This is the second article in a three-part series about Twitter for writers by Frances Caballo.
Now here are eight reasons why Twitter is awesome for writers.
1. If you’re active on Twitter, it will refer a ton of traffic to your blog and website. (Twitter is my #1 source of website traffic.)
2. There is a large community of Indie authors on Twitter who are willing to help you promote your book and form supportive alliances. Endeavor to meet other authors in your genre, share blog posts and promote each other on Twitter.
3. Twitter will help you to market your books.
4. Twitter is where the news happens. If you read newspapers or listen to the radio, your news is old. What happens around the world is reported first on Twitter. How does this help you as an author? As an online marketer, you need to stay abreast of the news to incorporate big stories in your posts. Who knows? Some events might even relate to your books. For example, if you wrote a young adult novel featuring a young, female athlete, you’d want to tweet about the Women’s World Cup or women’s events in the Olympics.
5. You can use hashtags to easily find your readers, book bloggers, reviewers and literary agents on Twitter. You can also use hashtags to find people who love to read. Using the Advanced Search feature, you can find the right people to follow for your genre or niche.
6. Who wants to write long updates after spending the morning writing your next chapter? Twitter is great because the platform limits you to just 140 characters, including spaces. Of course, you’ll want to keep your tweet to no more than 110 characters so make space for retweets.
7. As in my example, on Twitter you’ll meet bloggers who will help you to advance your career as a writer by offering you various opportunities, including guest posts, mentioning your books, or retweeting you.
8. Twitter tracks trending hashtags. Sometimes the hashtags that are popular are #FridayReads and sometimes they’re #PictureBooks or other hashtags related to the world of writing or publishing. So stay tuned to trending hashtags because one might just fit in with your book’s topic or industry related news.
In the next and final article in this series, I’ll show you how to get started on Twitter.
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Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s written several social media books including The Author’s Guide to Goodreads and Social Media in 30 Minutes a Day. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writer conferences. Learn more about Frances, and sign up for her free email course, at SocialMediaJustforWriters.com.
