Last night we had book marketing maven Joel Friedlander as our guest for #indiechat, our weekly Twitter chat for self-published authors, where he shared tips on how to build your author base on Twitter.
Here are some of Joel Friedlander’s top tips for building your author base on Twitter.
Building a following
1) Do your research. Find the most influential people in your category, niche, or genre and follow them
2) Once you know who they are, start checking out their followers. They have already succeeded at what you are trying to do. You can grow your readership quite easily this way, just by “following the followers.”
3) Avoid accounts without an avatar (they are probably spam or fake)
4) Spend ten minutes a day following “real” people. If you search through top twitter people’s followers, you can easily see who the “real” people are. Joel’s strategy is outlined on his blog.
5) Use hashtags that are well known. Examples are
Your Twitter Profile
6) Write your profile very carefully, concentrating on what you offer to followers. And use all 160 characters.
7) Make sure there’s a good match between your Twitter profile and the site people will land on.
8) Don’t write your Twitter profile as if it’s for your alumni newsletter (nobody cares).
9) Don’t use a photo of your dog, or your car, or the moon. People want to connect with other people.
Selling your Book
10) Don’t try to SELL your book, it won’t work and you’ll just irritate people. Instead, link to some interesting or entertaining content, and let the content sell your book.
Things that Annoy Followers
11) Don’t set up an auto-DM that sends a message to everyone who follows you. Seems good, but it’s not. (it’s actually annoying)
12) Don’t use validation svcs, most people are way too busy to go through the hassle.
Every week we invite industry experts and authors to discuss and share tips on the indie and publishing landscape.
#Indiechat is held every Tuesday at 9pm Eastern.
Have a topic you’d like to discuss? Submit it in the comments below.
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