Spreading the Word to Readers on Twitter

As well as being a great place to network with fellow writers, Twitter is an easy way to stay in touch with your readers — and to gain new ones. It’s encouraging — and sometimes illuminating! — to engage with your readers on Twitter. They might tell you how much they enjoyed your first e-book and that they’re waiting eagerly for the next, or they may have questions about a topic that you hadn’t fully considered or ideas for a topic they want you to write about.

Encouraging your readers to follow you

As on Facebook, let your readers know about your Twitter account, and encourage them to follow you there. You can even add the Follow Me button to your website, using https://twitter.com/about/resources/buttons . Figure 16-8 shows the options you can choose among when creating this button.

You can also list your Twitter name in the back of your e-book, on the contact page of your website, and on your business cards. Unless your readers know where to find you, they can’t follow you.

Engaging with your readers on Twitter

After a bunch of readers are following you on Twitter, make sure that you stay visible. In the fast-moving environment of Twitter, not all your readers will see all your updates. In fact, there’s a good chance that many of them will log in only once or twice a day or even once or twice a week — so you should repeat any important messages.

Be aware of different time zones, too. A message posted at noon Eastern time won’t be seen by many Australians, for example. You may want to use a service such as the one at http://twuffer.com or http://futuretweets.com , or schedule tweets ahead of time so that you can send out tweets while you’re asleep.

What you tweet about is up to you, but I suggest centering your activity around your e-book’s genre or topic. For example, if you’ve written a paranormal romance, you might tweet about other novels you’re reading in that genre. If you’ve written a nonfiction e-book about healthy eating, you can link to related news items and blog posts.

One helpful way to build buzz around your e-book is to throw a Twitter party, an event held online where a group of people gather on Twitter to talk. Authors sometimes hold Twitter parties in conjunction with conference calls, encouraging their readers to tweet about the topic being discussed. You can come up with a hashtag — the pound symbol (#) followed by a word, acronym or phrase — for partygoers to use.

A hashtag is label that’s attached a tweet. At online gatherings such as Twitter parties, and at offline gatherings such as conferences, organizers often create specific hashtags. Clicking one initiates a Twitter search for that hashtag so that users can easily find other tweets related to the party or conference. Twitter users also use hashtags for more general purposes: Many writers, for example, use the hashtag #amwriting to connect with other people who are also writing during the day.