The Karma of Tweeting Book Titles

I have a burn against people who continually hawk their books but never even click on others’ hawked books to check them out. And do they buy someone else’s book? I don’t think so!

Indeed, if we each bought just one book a week that someone tweets, all of us authors would be better off. And if we only wrote one book review a month for a book title that was tweeted (and then broadcast that), we would have a bunch of happy, not-so-desperate authors.

I did a very unscientific survey on Twitter and Facebook asking authors if they also bought tweeted book titles. I had an abysmal response rate. Pathetic, even. Very few people said they did. One person said he/she would buy but nothing sounded interesting.

Really?

I suggested he/she might want to follow different people. There are tons of titles/topics out there. If you don’t see any, find people writing what you do like.

Take a kind of selfie right now: How does it make you feel when someone tweets they bought your book or tweets they just left a review? How do you look, inside and out?

Well, share the love. Do unto others blah blah. Get it?

I probably buy a half-dozen tweeted books a week. (Okay, you’re right. I probably should seek professional help for that.) But my point is, I am trying to support people, and I entertain myself in the process.

Sure, lots of the books are not-so-good and some are awful.

But there’s also some great stuff the tweeps are making available. And it’s little money you are expending. Heck, I spend less on tweeted books than you’d pay for a Caramel Macchiato several times a week! AND I made somebody feel good!

I truly believe that if you expect others to buy your books, you have an obligation to buy some of theirs. Not all. Not even close to all. But click on the link of enticing tweets. Read the blurb. Sound like what you like to read? Buy it. Read it. Leave a review.

Karma is an interesting thing. What goes around, comes around. Do your bit to spread good karma.

Just in case you want to get your karma revved up, here are the three books I have published. I’d love to hear what you think!

Twitter for Writers: Keeping It Going

Maintaining the momentum to post day after day, month after month, year after year is daunting. Good intentions slide away. I have been tweeting, from my first account, since 2011. Yet, it wasn’t until 2014 that I was consistently tweeting (from three accounts at that point). Like all of us, I let pieces of my platform rise and fall depending upon what was happening in my life.

I realized that I had to be consistent if I were going to build my follower base, and I had to provide content they would want to read and retweet. So that’s when I got serious, and like the newly converted, I became an advocate for Twitter and blogging.

It paid off. While my numbers are not in the tens of thousands, across my three Twitter accounts, I connect with almost 10,000 followers. I have seen my page views for my three blogs rise to more than 3000 per month with me blogging just once a week. If I put up more content, I’ll bet I’d get even more page views.

Name recognition is what it’s about. Do I sell a bazillion books? Nope. Can I trace book sales to my tweets and blog posts? Nope. But I know me as a reader. If I know the name, have seen it a lot, I am more inclined to buy that book. Just ask Dan Brown and Stephen King if that name thing isn’t working for them.

So, how did I turn the corner on consistency? I came up with a system. I’ve already described parts of it:

1)   I create two or three tweets for each blog post (which I can use on Facebook, too).

2)   I collect content of interest to my followers by reading news items/articles and create tweets from them. One article easily equals five or more tweets.

3)   When making tweets about your book and how to buy, think of the tweet as a tiny book hook. Engage, intrigue, question, provoke so they click on the link.

4)   I retweet others, follow back those who fit my Twitter focus, and use hashtags to bring attention to my content.

5)   I arrange each day’s tweets in advance (I can do several days at once) and divide the list into two or three segments for tweeting at different times of the day.

6)   I attend Twitter parties like @StoryDam on Thursday evenings which allows me to share blog posts and interact with people who are also attending.

7)   Create your own Twitter party and invite people to attend. For example,  “You’re invited to a Twitter #mysterywritersparty Weds. 6-7pm MST. Bring questions/ideas/blog posts. Topic: Murder weapons you’ve used” That’s a commitment you are making, but ask some other mystery writers to co-sponsor it with you.

8)   I go back into my other two accounts and re-tweet my other accounts. My three alternate tweets about a blog post now I have been tweeted two more times. 3 tweets is multiplied as in the table below. G2T = @Good2Tweat; RR = @RomanceRighter; RG = @RiverGlynn

Tweet A version Morning post	Tweet B version Mid-Day post	Tweet C version Evening post
G2T; RT by RR/RG RR; RT by G2T/RG RG; RT by G2T/RR	G2T; RT by RR/RG RR; RT by G2T/RG RG; RT by G2T/RR	G2T; RT by RR/RG RR; RT by G2T/RG RG; RT by G2T/RR

Not even close to all your followers are on at the time you’re posting, so when I post three times a day, one tweet gets 27 chances for viewing. It’s the multiplicative effect. But, if you only have one Twitter account, you are still posting the link to your blog three times. Three is good! And if you’re using hashtags, someone else is helping you by re-tweeting.

