Don’t Fall For These Twitter Distractions

In trawling the interwebz yesterday, I ran across a post at the Self Publishing Advice blog by a Swedish indie author named Anna Belfrage discussing whether or not Twitter can be effective as a marketing tool for self-published authors. And, while I’m certainly a novice — considering I haven’t actually published a book yet, “novice” might even be kind — at self publishing, Anna is an admitted novice at Twitter. So, while I can’t say for sure whether Twitter is necessarily effective at marketing self-published books in particular, I can say it’s been an effective tool in marketing for my past two jobs (Yes, I’m a social/content marketer by day, aspiring author by night/weekend, much like a super hero), and I’m fairly confident I can make it work for me in the author world too.

Now, to her credit, Anna does admit to her inexperience with the medium, and she does acknowledge that Twitter helped somewhat, and could probably help more as she grows her following/becomes more comfortable with using it. But you don’t see much of that unless you read to the end, and I’m afraid there’s a decent bit of not-very-good advice and implied advice earlier in the piece. I wanted to address a bit of it here:

• “I joined a tweet group, I started thinking about suitable Twitter pics, I revised my short-links and set about trying to formulate punchy little texts.”
  This is how she says she started with her dive into Twitter. This is not how you should start your dive into Twitter, if you’re an author. 1) Tweet groups are fool’s gold. They tell you they’ll amplify everyone’s tweets as a group, but your feed becomes so bogged down with this junk that no one wants to follow you, and it defeats the purpose. There is no shortcut to doing well with Twitter. 2) Don’t worry about “suitable Twitter pics” when you’re starting. Find a nice headshot to use for your profile, maybe something fun for the banner, then find pics as they come and are relevant for your tweets. 3) Don’t revise any short links, particularly not at first. Twitter will take care of that for you (and it won’t even be an issue toward the 140 characters soon). 4) When starting out, just understand that developing a brand on Twitter takes a lot of time. Your following will grow steadily but slowly, unless you have a recognizable name. But, if you have books out there, put your Twitter handle on your Amazon page, the back page of your book, etc. Get it out there, and the following will come. Instead of “punchy little texts,” think about engaging with people, asking/answering questions, retweeting people with your own comments. Find the accounts that matter to you, and follow them, then find ways to help amplify their content and converse with them. It’ll help. I promise.
• “Being serious about tweeting also requires that you learn to schedule your tweets, as otherwise you will drown.”
  No, it doesn’t. It’s OK to schedule promotional posts from time to time, if it’s something you want to make sure you don’t forget, or you want to keep your account active while on vacation or whatever. But, generally, Twitter rewards presence and direct activity. Be there. Interact with others. Share interesting content you find. You don’t have to stare at Twitter all day until you’re driven to madness and shipped off to some remote, Twitter-less world, but be present when you can, and engage.
• “These days, I probably spend an hour a day on Twitter, five days a week. I RT, chase down interesting posts to mix in with the promo stuff, add the odd quote or pic. The truly distracting aspect about it is that I can’t spend that one hour in one go. I dip in and out throughout the day.”
  This is probably pretty reasonable, actually. If you spend about an hour a day on Twitter — and dipping in and out through the day is completely fine — that should probably get the job done over the long term. The only caveat I would make to that is that you should install a Twitter app on your phone and turn push notifications on for mentions and retweets. When you get notifications of someone asking you something, saying your book doesn’t suck, or sharing your blog post, be sure to engage with them. Thank them. Answer their questions. Be part of the community. Be available. Also, use Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to set up columns with searches for your book titles and name, so you can track mentions of those when they may not tag you.
• “Tweets need to look professional, they have to be varied, and now and then they must be about other things than the book you want to flog. Quite often, actually.”
  I suppose it depends upon what you mean by “professional.” You don’t need to be all buttoned up and stale. In fact, quite the opposite. Show personality. Be fun. It’s OK — preferred, even — to crack jokes. That’s one of the beauties of Twitter: readers get to feel like they’re seeing the thoughts of a real person, not just super-duper author guy (I think I’ll put that on my business cards: Jeff Haws, Super-Duper Author Guy). On the other hand, if “professional” means looking like you understand the medium, know how to use hashtags and the retweet function correctly, then yes. Absolutely. Don’t even start tweeting until you get the language and pace a bit. It’s entirely OK to spend weeks, even months just following accounts and watching Twitter to get a feel for how it works. And don’t use hashtags until you can confidently say why you’re doing it.

So, that’s about it. Can Twitter be useful for a self-published author? My experience suggests it can, but I guess I’ll find out a bit more once this book is published in another month or two. Until then, I’ll have to lean on what I know from more traditional business marketing, which will hopefully help me when it comes to building a following for my books. Just know that it isn’t simple, and it’ll take a good deal of patience to get your Twitter account to a point where it’s helping you sell books in any appreciable way. But there are indirect benefits to Twitter engagement, and I think it’s worth the time for most people.