Twitter, twitter, twitter. Twitter, the microblogging platform, has hit the mainstream. It’s constantly in the media and everyone seems to be tweeting.
I love twitter because it suits my style of communication and connection. It is short and fast. I check twitter several times a day – and tweet when I have something interesting to share – and find lots of interesting information from people I follow.
I follow authors, publishers, social media experts, some entertainment columnists and a few celebrities (Nathan Fillion ). You can find me at www.twitter.com/mallevallik; Harlequin is www.twitter.com/harlequinbooks; and Harlequin Teen is www.twitter.com/harlequinTEEN.
Five twitter tips for authors if you decide to join or want to use twitter more effectively.
1. Your twitter persona should be your real name/brand. I’ve written more about developing an author brand at my blog, but the simple logic is that your readers need to be able to find you. Just as they look for a book written by Author Superstar they will look for you on twitter as Author Superstar.
If your name is too long or too popular you can make your twitter dot com name a clear variation of your author brand and make your profile name your brand. As examples look at what Rachel Vincent and Heather Gudenkauf have done. Rachel had a popular name so her twitter url is Rachel K Vincent but her profile name is Rachel Vincent. And in her bio she says she is a writer. Heather Gudenkauf shortened her twitter url to hgudenkauf but again states her full name in her profile and, of course, that she is an NYT author.
2. Being a good tweeter means you are not answering the question “What are you doing?” but sharing information, not promoting yourself. I really don’t care what you had for lunch unless you had lunch with Nora Roberts. If it’s the later, I want full details!
The people I follow on twitter post links to interesting articles and generally share information. When they occasionally talk about something they are doing (a new post on their blog) I feel very favorable toward them in general so am happy to click through to the information about them – and to share the news with people who follow me.
Repeat after me: It’s not about what twitter can do for you but what you can share on twitter (and then twitter becomes a tool to help you).
3. Do retweet interesting information. To retweet use the letters ‘rt’. It is also tweet etiquette to credit who you are retweeting. You do this with the @ key. Put a space after ‘rt’ but put no space between @ and the tweetee’s name. If you were to retweet something I had posted you begin your tweet thus: rt @mallevallik blah blah blah. Putting a space between ‘rt’ and @ means the twitter search engines can search all the @mallevallik mentions. This way I can easily see who has mentioned me, who has retweeted me. If you hope that people will retweet one of your posts keep your post several characters under the 140 character limit so that people can add the ‘rt’ and @authorsuperstar within the 140 character limit.
4. Use a tool like bit.ly to shorten urls and to track. That way you can track which tweets drive the most traffic.
5. Tweet at least a couple of times a day if at all possible. If you are going to be away for a few days, your last tweet should be a note that you’ll be on vacation/in the middle of revisions/whatever. Some followers purge their following list and if someone has not posted a while, they may unfollow since it looks like you’ve stopped tweeting.
Again, I end this post with my ongoing social media advice: you don’t need to participate in every new social media tool. Choose a few that work for you.
Me, I love the twitter. Hope to connect with you!
Related posts:
This is one bandwagon I haven’t jumped on. Heck, I’ve made it a point to stay at least three streets away.
I do have a Facebook page for social networking (as well as blog, website, and author pages here, there, and everywhere). My current pet peeve is dealing with all those people who put their tweets onto Facebook, especially when they’re basically ‘private’ communications between themselves and someone else I don’t know. I finally created a separate filter on my Facebook users so I didn’t have to look at all their tweets on the page.
There are too many folks out there who are in the ‘what I had for breakfast’ community, and who seem to think that their worth is measuring in how many followers they have.
I prefer my blog. I may not have 17,000 followers, but I think the folks who read it are there because they want to know more than what I’m cooking.
I don’t have time to Tweet right now, but I do follow a few people with useful and interesting tweets.
As for authors, my advice is always the same. Be where your readers are. If they’re on Twitter, then you should be too.
I like Twitter. Even knowing what people ate for lunch can be interesting sometimes. My favorite author to follow is Susan Mallery. She posts sort of random things that she finds on the internet that are funny or interesting, and she also posts about her books.
When I read about Twitter, it sounded overwhelming, but it’s really not. It’s just sort of an ongoing cocktail party. You can hop into a conversation if you feel like it, or you can go away for a while. If you miss something, no big deal.
All 3 commentators raise excellent points. The plethora of social media tools is confusing and there is no need to participate in every new area. I like Twitter because it’s fast — I’m a fast talker, reader, worker — so Twitter matches my attention span.
I like the cocktail party analogy.
Some people follow me because I am in publishing and every once in a while I mention my blog. I can see my blog traffic increase when I do this.
I have yet to Twitter. I already spend so much of my writing time on Facebook… I think one more opportunity to tell the world what I’m doing might be a bad thing!
Great post, though. Thanks for the info.
I loved this post (found it via twitter, natch) and just want to jump in and say I’m a total facebookphobe, but I just adore twitter. It feels like an office door to me – one I can open and cruise the halls for laughs, info, links, news, insights. Or I can close the door and work in silence. Some days I’m twitter happy and post 20 times, some days I don’t open up my tweetdeck more than once.
I know authors think of twitter as a marketing tool, and I suppose it is, but more than that, I find twitter a social lifesaver in a lonely job. I also think it’s a tremendous source of incoming information (links to blogs, youtube videos, news stories) I would otherwise never find.
Great post, Malle. I’ve been following you for a long time!