Today's guest post comes from Cherie Burbach, author, blogger, poet, crocheter, and geek. She is the About.com Guide to Friendship and has penned eleven books and ebooks, including Internet Dating Is Not Like Ordering a Pizza and 21 Ways to Promote Your Book on Twitter. She has published over 500 articles on the subjects of health, sports, and lifestyle. For more info, visit her website, Cherie Burbach. com.
Today Cherie talks about promoting on Twitter, and she shares three of her excellent tips with us.
One of the best things about Twitter is that it helps support all the other marketing efforts for your book. If you've written blog posts or received great reviews, go ahead and tweet them out. There are many ways you can make your book relevant on Twitter. Here are three of them.
Use Twitter Search
A lot of Twitter users I know seem to skip the search function on Twitter, but it's actually a really great resource to instantly find topics related to your book. When you see what people are chatting about, you can get in on the conversation. Remember, though, don't just spam with links, but actually find people to talk with.
For example, if you are a romance writer, see what people are talking about in terms of love and relationships. This helps you find out what's on people's minds and gives you an opportunity to share your thoughts. As a writer, you're an expert, whether you write fiction or nonfiction.
Another example would be if you wrote women's fiction. Search for items pertaining to friendships and working through issues related to women. The fiction writers I know are naturally curious about things, so tweet out news items you've found of interest, and respond to those with complaints or questions.
Tweet Out Quirky Events and Special Days
Don't we always love to find out it's national pancake day? Or blueberry day? Tweet out special days on the calendar and relate them to your book. You can find some of them here. People create these days and you can benefit by using them to talk about your book. This is one area where fiction authors may just have the advantage over nonfiction folks, because they can be creative and relate these special days to the characters in their book, the subject matter, something they'd like their character to do… and on and on.
Use Your Book's Name as a Hashtag
Hashtags (#) are part of the language of Twitter. They help serve as a search function, and also band together people who want to talk about a certain item. For example, I noticed Max Lucado did this when he was promoting his book, Max on Life. He'd send out snippets of wisdom from his book, with a tweet like this:
Notice how he used #maxonlife as his hashtag? This allowed the name of his book to get firmly planted in people's minds and created a nice search feature where people could look specifically for tweets related to his book. You could also use this for a special phrase you might have in your book, a character's name, or more.
Twitter is like a big cocktail party, but the great part is that you can talk for as long as you want! No one will kick you out at the end of the night. These are just three ways you can use Twitter conversation to help promote your book.
Author Bio:
Cherie Burbach is an author, blogger, poet, crocheter, and geek. She is the About.com Guide to Friendship and has penned eleven books and ebooks, including Internet Dating Is Not Like Ordering a Pizza and 21 Ways to Promote Your Book on Twitter. She has published over 500 articles on the subjects of health, sports, and lifestyle. For more info, visit her website, http://www.cherieburbach.com.
Thanks so much, Cherie, for sharing these great ideas. Remember to check out Cherie's book for even more savvy marketing tips.
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