a tweet you like from one of the people you're following, you can re-send that tweet as a "retweet". The old way of doing this is simply to copy and paste their message and add "RT" plus their Twitter name @cherylktardif, then the message.

But Twitter has created a new automated Retweet feature. Most people seem to like the ease of this new feature, but many don't like that they can't add a personal comment to the message. The Retweet feature allows for no editing or adding of text. But that's also a plus as you don't have to figure out how to edit someone else's tweet to make the old "RT @cherylktardif" lead in fit.

The advantages to having one of your messages retweeted by a follower is that your message then goes out to all THEIR followers. Like the old shampoo commercial, "and they tell 2 friends, and so on and so on..", your tweet goes viral.

So here's how you now retweet using the new feature:

1. You see a message on your home page (which shows tweets from those you're following) and you know all your followers should see.
2. Retweet it by hovering over bottom right of the individual message. This activates the Reply link and the Retweet link.
3. Click on "Retweet".
4. A message pops up asking: "Retweet to your followers?" Click "Yes".

That's it. You're done. That tweet has been retweeted to all your followers. If you'd like to verify this, simply go to the top right, right beneath your twitter name and click on #tweets (the # being however many tweets you've sent out in total).

Twitter 101: Creating Twitter Lists

Twitter recently introduced Lists so that you can organize the people you're following and find them much easier. You can catagorize your lists in any way you like.

Let's say you want to make a list of your favorite authors:

1. Decide what kind of list you want to make. For this example, we'll use your "favorite authors".
2. Decide who your favorite authors are and search for the first one on Twitter. You can do this in many ways. You can look for them in your "Following" or "Followers" links (top right of your Twitter home page). If you'd like to add an author that's not in either, you can try searching for them by clicking on the "Find People" link at very top right of home page.
3. Click on the first author you want to add to your "favorite authors" list.
4. You'll see a grey box marked "Lists". Click on it. If you've already made a list, you'll see it listed first with a square tick box to left. You'll also see "New list" below.
5. Click on "New list" and give it a name: "favorite authors". You can add a description if you want. If your title gives enough info, don't bother with the descr.
6. Select "Public" or "Private". It's advantageous to select "Public" if you want to help promote the people on your list. Some lists you might want to make only for you.
7. Go back to step 2 and locate other authors for this specific list and follow steps 3-7 until your list is as big as you want. You can always add another person to any list by going to their page and following same steps.

That's all there is to making a Twitlist.

Viewing your lists:

1. You'll find all your lists (ones you've created and ones you're following in the "Lists" section underneath "Saved Searches" on right side of home page. Your lists that you've created will show first, then ones you're following.
2. For easier viewing of the same thing, click on the "Listed" link at top right beside "Followers". The "Lists following you" shows any list where someone has added your name. The "Lists you follow" is just like the ones you see beneath "Saved Searches".

Lists are a great way to keep track of people since the list of your followers isn't easily searchable.

Twitter 101: What the heck is a hash tag?

If you've been on Twitter for more than a week or two, you will have noticed that people often include a term preceded by the # sign, like #writechat. This is a hash tag or hashtag. Now you're probably wondering, what the heck is it for?

A hash tag is a specific keyword identified by the preceding # sign that is used to tag or identify a topic within tweets. It is used on Twitter to filter tweets, to make it easier for you to find that information.

Let's say you want to post a tweet about the writechat group that meets on Twitter and talks about writing and publishing. You might add #writechat to your 140 character tweet so others can find it easily.

Fans of this group or of writers in general could type #writechat (or just writechat) in the search bar on Twitter (right side) and up pops all tweets about this topic.

One thing you'll want to do is follow @hashtags on Twitter. They'll follow you back automatically and will track all your hashtags.

Keep in mind, hash tags must consist of either one word, initials (like #SXSW - South by South west) or combined words as one, like #writechat, all preceded by #.

So go ahead and add hash tags to your posts, and check out #writechat.

Plus, don't forget to follow me @cherylktardif on Twitter.

~Cheryl Kaye Tardif, aka Shameless Promoter

Twitter, MySpace, Facebook - how much time should I spend on them?

So how much time SHOULD a writer spend on online social networks like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook?

The quick answer: Not so much time that your manuscript is piling up around you--unedited or unfinished.

For the not so quick answer, please visit:
How much time should an author spend tweeting, Facebook-ing and MySpace-ing?

Twitter 101: How to send messages on Twitter

Have you signed up on Twitter but haven't got a clue what to do next? Are you unsure how to get your messages out? Well, here's a crash course in the very basics of Twitter--sending messages.

First, sign up for a free Twitter account at http://www.twitter.com/. When you have logged in, you'll be on the Home page of your account.

On the right side, above the search bar, you'll see the following links:
Home
@your username
Direct Messages
Favorites

Home is where you can send messages out to everyone in Twitterville (or the Twitterverse). You can also send a public message to a specific person by putting @their username anywhere in the message.

@your username shows you all replies to your own posts. You'll want to check every now and then and reply back. To reply, hover over person's message and you'll see a star (to make favorite) and an arrow (reply back).

Direct Messages shows you who you sent private messages to and who sent you private messages. To send DM, click on top drop-down arrow for list. Sometimes DMs don't work, and you have to be following that person and they have to be following you to send a DM.

Twitter is an awesome little social network, a tool that anyone can use...once they figure out how.

Follow Cheryl Kaye Tardif on Twitter. By following me, you'll automatically be entered in my Twitter Contest.

SP Tip #3 - Tweet on Twitter

Twitter is a form of blogging called micro-blogging. You have 140 characters to get a message across, usually answering the question: What are you doing?

However, people with products and services to market or promote can also "tweet" a short piece of sales copy or ad copy. But don't use hard sales tactics.

Since this is a social network, make sure you intersperse your sales tweets with more personal ones. Let people get to know you.

Hope you'll follow me on Twitter!