What's the Point of Twitter? - Lynne Garner

Once you’ve had a book published you soon realise you need to learn marketing skills. There are many ways to market your work and perhaps the easiest is Twitter. If you’ve not heard of Twitter it is a free social networking site. You can tweet as often as you wish, you follow other members and they follow you which hopefully creates a fan base. A tweet is a comment of 140 characters or less, also making this is a great way to hone your writing skills.

Some authors are using Twitter as a tool to prove they can write by creating ‘Twisters.’ Although I’ve not discovered any children’s writers doing this I have found a few who write for adults, for example:

"Time travel works!" the note read. "However you can only travel to the past and one-way." I recognized my own handwriting and felt a chill.”

By Ron Gould and another from: http://twitter.com/simonasylvester

“She insisted they call the baby Robert. If he’d known the real reason, he’d have put up more of a fuss.”

Now I’m a novice at Twitter but what follows are a few things I’ve discovered along the way. Firstly although you want people to know about your writing don’t just sell, sell, sell. To make things interesting you could use this five point formula:

·          Tweet a tip

·          Tweet an amusing quote

·          Tweet an interesting fact

·          Tweet a ‘plug’ for your work

·          Repeat the above

In addition you can also re-post a followers comment, this is known as re-tweeting. You can also link photographs to your tweets by joining: http://twitpic.com Although I have not done this yet with my personal Twitter account I have on an account I manage for the hedgehog rescue centre Herts Hogline – http://twitpic.com/photos/HertsHogline

When you first join find people with the same interest as you and follow them, hopefully they will follow back. Stick with it and keep tweeting. Slowly the number of followers will slowly increase and when someone follows you remember to follow back.

Now there are a few things you should not do on Twitter:

·               Do not tweet things that are personal

·               Do not moan about your editor, life, love or the universe

·          Keep repeating yourself

If you follow someone and they do not follow you back there is little point to continue following them, well unless you find them interesting. To check if someone returns the compliment visit: http://friendorfollow.com/

Lastly if you join Twitter and are looking for your first follower then follow me (http://twitter.com/#!/lynnegarner) and I promise to follow back.  

Lynne Garner