Using Twitter to build a readership - Part Two

In Using Twitter to build a readership – Part One, we talked about the importance of using Twitter as part of an authors social marketing plan.

In addition to Twitter, to take advantage of the social networking world, you must have a blog, or some other site where you can post helpful content for your Twitter followers to read. This is the main reason you’re tweeting - to get people back to this site where they can read articles you’ve written, people you’ve interviewed, books you’ve reviewed, and links you’ve posted.

Click here for some great tips on blogging for writers!

Of course, that helpful content, which should in no way be a sales pitch for your own work, is also sitting inches away from your bio, your book covers, your sample chapters, and the links to your sales pages. (You do have all of those on your blog, right?)

You know why you see sales ads posted on blogs and networking sites like Facebook?

Because they work!

What you’re doing here is no different. Think of your book cover and all that other stuff as the “ads” on your blog. They’re not why people came to the blog, but once the readers are there, it’s a statistical fact that a percentage will buy what’s being advertised. If it weren’t, there would be no Facebook. (BTW, we’ll talk about social marketing with Facebook, soon.)

The beauty of Twitter is that the people following you EXPECT to be redirected to another website at least 90% of the time. With the limit of characters allowed in a tweet, the only way to share valuable information is with a one-sentence “descriptor” and a link.

The 80/20 Strategy

I strongly suggest using an 80/20 strategy for your tweets. That is to say, for every two tweets that are linked to your own webpage/blog, or sharing a personal writing achievement, you need to post at least eight tweets that have nothing to do with your writing.

These can be replies to other tweets, links to interesting or helpful articles you’ve read on other websites/blogs, a funny or inspirational quote, a question of your own, etc.

Now, am I saying that only 20% of your blog posts can be about you and/or you book?

Not at all!

I’m just saying that you only want to tweet that percentage. Blog a lot about your book, your publishing journey, your family…it’s a great way to hook a reader, but don’t tweet everything you put on your blog. Studies show that when a link is followed to a specific webpage, the average visitor clicks on three additional links that they find there.

Give them some stuff to find on their own, as well.

I’ll be back soon with “Using Twitter to build a readership –  Part Three”

-Perry

Here’s the whole series: Using Twitter to build a readership – Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four. (Thanks @LynetteBenton)