Most authors these days can call themselves entrepreneurs. There's a lot that goes into the business of writing besides storytelling. If you're looking to make writing a regular thing, especially when it comes to building and maintaining your writin...
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Twitter is the place for breaking news and sharing the latest social trends. Not only can you engage with readers here, but literary agents and publishers as well, who often use social media to scout for talent. Built around the short, witty post, Twitter also challenges us to keep it brief and interesting. Remember, Twitter does not provide an editing option once your tweet is live, so proofread carefully before you post.
Here are our best practices for using Twitter:
1. Use your banner like a billboard. Share your brand here, advertise your stories, create something that shows your personality. You want your visitors to recognize you, so this banner could serve you on your other social media accounts as well.
2. Make your profile picture recognizable. When you share a post or retweet another post, your profile picture is what people see. If you're trying to brand yourself, this image should be used across all your social media accounts.
3. Take advantage of all 160 characters of your bio. Provide links to your other accounts, show your personality and brand here, tout your writing cred, share your love of something. Use this space to make a connection with potential followers.
4. Stay true to yourself and your brand. Your tweets should be professional yet personal. Let your followers know what you stand for. Share story aesthetics, quotes, books you're reading, and interesting anecdotes from a day in your life. Of note: while it's important to be genuine, if you are especially passionate about certain controversial topics, you'll want to tread carefully when sharing personal opinions on your branded social media accounts. You may end up alienating some of your followers.
5. Be the first to break the news. If you want people to trust you to have your finger on the pulse of the industry, follow others in your field and keep track of current events. This allows you to start a conversation on a trending topic and to drive traffic to your account. If you are particularly passionate about a topic, you might tweet about it multiple times, changing it up a bit each time.
6. Be consistent. As with any social media platform, you'll want to tweet consistently but not so much that your followers feel like they're being spammed.
7. Ask and answer questions. A great way to start conversations is to ask others about their experience or opinion on relevant topics. And be prepared to engage with them afterwards.
8. Promote others. This can be as simple as retweeting another user's post. If you have something to say about their post, add your comment to the retweet to show your investment. You can also promote through hashtags or specifically tagging someone in your tweet.
9. Use Twitter as a career tool. Broaden your scope of knowledge and opportunity by following writers, agents, readers, and publishing companies. What are they talking about? What hashtags are they using? This will give you insight into their preferences and personality, market trends, and current events happening in the industry.
10. Research and use hashtags relevant to your industry. Hashtags are how tweets are categorized. If someone is interested in a certain topic, they can browse tweets with that hashtag. Social media experts recommend no more than three hashtags or people may be discouraged from retweeting.
11. Use the lists feature. Lists provide an effective way to organize, share, and find like-minded users. You don't need to follow the accounts you add to your lists. If you're not familiar with this feature, search Twitter Lists to learn more.
12. Share images and videos. Twitter data shows that tweets with videos or gifs rank higher than other forms of tweets. Be sure they're of high quality and the right dimensions so they appear properly in your feed.
