How to Market your Books on Twitter
By Charles Moffat - March 2021.
Twitter is perfect vehicle if you're a writer or author and you are looking to promote your books, magazines, ezines, blog, etc. If it is a written product Twitter has what you're looking for:
People who Read.
The majority of people on Twitter are educated and fond of reading. If you want to market to people who don't read then you should check out YouTube and TikTok. It comes down to demographics.
Facebook is a generic website where people share family photos, photos/videos of their dogs or cats, and often get into heated arguments about things that often don't matter. Facebook is a time waster website. Some people do try to market their books or music on Facebook, but due to the Page Liking system only the people who physically click Like actually get to see marketing. Thus Facebook really only works well as a marketing device to people who already Like your product. It doesn't work so well for companies looking for new customers.
Likewise LinkedIn sounds like a great way for people to network, but in reality 99% of what you get on there is spam. People looking for jobs and/or people looking to sell you a product you don't actually want. Plus the way LinkedIn is designed it makes it very difficult to contact people in the first place unless you pay to get a premium account (which basically just entitles you to spam people).
Twitter however (and Instagram) are really about the hashtags. Hashtags like #amreading, #reading, #amwriting, #newbooks, etc is the reason why it is so easy to advertise books via Twitter. Instagram is also pretty useful for books, but because Instagram is more visual it is more geared towards book covers and better geared for music videos in a manner similar to YouTube.
Another aspect of Twitter is the idea of the Followback. Writers and authors frequently Followback other writers and also engage in something called #writerslift. A #writerslift basically is a post in which a writer asks fellow writers to follow them in return for a followback, creating the illusion that the writers have more followers. Part of the #writerslift however is also a call for fellow writers to tweet links to their books/etc and sometimes people seeing the tweets will buy the books in question.
Thus taking part in a #writerslift is very beneficial to writers because they gain followers and they sometimes also get sales.
And better yet, they sometimes get book reviews - often from fellow writers who know how important it is to get more book reviews. Sales + Book Reviews is basically what every writer needs in order to become successful as a writer. (This applies to both traditional publishing and self-publishing.)
Another advantage to Twitter is that anyone can visit or see tweets without having to Like or Follow a person. They just search for a specific topic of hashtag and then see the tweets on that topic. So if a person is looking for fantasy books then they might use the hashtag #fantasybooks and find a long list of books they could potentially buy, read and review. Nobody on Twitter sees this as spam however as authors are basically expected to be doing these kinds of posts on Twitter. They're not spammy as a result. But if someone did that on Facebook then people are either posting on a private author page (which only the subscribers who clicked Like will see it) or they are posting it on Facebook groups, where the posts will be marked as spam and deleted. Thus Facebook is not very author friendly.
Other websites also useful for authors are sites like Wattpad and YouTube. Wattpad is basically a social media site just for writers and readers, and it allows writers to post samples of their writing, their short stories, poetry, and even sell access to their books via Wattpad. It also means that readers can leave comments on the stories, offering writers a direct line to getting feedback and reviews from readers on specific chapters and passages.
YouTube is likewise handy for authors as it also operates on a systme similar to hashtags. A person simply searches for "fantasy books" and they will see a long list of videos about fantasy books, often with the most popular videos being shown first. YouTube thus is very handy for marketing niche topics. If a writer makes a series of videos about their "post zombie apocalypse romance novel" they would be promoting their writing to anyone interested in such a niche topic. The more videos they make the more followers they get on YouTube, the more Thumbs Up they get, the more comments, and the more people who actually go out and buy the author's books.
Twitter, Wattpad and YouTube are three websites that work well together for writers too. Twitter posts can contain links to both Wattpad writing samples and YouTube videos. Wattpad writing pages can include YouTube videos within the chapters and links to Twitter or YouTube. YouTube video descriptions can likewise be used to create links to Twitter and Wattpad. What you get effectively is a synergy where writers can use all three to promote their writing.
Couple those three with links to an Amazon Author page or various other websites that sell books (Eg. Any of the SmashWords publishers) and you've got a direct line for hooking readers and leading them towards buying the books from a variety of book sellers.
Or better yet, redirect readers to your author website where they can browse your books / short stories and choose which story they want to read the most. Or potentially buy multiple books.
Want to learn more about how to use Twitter and other types of social media to sell your books? Email designSEO and we will help you to sell more books.