Some Tweeps use services like HootSuite to schedule and post their tweets. That doesn’t work for me. I want to interact with my followers when I see an interesting post or I find things I want to re-tweet. Since I’m at the site anyway doing those things, I can find the 8 seconds per tweet it takes me to put them up.

Well, I’m done talking about Twitter. I hope this series has helped you to navigate the system you may have been avoiding. Remember, you only have to spend as much time as you allocate. Set that timer and tweet away!

Twitter for Writers: How to Construct Tweets that Get Re-Tweeted: Part 2

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Since I last posted about tweeting, there’s been some water cooler conversation on the author loop for Oak Tree Press authors. The reactions to Twitter range from disdain to delight, from cluelessness to consistent use.

One huge issue for these writers’ is time. SO, I timed myself. It takes me 8 seconds per posted tweet to copy, paste, and send the tweet to my followers. If I am sending 8 tweets in that time period, that is just over one minute to post. Now, additional time does go into the prep for those tweets, but it is not onerous at all. And you can control how many tweets you send a day and when you send them. More time goes into re-tweeting others via from followers or from hashtags. But, again, you have control over when and how much.

So, sorry, no sympathy here for the whiners who say it takes too much time. My response: Just how much time are you willing to allocate to promotion and marketing of yourself and your brand?

Back to work: Two weeks ago, I wrote Part 1   of this post. Too much to do in one post, so I split it. I think I’m going to have a book when I finally finish this series that began last fall! (Okay, a small book.)

So the goal is to be noticed, right? And noticing you means tweeps: a) re-tweet your tweets; b) click on the links you provide; or, c) both. If people notice you they are more likely to follow you.

One way I have found to get my followers to re-tweet me is to re-tweet their posts. I sometimes find them in my Twitter feed, and I re-tweet posts of interest to me and my followers.

On occasion, I click on someone’s name who follows me, and I re-tweet a number of interesting tweets. That brings me to their attention, thus, I am more likely to be re-tweeted. And most of their followers don’t follow me--yet. But by re-tweeting, then I pop up in the Twitter feed of someone else. I always get more followers from the person I r-etweeted followers.

I’ve read that getting the first 10K followers is the hardest. After that it expands easily. I agree with that. I don’t buy followers nor do I follow people who offer to sell followers. I’d rather grow gradually with real followers.

But as I get more followers, I get more re-tweets. Makes sense, eh? So work on growing that Twitter follower base and you’ll get more RTs.

What are some other features to attract re-tweets and/or clicking on links?

Ways to Get Re-Tweeted:

1) Hashtags are invaluable.

I said it in an earlier post I wrote, and I’ll say it again: join into Twitter via hashtags. This exposure introduces you to a wider range than your followers so you get more followers from like-minded folk. These people have tacitly agreed, like you, to re-tweet others with that hashtag. The potential reach for you is in the hundreds of thousands more than your small followers list.

I’ll repeat here the list of hashtags I use regularly:

#SundayBlogShare (Sundays for blog posts only)

#MondayBlogs (Mondays for blog posts only)

#WWWBlogs (Wednesdays for blog posts)

#ShareBlogPost (Thursdays for old posts mostly, can be new)

#ArchiveDay (Saturdays for old blog posts)

#BlogHer (any day)

#WriteTip (any day for writing tips, not promos)

#amwriting (any day)

#amreading (any day)

2) Be consistent in posting.

Followers start to look for you. I have even gone hunting for some I follow who haven’t posted recently. They come to depend upon your content and rely on you for a consistent presence and flow of consistent information that reflects your Twitter accounts focus.

Post daily, even if only once. And post at similar times. I post two or three times a day--Early morning, midday, and evening. People have tried to figure out the best hours and days, and there are articles all over the Internet on somebody’s study or other.

3) Analyze the highly re-tweeted posts and replicate where possible.

Okay, cute animal and baby tweets can go crazy, but that’s not my content, so I may click on them, I may re-tweet them, but I won’t create them. Not my thing.

