Twitter Twists for Authors and Publishers

Twitter is a great tool to launch a book campaign. A foundation that can support the walls of the more detailed, strategic marketing effort to follow.

For example, a short blurb giving the title, author's name, etc., gets your book's and your credentials in the minds eye of the readers AND in the search engines (SEO)...PLUS, you can add a link to a more detailed marketing venue such as Facebook, a review page, your website or point of purchase page, etc.!

This is heavy artillery for a little blurb!

More detailed author/publisher Twitter strategy is spelled out by Cindy Ratzlaff in the Business Insider:

5 Twitter Tips for Authors and Publishers Maximum Visibility Playbook Tips


The book is written and ready to publish. So how do you and your publisher spread the word, create excitement and ultimately drive people to take the action of purchasing and reading the book? These days a well-rounded social media strategy must include Twitter. Twitter is a nimble, real-time megaphone ready to create both ambient awareness (“Oh, yeah, I heard about that book…) and advertorial awareness (I read a great review of that book).

Twitter is to a social media campaign what PR is to a book marketing campaign.

Twitter, however, is not a marketing campaign. Twitter is part of a full strategic campaign and acts as a megaphone to blast your message to millions of people and invites them to your website, Facebook page or other venue for a deeper conversation. A book marketing campaign needs distribution, point of purchase display, publicity, an advertising concept and a highly motivated author. With those things in place, Twitter can:

Share the author’s excitement with followers in real time.
Direct people to a link to buy the book.
Blast out late breaking news such as media appearances & live events.
Share excerpts from the book either in short snippets or via a link to a longer passage.
Encourage others to spread the word.

Here are 5 quick tips and techniques that any author or publisher can use right now to enhance a book marketing campaign.

1. Move content. Use Twitter to move content from your Blog and your Facebook posts to your Twitter fan base by installing the Twitter app on your Facebook fan page. This will auto-tweet everything you post on Facebook, with a link back to your Facebook fan page to read any post longer than 140 characters. If you are auto-importing your blog to your Facebook fan page, it will also be tweeted out to your followers automatically, again with a link to continue reading. This serves a couple of purposes. First, it shares content on three different sites, increasing the number of potential readers for every post. Second, it invites Twitter users back to Facebook to become fans whenever they click on the shorten Twitter link. Third, Facebook will have a live link to the post on your blog through Networked blogs. So one post introduces your Twitter fans to two additional

Read and learn more

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Easy Way For Writers To Enter Affiliate Marketing For Free

Today we are going to speak of "other life stuff" but with a bent toward writers.

Just as in the past, there are many starving writers in the world today (if not actually starving then poor as hell due to the present economy). But today, with the internet and new technology, writers can take advantage of some programs that won't take too much time away from their writing and can put some extra change in their pockets to sustain them between sales of their work. And can involve a little creative writing to boot!

I am trying a free program that is a whitelisted application to Twitter called Twivert that is working for me. It's a little slow to start but should grow if it's promise and premise materialize. I will post about my progress from time to time in the future.

This free program involves posting ads on your Twitter account (and you can approve the ads if you wish). When someone clicks on the ad you get paid! This is called CPC (cost per click) and is known as Affiliate Marketing. If you don't want to spend time on this, you can automate the system and have four ads per day posted for you by Twivert in any time frame you pre-set in the settings. Twivert doesn't believe in spamming and restricts the number of ads per day you can post.

For more info to be a twitterer on this Twivert program go to http://www.twivert.com/o/2z1

If you are a writer with a book, website or any other product to promote you can also be an advertiser on Twivert at dirt cheap prices and get your promotions in front of thousands & thousands of targeted tweeters!

For more info on advertising on Twivert go to http://www.twivert.com/o/3z1

Twitter Connections For Writers, Authors And Publishers

The Book Publicity Blog at http://alturl.com/8229 is one of my favorite sources for up-to-date info on the publishing and book industry. Today The Book Publicity Blog had a great post about Twitter, and since I am also on Twitter (as well as Facebook and Myspace) learning "social media" and how I might use these type sites for book marketing, I am extracting it below for my readers info. WARNING: This post has great contacts and connections to experts in the
writing and publishing field!

"Twitter is possibly the most robust network to link readers and the publishing community since Gutenberg built his printing press. I realize Twitter doesn’t work for everybody and I’m not suggesting that everyone use it — there are days when even I don’t have the time (or simply can’t be bothered) to type even 140-character status updates — but what must be recognized is that Twitter is no longer the latest fad among tweens; it has since evolved into an incredibly powerful communications tool (and it can be fun, too). I realize I’m pretty much preaching to the choir with this post, but please feel free to share the following with colleagues/authors."
***
Most people now know the Twitter basics: you have a 140 characters to update your status and you have a list of people whose status updates you follow and a list of people who follow your status updates. But for all practical purposes, what does that mean? Why should authors and people in the publishing industry use Twitter? Here are some reasons why:
– Networking: Although most publishing houses, literary agencies and book publicity firms are in New York — which means many of us see each other in person — many are not. And of course, media exist all over, as do readers. Twitter is how we meet. Publisher @artepublico uses Twitter to connect authors with the media. @calli526, a book publicist, uses it to connect with the media.
– Promotion: Twitter can be used to talk up a book, blog, event, author, giveaway or pretty much anything else.
– Feedback: For example, @benrubinstein polls his followers for ideas and suggestions.
And here are some specific examples of how Twitter works:
– #followreader is a weekly publishing discussion conducted on Twitter on Thursdays at 4 p.m. ET and moderated by @charabbott and @katmeyerwho also blog at Follow the Reader. (Summaries of the discussions are posted on the blog for people who miss the Twitter conversation.)
– @RustyShelton and his colleagues at Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicity developed a Tweet the Author service.
– Author Anastasia Ashman posts about how she uses Twitter.
– @meredithkessler points out that Robert Olen Butler’s @TweetsFromHell was picked up by @LATimesbooks and followed by major critics and Butler fans.
– Literary agent @janet_reid found a panelist for a publishing conference via Twitter and has also used it to fact check some locations/spellings/customs.
– When I write a blog post, I try to tweet about it (and include a link to the post). That means my post could potentially be seen by the 1,267 people who follow me. Realistically, a tweet won’t be seen by all of one’s followers, but even if only a fraction of those people see an update and click through to the link, that still amounts to a lot of eyeballs. (And certainly a lot more eyeballs than if you’re not using Twitter.) Similarly, some authors will tweet about upcoming events to let readers know where and when they will be speaking or about reviews and interviews.
– And lastly, how do you think I found the examples for this post? Yup, you guessed it.