Five Ways to Use #Twitter To Grow Your Author’s Platform (With Examples)
One hundred and forty characters two hundred and eighty characters of writely goodness. When I started blogging, oh back in the dark ages of blogging seven years ago, Twitter was just a toddler. At the time I was signing up for every platform possible to get my blog Astrology Explored noticed. When I encountered Twitter, which at the time defined itself as microblogging, I scratched my head. What the heck is one hundred forty characters good for?
I was so wrong.
Now, I admit to flailing around Twitter for a number of years so that it took this long for my astrology twitter Starrynightastr to reach one thousand one hundred and forty-three followers. I was quite proud of this until my son laughed at me with his two twitter accounts and over three thousand followers.
Twitter now stands is one of two de rigeur social media platforms nearly every writer uses. So much that new writers, once they set up their blogs run to twitter to set up their account. But now you have it, what do you do to make your followers grow?
What do you do to get followers on your team?
1.) Do I have to say this? In any forum you are part of put a link to your twitter handle in your signature. If you are funny, clever and/or interesting enough people will follow you.
2.) Follow people to get them to follow you back. This seems obvious and the first go to people are people we know. But after clicking on mom and dad to follow your tweets what to do? Follow people who you find interesting. Some you follow for funsies because it is highly unlikely a famous author is going to follow you back. But others are writers just like you who are looking to connect with other writers. Go ahead, overcome your innate writer’s shyness and click them. Most will not bite.
One you click them engage them. Retweet their tweets, heart their posts, strengthen those bonds between you. You don’t have to do everyone, of course, but you’ll eventually get more out of this process if you are recognized as someone who pays attention. Do I have to say people will tend to retweet you if you retweet them? There, I said it. Promote other people as shamelessly as you do yourself and they’ll return the love.
3.) Create diverse content. You don’t have to work hard at this. Retweet other people’s tweets, put up links to your blogs posts (do this automatically through WordPress,) make wise observations about the world (or silly ones if it suits you.) Put up humorous sayings. Heck if you subscribe to a Twitter management service like unfollowers.com they’ll even post a pithy quote from time to time.
4.) Explore the world of hashtags. Hashtags slings your posts past the sphere of influence you’ve created into the wider Twitterverse. Hashtages exist for everything and everyone under the sun. You can even find trending hashtags in the extreme left of your Twitter screen under “Trending.” (Pro tip: Stuck on a topic to blog on? Check the Trending box and pick what interests you.) There are hashtags on generic as well as specific topics. A popular ones for writers are #amwriting #writerslife #writersproblems. But you can also use the a hashtag for your genre of choice #SF #SFF #SO and so on. Once you use a hashtag, a drop down opens to suggest like tags. Use those and post in more than one place. If you are funny,clever or interesting enough, people will follow you. I put in little conversations between me and one of my characters. Strange? Geeky? Yes. But writers relate. Many of us talk to our characters. We just don’t tell other people that. Ssssh.
5.) Thank everyone profusely for retweeting and or giving a little heart on your post. This is time worth spending. The more you pay attention to other people the more (hopefully) they’ll pay attention to you.
And some final words. Don’t take Twitter too seriously. No really. Spend more time doing other things than typing your latest Twitter post. Otherwise it becomes work and not fun. Another caution. There are people who get into knock down, drag out twit attacks and that’s sad. And foolish. Do not engage in any conversation that is less than supportive of another human being. When on twitter make sure you are one of the white hats. Have fun with Twitter. Works better.
“Twitter bird logo 2012” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Twitter_bird_logo_2012.svg#/media/File:Twitter_bird_logo_2012.svg
Thanks. It is very insightful. I can use this stuff. While I’m at it, did you ever look at my blog? What can I do to beef it up? If you don’t mind.
Yes, Dave, I did look at your blog.
I suggest the following.
My default advice is to spend the $5 or $10 bucks a month to get a self-hosted blog, and spend the fifteen bucks to get your own domain name. It just doesn’t look professional to use one of these blog farms with your name all over it. But if you don’t feel your ready, then you’re not ready. But for sure do these things:
a.) get rid of the static front page. When Google crawls it and sees the same content over and over its little bot mind thinks you haven’t updated anything. Businesses use static front pages but individual blogs? Usually doesn’t work, at least not this stage to the game.
b.) Build more content and soon. The more content you have the higher it ranks on search engines.
c.) Add images to each post and make sure you have an alt tag in each picture. I do not know how Weebly works, so I can’t give you specifics, but in WordPress when you insert an image you have an opportunity to add an alt tag with a keyword to the image. Alt tags are a signal to the search engines that you have more content on your page then just your words.
d.) Go forth and learn about keywords and use them in your titles and text. Bots count the number of times the keywords are used and use that number to rate the authority of your blog on the subject matter on which you wrote.
Here is a good article on SEO basics: http://www.blogtyrant.com/beginner-blogging-seo/
Yes, Dave, I did look at your blog.
I suggest the following.
My default advice is to spend the $5 or $10 bucks a month to get a self-hosted blog, and spend the fifteen bucks to get your own domain name. It just doesn’t look professional to use one of these blog farms with your name all over it. But if you don’t feel your ready, then you’re not ready. But for sure do these things:
a.) get rid of the static front page. When Google crawls it and sees the same content over and over its little bot mind thinks you haven’t updated anything. Businesses use static front pages but individual blogs? Usually doesn’t work, at least not this stage to the game.
b.) Build more content and soon. The more content you have the higher it ranks on search engines.
c.) Add images to each post and make sure you have an alt tag in each picture. I do not know how Weebly works, so I can’t give you specifics, but in WordPress when you insert an image you have an opportunity to add an alt tag with a keyword to the image. Alt tags are a signal to the search engines that you have more content on your page then just your words.
d.) Go forth and learn about keywords and use them in your titles and text. Bots count the number of times the keywords are used and use that number to rate the authority of your blog on the subject matter on which you wrote.
Here is a good article on SEO basics: http://www.blogtyrant.com/beginner-blogging-seo/
Thank you, Beth, for emphasizing the importance of Twitter. I feel like I’ve been flailing along but your post has encouraged me to utilize Twitter as part of my author platform.
Thanks again!
Jennifer
Jennifer,
You’re welcome and thanks for reading!
Beth
Thank you, Beth, for emphasizing the importance of Twitter. I feel like I’ve been flailing along but your post has encouraged me to utilize Twitter as part of my author platform.
Thanks again!
Jennifer
Jennifer,
You’re welcome and thanks for reading!
Beth