Sex also sells, and I do create some of those for @RomanceRighter, as well as relationship topics, also highly re-tweetable. Feel good articles are also popular topics for re-tweeting.

Quotes are one of the hugest areas for re-tweets. Surely you can collect quotes for your account’s focus and re-tweet them. I have pages of quotes to dip into.

Another thing that gets re-tweeted a lot is quirky and odd facts. For @RiverGlynn, I tweet science facts (like the recent “9 Facts about Flatulence”) and info about paranormal happenings.

It’s a good thing recipes are so big in the Twitterverse. @Good2Tweat posts lots of recipes and links to recipes. I get tons of followers that way since we have a shared interest.

In fact, “how to do” tweets on just about anything is appealing to re-tweeters.

4) Be Yourself--whoever that persona is.

Related to number 3, being yourself is a feature of consistency. Followers do not expect me to retweet sex facts from @Good2Tweat, but @RomanceRighters followers expect it. So build a consistent persona and tweet accordingly. Authentic tweets get re-tweeted because you met your followers expectations.

5) Share “personal” information.

No, I don’t mean what you ate for breakfast. Yawn! Nope, share things that are important to you, like the birthday of a favorite author and tell why he/she is a fave. Or share that you are struggling with a knotty plot point and ask for help. Share the steps you are using to prepare for NaNoWriMo. This is also part of being authentic. You are a working author. That intrigues lots of people.

6) Grow your audience, and thus the potential for RTs, by finding influencers in your area of expertise.

You write like Michael Connelly so might follow him (he’s unlikely to follow back) and then cherry pick some of his followers to also follow. These are people who selected him because they like his tweets. After you follow some of them, go to those profiles and RT some of their tweets to get their attention. Many will follow you back, because like you, they are NOT Michael Connelly, but they want to hang with people LIKE M.C.

7) Use the handles of others when posting whenever possible.

When I have guest bloggers or I am posting on someone else’s blog, I tweet about it, and I use that person’s handle. @SuziAuthor has followers who see my tweet. I hang out with Suzi, well, that might be enough to entice them to follow. I sometimes mention other authors when sharing personal information. New eyes see my handle and I get followers. Again, the more followers you have the more RTs you get. Basic math, eh?

Using Twitter for authors continues next week. Stop back in to see some specific ideas for how to use Twitter for marketing and promotion of your books. Once you have built a following, you have folks to sell to.

If you haven’t visited my website recently, Sharon ArthurMoore-Author, please go by to check it out. It looks VERY different (and needed to!). 

Twitter for Writers: How to Construct Tweets that Get Re-Tweeted, Part 1

Have you been noticing how you are drawn to some tweets more than others? Tweeps (people who tweet) who get re-tweeted present the information they are posted in an appealing way and/or they choose topics that are popular with people at a certain time (trending). In this post I will begin the conversation on re-tweetable posts and continue it in two weeks.

What is a Tweet?

1) In 140 characters (spaces count as characters) you try to grab a reader’s attention.

That’s not a lot of room to express yourself. We novelists are used to mounds of words we can roll around in and toss about like fallen leaves. It took me a while to get the innate sense of how much to write and to develop some strategies.

If you tried tweeting your own content, you might have noticed the countdown in the Twitter message box. You’ll get better. For now, modify the message into two messages or use abbreviations. When splitting in two end one with ... and begin the continuation with …  That is the shorthand that tells tweeps there is more than one part.

One huge help for me was I tweeted a lot of recipes using Maureen Evans, author of Eat Tweet, as my guide. Every once in a while, I have to break the recipe into two parts, but mostly I get it in one. Here’s an example from @Good2Tweat (the food/culinary mystery focus is where I got my Twitter handle):

Gelato 2cmlk/1c cr+4egylk/.5csug Beat egz/sug 2 froth Wrm mlk/cr 2 foamy Slo por egz n2 mlk Ck 2 thck Sieve Chil ovnit N2 icecr mach Srv~4

Can you read it? Tweets often use abbreviations to save space. So while it is better to write whole words, people sort of expect the abbreviations.

2) When writing tweets, engage the reader with a question or provocative statement.

