The network for book authors and publishers

Are you using Twitter, I am

I now have an account on twitter under the name integrity_ethic. Is anyone else on this site using twitter?

Permalink Reply by Frances Shani Parker on March 27, 2009 at 10:43pm: What do you like about it? I saw the video on it. How is it different from Facebook?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Vikram Narayan on March 28, 2009 at 10:39pm: Facebook is a lot more closed and allows you to interact with known people such as your friends. Twitter is a lot more open and focused on just getting short, tight, useful messages out to your followers.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Judy Mandel on March 28, 2009 at 7:03pm: I have just started using Twitter as well, and am trying to see if it can help promote my new gift book: 50 Ways to Take the "Down" Out of Downsized, https://www.createspace.com/3375684.

Has anyone figured out the promotion piece of Twitter? How do you increase your followers for example?
Thanks!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Vikram Narayan on March 28, 2009 at 10:41pm: I've found that following others increases the number of followers. In addition, it helps to make useful posts about 4-5 times a day (mostly interesting links or quotable quotes); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Freya R on June 1, 2009 at 5:27am: Hi Judy

If you are using social sites to market your book, I would suggest providing users an excerpt on tehse sites. It always helps to let people see what you have to offer by browsing and not only seeing a static book cover.

And rather than use a PDF for the excerpt I would suggest using a tool like BookBuzzr that lets you flip pages and even zoom in to read.

Would love to hear what you think of this.

Cheers
Freya; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Vikram Narayan on March 28, 2009 at 10:38pm: Yes. I'm there on Twitter and it's sent plenty of traffic to fReado.com.
My twitter account is @freado; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Gary Val Tenuta on March 29, 2009 at 8:07pm: I've been tweeting for about a month under the name EzekielCode. It seems to help maintain a higher number of hits to my website (www.ezekielcode.com). I'm hoping, of course, that some of those hits are converting into actual sales but I have no way to know which sales were a result of Twitter.

I agree with Heather about not being a spam machine. If you join Twitter to promote your book try to tweet about other things as well. I intersperse tweets about YouTube videos and news articles that I think my followers may find interesting. I also tweet amusing quotes and occasional jokes.

Here's a tip to new Twitter members: Since you are limited to 140 characters per tweet, try using www.tinyurl.com to compress long URLs into short ones. It's quick and easy to do.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Frances Shani Parker on March 30, 2009 at 11:10am: Is there anybody who tried twitter and didn't like it, particularly in terms of book marketing? Why?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Paul Krupin on May 27, 2009 at 12:19pm: I continue to have doubts about the ROI from Twitter. It has to do with 1. the inability to communicate meaningfully 2. the time, energy and money investment, when compared to any and all other time energy and money investments; 3. the type and number of people who really act on twitter messages in a way that translates into income.

You can have a ten thousand followers but convert no one to meaningful sales.

I can personally call and talk to five prospects and convert two or three of them into clients.

Which would you rather do?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dennis AuBuchon on March 30, 2009 at 5:16pm: I want to thank everyone who has responded to this forum topic. My link popularity, backlinks, search engine statistics and my name recognition have seen what I consider a huge increase since I started using twitter. I have seen a number of new visitors to my site and twitter is easy to use and provide short statements about what I am doing. I like it very much.; ▶ Reply to This