This past week a friend pointed out to me that since it’s December, I should be marketing my Blue Lake Christmas Mystery on Twitter.I’m of two minds about book marketing on Twitter. Mostly, I don’t do it. I depend on blog posts to indirectly indicate that hey guess what I write books too! So she said “pin a new post every day with a fresh picture, hash tags, and a buy link.” I accepted the challenge and posted a new pinned tweet every day last week. I’m not sure I sold any books. I am hoping none of the people who follow me got annoyed.
I find people who post a ton about their products annoying. If that is the only thing they post.
(Just as an aside I am trying to use the new “better” Word Press format. I started this post yesterday and couldn’t finish it because I got so confused. New tech is daunting for me. But I am determined to publish this post today. I see in previews that I do not like the box format at all!! Don’t know how to fix it. Hope it goes away when I hit publish! Sorry for all the !!!! but I am frustrated.)
So back to posting about your book (or your service, or your product that is not a book) on Twitter. It really doesn’t work as a sales tool for me. It does work for some people. I figured out why it doesn’t work for me this week. I usually post to Twitter once a week with a blog link. That’s it. I do look at other posts on the day I tweet. I have my favorites, but I also randomly read those I follow, too. If something someone says interests me, I will retweet it or make a comment or like it or all three.
Lately I’ve noticed people are not retweeting as much. I get many more “likes” than retweets. I thought it was just a new trend or perhaps a new rule. Really, are people sick of retweets? I thought RT was queen of Twitter, but at least for me, not so much anymore. Still, I persist in RTing. It’s what I do most on Twitter.
From what I’ve read, the rule for tweeting your book on Twitter is make it ten percent of your tweets. So that’s one post in ten. I like to mix up comments and RTs. I don’t do a lot of original tweeting because there are so many other people who speak tweet better. But I tweet a bit when I have a flash of brilliance…you see I set a high bar.
For blogging, I like posting on Monday to catch the #MondayBlogs hashtag. But those posts are not supposed to be about your book. They’re not for promotion or sharing buy links. So I kind of got out of the habit of talking about my books at all on Twitter or in my blog posts. I’m less shy about it on my Facebook author page. Not sure why.
So what this week has shown me is that if I pin a new post every day, I will look at my Twitter feed and spend some time on there commenting and RTing and even tweeting an original though every so often. I liked doing the new pinned book tweet every day, too. It was fun, even if it didn’t sell books. I think I will keep up this practice. And there’s always #TuesdayBookBlogs.
Happy holidays everyone and thanks for reading.
Cynthia Harrison 
Twitter can be useful to attract blog readers but I’m not convinced you can sell a lot of books via that medium. I sometimes use the Monday blogs hashtag too.
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Jan, that’s the key. I don’t expect to sell any books. I went into it as a fun way to be on Twitter. It really was fun.
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I’ve found lots of readers for my books via Twitter, but it didn’t and doesn’t happen overnight; it’s important to remember that Twitter is a fast moving site. I read somewhere that the average life of a tweet is 18 minutes; that’s why retweets are so important! The point of pinning a tweet is so that when people go to your page to return an RT, they can see something, quickly – something you want ‘out there’.
All I meant about BLCM, Cindy, is that you have a great Christmas book and it seems a shame not to be promoting it. Lots of other authors of Christmas books tweet the hell out of them at this time of year – it’s such a great opportunity. The main reason why good books don’t sell is that people don’t know they exist. If you don’t sell every day or most days, your books won’t appear in searches or recommendations on Amazon; they will be invisible to the book buying public. Social media is a way of telling the world about them. But Twitter (or any other soc med site) doesn’t work like a one week advert – it’s a long game. And everyone should use the site how it works best for them; there aren’t any rules 🙂
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I’m grateful to you, Terry, for the encouragement on Twitter and also for the idea for a blog post. I had a very good time this week & learned a lot. Thanks.
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Some people make a success of it, but that’s not been my experience. I did enjoy pinning my book tweets, maybe because I have no expectations.
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Retweet whatever you want to share, don’t ‘like’ it! That serves little purpose.
The function of liking a tweet was actually for you to to save it to read later. That is why all your liked tweets are listed on your profile page! When I first joined Twitter, and I was considering following someone, I’d often look at their liked tweets to see if they were useful. Most people don’t use ‘like’ that way anymore. They use it as if they were on Facebook. Silly tweeters.
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Yes yes yes, Linda – That’s what I do. I like, to save if it’s useful or interesting, and I also save my own tweets like that so I have my links at hand to copy and paste. Now, though, it seems to be used as a way of showing support. I blame Instagram, which is all about collecting likes. I sometimes tweet that Twitter is not Instagram – if you like something, retweet it!
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LOL Linda. My friend said maybe they got it off Instagram. 🙂 She also told me to like all my own book tweets and then there they all are in one place and I can use them again without starting from scratch. So that’s how I’m using likes now.
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I’m not liking this new WP posting format, either. I haven’t used the #MondayBlogs, but maybe I’ll try it now. I enjoy Twitter, but I’m not sure I understand all of the intricacies of it. So many people promote their work and books on Twitter. I think it’s a great idea, although I don’t think I saw any of your book-related tweets. The feed moves so quickly!
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Cheryl, last I heard a tweet life is 18 minutes. I’m happy to hear you didn’t see mine, because it makes me feel like I didn’t overdo it. Although that misses the point, lol. I am in America so I have begun to hang out with the other liberals and we grouse about the president. That’s fun! You gotta find your peeps and dive in. If you want to…it’s mostly for fun or to blow off steam in my case. Some people, like my friend Terry Tyler really have made Twitter a selling tool but as she says it takes a lot of time to build up a following that way. For WP, I have got my IT guru looking into if I can change this site back to the old Word Press.
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The blogging world gets crazier by the minute! Don’t know about everyone else, but I’m having trouble keeping up…
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Jaye, One of my tweeps said they blog twice a month and I thought about it. I do once a week right now. I decided that I can’t wait for two weeks to say whatever is on my mind. I see that you do lot of re-posting on the Word Press reader. You’ve shared a lot of my posts. Thanks for that! I have never done that. I think it would be too much for me to handle. And being frank here, I like having only my own posts on my site. I have been on cynthiaharrison.com since 2002 way before guest posts and blog hops and sharing. So I got used to the old way of just posting my own stuff and then reading other people’s blogs off their websites. I do think I’d feel overwhelmed if I did as much as you. xo
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I know what you mean, but can’t seem to help myself. I love sharing all the good stuff!
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That’s because you are a good person. You and your sister both are 🙂 xo
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xxx
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I like your Twitter philosophy. I have similar rules for my account. 🙂
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