I wrote a post right before Halloween for “Romance Righter” on hybristophilia, a mental condition of women who fall in love with monstrous men. It was re-tweeted that week a moderate amount. But in mid-November, a young woman announced she was marrying Charles Manson. I re-posted my tweets and they went crazy. Lots and lots of re-tweets and many more blog post views! Here’s one:

Puzzled over young woman marrying Charles Manson? She’s probably a hybristophiliac #amwriting http://angelicafrench.blogspot.com/2014/10/women-who-love-monsters-not-just-any.html

Here’s one I tweeted during the holidays:

I am anti-Elf on the Shelf and so is she #ShareBlogPost http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2874808/Elf-Shelf-conditions-children-accept-surveillance-state-argues-professor.html

Both tweets share a common element: an attempt to engage the reader. That is a basic element in writing tweets people click the link on and/or retweet.

3) Maximize the potential to be noticed.

Use # sign (hashtags I posted about in December) to call attention to yourself to get followed and re-tweeted by people with like interests.

4) Tweet throughout the day to get to your followers in different time zones.

However, if you can only tweet twice, the recommendation I read is 9 am and 4 pm. You want people to begin noticing you. Irregular tweeting doesn’t build followers.

5) There are two ways to post tweets.

There’s a little feathery thing in the upper right of your tweet feed. You can click that to post a tweet. Or, and this is what I do, you can put your tweet into the box at the top of your feed labeled “What’s happening?”

6) Shorten the link you are tweeting to save space and keep tweet from looking cluttered.

For example, you want to tweet the link to a book title sold on Amazon.

These are two of the most used link-shorteners. The first is far and above the most used tweet shortener, but choose whatever you like best.

Bitly.com 

Tinyurl.com

Here’s the link I wanted to tweet for my friend Kathy Weyer’s book Stitches, her women’s fiction novel:

http://www.amazon.com/Stitches-Kathy-Weyer-ebook/dp/B00O0EQ3BM/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413549121&sr=1-1&keywords=stitches+kathy+weyer

That’s a bunch, isn’t it? Shortened on bitly.com, it came out like this:

http://amzn.to/1CvxKFQ

What a difference, eh?

7) What to do if retweeted or put in an on-line newspaper.

Common courtesy says we should thank people who RT tweets. But that really clutters your Twitter feed.

  

I don’t thank everyone, but a frequent RTer gets two things from me: a periodic TY and re-tweets of that person’s content.  Replying to my frequent RTers also gets me in front of their followers eyes.

I always thank a newspaper for including my tweet in the paper and I refer to the content in the reply. I get lots of followers that way.

Don’t just RT, engage. People will ask you questions or reply to one of yours. Engaging with them makes you more likely to be re-tweeted.

More on how to tweet and tips in two weeks.

Next week we have a guest poster! Sue Raajtkes will be here to share “Writing is Not for Wimps”. Be sure to pop in and see what she has to say.

Twitter for Writers: Hashtags are Presents to Open

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Wow, this is a big topic. No wonder Rayne Hall wrote her Twitter for Writers book. Too much! You know this is only a Twitter starter kit, right? There is so much more to Twitter than I will deal with in my posts. But, enough whining, today we focus on hashtags.

You probably noticed hashtags (#wordorphrase) in my examples in last week’s post about collecting tweets and sending tweets. Like this:

A month of ideas for “What Can I Write on My Blog Today?” #amwriting #MondayBlogs http://angelicafrench.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-month-of-ideas-for-what-can-i-write.html

1) Hashtags are one of the ways to get yourself re-tweeted by others. A hashtag is a label that gathers tweets with the same hashtag in one place. So, if you have an interest in writing, you might visit #amwriting after you finished your tweeting.

Use the search feature to find topics people are tweeting about by putting #amwriting (or #mystery or something else) into the search box and hit the little magnifying glass for the search. A list of tweets in chronological order with most recent first will pop up on the right. Scroll down and find some links you might want to explore and/or re-tweet. When you add a hashtag to your tweet, others might do the same.

Some hashtags are “live” 24/7. For example, #amwriting is always available. Others like #MondayBlogs (only blog posts, no book promos) only are used on Mondays. Posting other times, or not sticking to the blog-post-only rule, is bad form. Others will notice that you are abusing the hashtag and may not retweet you!

You can start your own hashtag category. But if you don’t let people know about it, they won’t use it, so what’s the point. I started one for sharing old (or new) blog posts (no books) on Thursdays. So each Thursday I post the hashtag rules on Facebook and tweet about #ShareBlogPost to build up an audience. Each week, I have more people using this hashtag. So my tweets are being sent to tens of thousands more people than would be true if I only tweeted from my accounts.

