How,can,Twitter,help,self,publishing,authors?

How Twitter Can Help Self Publishing Authors by Georgina Lewis

A lot of people talk about Twitter and plenty of people use it (over 200 million!), but for the uninitiated it might seem like just another time-wasting distraction from your writing that you probably don’t need.
Well, it might be…(everything requires a degree of self-discipline!) but it can also be pretty useful for writers too. Here are some thoughts on why it might be worth a try and some ideas to help you get the most out of it.

Widen your network
One of the main benefits of Twitter is that it can widen the group of people that you are communicating with, so that ultimately you can find more people who might like to buy your book or comment on it and review it. But you have to remember that nothing comes for free (would you just order someone’s book that you don’t know?), so you might need to put a little bit of time in first.
If you’re trying to reach new audiences, think about what you are going to give back. Help people by using your expertise, or help your followers keep up to date with things that they might find interesting such as sources for your ideas, relevant political stories etc. Updates on the health of your dog might be interesting for your friends but probably aren’t going to get you an audience for your book. Unless your book is about dogs of course…but you get the point. That way you build more of a relationship with your followers and they’ll be more likely to help you out too.
Tweeting also gives you an opportunity to find other people going through the same process as you are. You can say hello and ask questions to other self-publishers – they might have some useful advice for you.

Still not sure what to say or do with Twitter? Try these ideas:

Answer people’s questions wherever possible and say thanks if they mention you in a tweet.

Join in with communal chats on Twitter e.g. #FridayReads and promote other tweeters you think are good using the #ff hashtag

Conferences often have a hashtag which you can follow, and contribute to e.g. #LBF11 for London Book Fair. This is also a great way of keeping up to date with industry news.

There are literary agents and publishers on Twitter – you can follow them, find out more about them, and it may come in handy in the future if you want to get in touch with them.

Find out from everyone you know/meet if they are on twitter and follow them (it’s all about being sociable).

If you think you’ll be using Twitter a fair amount you can use Hootsuite to keep organised. This video tutorial of how to use Hootsuite is a little old, but still helpful

Finally, remember to try and sound like a normal person! Don’t just keep plugging your own book. It can get boring pretty fast. And like everything, it’ll probably take some time to find your feet and figure out how to get the best out of it. But it can allow you to tap into audiences and people with common interests that might lead you to new ideas and opportunities…so worth a try don’t you think?