How to use Twitter to expand your #AuthorPlatform

Unless you are completely unfamiliar with social media, you've at least heard of Twitter. A social media platform where you send out messages of 140 characters or less. When I first heard about it in 2008, someone explained it to me as a site based entirely on Facebook Updates. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of," I said with disdain. Fast forward to when I decided to indie publish and I knew I needed an author platform. Blog… and what else? I wanted my internet presence to amount to more than a few blog posts that would get lost in the void. So then I reluctantly went to Twitter. I created my profile and tried to figure it out. Fast forward again, and I'm at nearly 4K followers and I pretty much "live" on Twitter.

It is my absolute favorite way to connect with readers/bloggers/fans/other awesome people. It's also a quick way to reach a lot of people that you might not be able to reach. So how do you make Twitter work for you?

1. Follow as many book people/bloggers as you can. Don't do this all at once, because Twitter will think you are a spambot and shut down your account for a few days. Follow people who write in your genre, bloggers you read, agents you might be interested in. I'd also suggest following @maureenjohnson and @TaherehMafi, both authors who are brilliant at using Twitter.

2. Watch and learn. I spent at least a week just creeping on other people's Twitter feeds to figure out "how" to tweet. What people liked, what they found interesting/funny. Which leads me to…

3. Figure out your Twitter "style". This is very much like figuring out your writing style. I try to tweet in the same style that my books are, so people can judge what kind of books I write based on my tweets. I follow the styles of Maureen and Tahereh because they are similar to my personality. Some have described my feed as a string of non-sequitors and it is. Some of my tweets this week:

I also live-tweet events and my observations on them, like the Oscars, or the Superbowl. Other people find these observations amusing, so I normally gain a few followers during those times. I also added a "follow me on Twitter" option to all my contest entries.

4. Tweet! The best way to start is by responding to people. It feels REALLY WEIRD at first to tweet a complete stranger, but most people on Twitter are used to it. My beta reader/very good friend and I met on Twitter when I tweeted about sending out ARCs of one of my books. When you respond to people, that opens up a conversation and then those people will see how lovely and smart and witty you are and follow you back. The way to gain followers is to ENGAGE. The way to LOSE followers is by spamming EVERYONE with links to buy your books.

5. Host contests for bookmarks/swag/ARCs on Twitter. This is a quick and easy way to get some buzz going.

6. Join a chat. Every Thursday night I participate in #NALitChat, which is a chat for authors of New Adult. If you are unfamiliar with that little number sign and what it is doing in front of those words, read on. That is called a hashtag, and anything after that (WITHOUT spaces or punctuation) turns into a link that you can click on, and see what other people are saying about that subject. It's like a flag to add to your tweet so people can see what it's about.

7. #Use #Hashtags #ToYou #Advantage. There are a few writing #Hashtags like: #amwriting, #amediting, and those for various genres and categories.

8. BE YOURSELF. This is MOST important :)

Now get #Hashtagging!

Chelsea M. Cameron is a YA/NA and Adult New York Times/USA Today Best Selling author from Maine. Lover of things random and ridiculous, Jane Austen/Charlotte and Emily Bronte Fangirl, red velvet cake enthusiast, obsessive tea drinker, vegetarian, former cheerleader and world's worst video gamer. When not writing, she enjoys watching infomercials, singing in the car and tweeting (this one time, she was tweeted by Neil Gaiman). She has a degree in journalism from the University of Maine, Orono that she promptly abandoned to write about the people in her own head. More often than not, these people turn out to be just as weird as she is.

Her New Adult Contemporary Romance titles include My Favorite Mistake, which has been bought by Harlequin along with a sequel, My Sweetest Escape (January 28, 2014), Deeper We Fall and Faster We Burn and For Real (November 14, 2013) and the novella, Christmas Catch (November 1, 2014).

Her Young Adult books include Nocturnal, Nightmare, Neither, and Neverend (The Noctalis Chronicles) and Whisper, the first in The Whisper Trilogy. The second and third books in the series, Silence and Listen, will be out in 2014.

Her Adult Contemporary Romance titles include Sweet Surrendering, and, coming soon, Dark Surrendering.

Visit her online: http://www.chelseamcameron.com

Secrets to Planning a Rockin' Twitter Party

I know consider myself a Twitter Party Addict. I have managed three of my own and hopped on the bandwagon of over twenty of them.

It's a great way to spread the word about your book and to play as an 'appetizer' to a larger launch party.
 
THE LAUNCH

Who says you can only have one book launch party? Well I say, have many. This is the main event for your book. You've been building up to this for months. Doing it on multiple platforms will afford your book a lot of visibility. But even though Twitter is always hopping, you need to promo it a bit.

THE BUILDUP

I usually start my book launches that include a Twitter Party, Blog Party and Facebook Party with a mini-blog tour which includes all the authors who will be part of my Facebook Virtual Launch Party. We do this to build up the buzz.

About 6 weeks before the party all of the authors involved in the big Facebook Party event tweet about the Twitter Party coming (using a hashtag for the book title & a link to our Party Map Page).

The mini blog party kicks off 1 week before the Twitter Party. It's used to build awareness of all of the book release events coming. The Twitter Appetizer Party (which runs the Friday before the Facebook Party) is used to drive even more traffic to the book sales pages for participating authors.

The Giveaway announcement. We run a giveaway announcement on twitter (a daily tweet from each participating author) with link to Party Map Page which has the schedule of the mini-blog tour, the Twitter Party, Facebook Party, links to all books, and rafflecopter.


THE TWITTER APPETIZER PARTY

We call it an appetizer because it's the night before the big Facebook Party event (which usually last for 8 hours on a Saturday and is run by a number of authors not limited to the launch guest of honor).

These usually last 3 hours. Three hours is enough time to run 3 trivia games, intro the book, shout out for prize winners and share links to big party coming the following day on Facebook.


The trick though is to have about 3 other people who you KNOW will be there to help you keep the party going, promo the party, and invite others.

A neat way to make sure you know who's coming is to use the mini-blog tour to build an invite list and later tweet a reminder to participants.

PARTY MUST DO LIST

For a twitter party to work, you need to have the Trivia Questions, links, etc preset (you can use hootsuite or socialoomph to do this in advance). This makes things much easier and allows facilitator to just do promo, invite tweets, and personal interaction with crowd.

Announcing the party should be done 60 to 30 minutes before by the 3 party facilitators. Invites to fans who are on twitter at the time & share a party favor if they show up is a great kickoff. Have a main prize of about $25 gift card that you will give out at end of night.
 
Kick off party with party jargon, a swag giveaway like bookmarks, introduction of participating authors, book, book trailer. Then start the games. Try to stick with games that are themes of the book. In between shout out a reminder about follow-on Facebook party, shout out winners and 'thank you' to participants before running next game. Sticking to 10 questions for each trivia works.
 

Trivia ideas. Movie lines, guess that tune, caption picture contest and many more depending how creative you are.

WOULD YOU GO TO A TWITTER RELEASE PARTY?


by LM Preston, YA & MG Author, http://www.lmpreston.com/