As with any social media example, Twitter can be used to share anything from the most mundane details of your life—like what you had for lunch—to the much more relevant and exciting, such as promoting your book!
Remember: The goal for authors should be to engage your target audience by being entertaining, sharing useful information, or serving as a resource.
Here are some examples:
- An author of a financial book could share tips for saving money and planning for retirement.
- An author of a memoir about overcoming adversity could share motivational messages.
- An author of a children’s book could share fun things to do with your kids.
- An author of a cookbook could share recipes or quick cooking tips.
- A novelist has to be a bit more creative and develop a unique presence online. You could send tweets from the perspective of characters in your novel or share interesting excerpts from or insights into your next book.
Remember that it’s all about cultivating your audience and sending tweets of interest to them. Here are some additional ideas for content to post on Twitter:
- Link to your blog posts
- Link to other people’s blog posts (Use RSS feeds to pay attention to interesting blogs and share the results with your followers)
- Link to articles (yours or other sources. Could be major news outlets like the New York Times or a lesser-known site.)
- Brief tips with links to additional information
- Brief tips without links!
- Invites to upcoming events
- Announcements about conferences you are attending
- Announcements about speaking engagements you are conducting
- Recommended books, software, online resources, or just about anything that your followers would enjoy
- Free giveaways. Use Twitter as a tool for giving away copies of your book, a free report, or a ticket to your event. Get creative!
Twitter can be a powerful tool for authors who want to cultivate an audience of readers. If you’re just getting started, pay attention to how other authors are using Twitter, along with what you like and don’t like about their posts. The more you watch, the more you can learn and ultimately develop a strategy that feels comfortable for you.
If you like this blog post, you’ll love our Author Toolkit covering websites, blogging and social media for authors. Check it out!
This is an informative post giving valuable suggestions for using Twitter. Twitter is becoming my favorite social media site. I have been using it to retweet notices about writing retreats, workshops and conferences, give a nightly #writetip suggestion for improving skills when writing, and provide a nightly link to a just-published Blogger blog post. @BarbaraMcDWhitt