Here’s the deal with one-day-a-week hashtags. If you post to there, you need to visit the site two or three times that day and re-tweet others. That’s how it works. If people only used the hashtag, the tweets would just sit there undistributed. It only works if people re-tweet and/or visit the link in the post. 

2) Another thing I like about a topic-focused hashtag like #amwriting over the more general topic ones is that I can get a bunch of possible links to information on something I am interested in. I can scan #amwriting to find tweets on character development or plotting. They stay there, accumulated, so I can go at any time to peruse topics.

And I am shameless. If someone has a good topic, well, I can do my spin on that for a blog post I write. These hashtag sites are a great resource for topics for your own blog posts or novel topics.

Here are some of the hashtags that I regularly use. Not every tweet and not all at once, but I attach these more than others.

#SundayBlogShare (Sundays for blog posts only)

#MondayBlogs (Mondays for blog posts only)

#WWWBlogs (Wednesdays for blog posts)

#ShareBlogPost (Thursdays for old posts mostly, can be new)

#ArchiveDay (Saturdays for old blog posts)

#BlogHer (any day)
#WriteTip (any day for writing tips, not promos)

#amwriting (any day)

#amreading (any day)

3) A third use for hashtags is to have a Twitter party or gathering of like-minded folks. #StoryDam does this on Thursday evenings and authors have used it for a book release party using their #MyBookTitle (fill in your title) hashtag. Everyone in “attendance” attaches that hashtag to posts so everyone can see it at the same time. These gatherings can be even more frantic than the Facebook events you may have attended. Items get lost in the Twitter feed and sometimes you don’t know what was being responded to. It is critical at those parties to not only use the hashtag, but the @name you are responding to so the person has a shot at seeing it.

Having said that, it is like being at a cocktail party where everyone is talking at the same time. LOTS of energy, and you will no doubt find some new folks to follow who have interests aligned with yours. Bright and glittery things will attract your attention! It is crazy fun!

More on hashtags coming as well as the specifics for constructing a tweet that will get re-tweeted. Come back next week! Same time, same place!

Twitter for Writers: Twitter Doesn't Mean Fritter

Let me say, it’s nice to be back after my hiatus. I was posting at another blog, but it just didn’t work out so I bailed to return here. I did keep up my other two blogs (www.sharonarthurmoore.blogspot.com and www.angelicafrench.blogspot.com) while gone, but I missed you guys! 

Twitter is ubiquitous. We’ve all heard the stories of tweets that go viral. And wouldn’t I love that to happen with one of my tweets about one of my blog posts or book titles?

I have vociferous friends who refuse to tweet, calling it yet one more time waster. They’d rather be writing (so would I) then spending time contacting virtual friends in the Twitterverse. But, as a realist, I know my professional reality is marketing my work as much as writing it. And Twitter gives me a good ROI, return on investment.

This week, I’m starting a series of posts on Twitter for Writers in which I will simplify the world of Twitter, what it is and how it works, as well as strategies use it more efficiently for your purposes.

In a nutshell, Twitter can help drive traffic to your blog and to book selling sites. Eye-catching tweets gets re-tweeted to others followers and captured in some of the hundreds of on-line Twitter newspapers. You build trust, name recognition and followers so that when you tweet something, they want to help you spread the word.

I believe that at minimum an author ought to have a regular blog with content (not just book

promotions), an author page (or several) on Facebook, a presence on sites like Goodreads, and a few Twitter accounts. On Facebook, authors should belong to and actively participate in affinity groups who are potential readers of your work. Anything you do beyond that is the gravy on the mashed potatoes.

Notice I said “a few Twitter accounts”. I’ll be addressing that topic more fully in an upcoming post on maximizing Twitter coverage.

Twitter is unique among social media venues for several reasons. To me, the biggest are you have limited message space (140 characters), and you have the potential to contact hundreds of thousands more beyond your own set of followers. Even more than Facebook, the reach can be astronomical.

First, a little history. Twitter was created in mid-2006 (and there are some interesting, and conflicting stories around the creation that you can investigate on your own), and by the fall it had thousands of users. As of stats from 2012,

100 million users posted 340 million tweets a day! As of 2014, there are more than 500 million Twitter users with more than half being active users.

That’s a lot of potential audience for buying your books.

So what is Twitter and how does it work?

You set up one or more free Twitter accounts at https:twitter.com and then you find some people to follow. Select a few, click you want to follow, and then watch the Twitter feed those users send. The messages they send are called “tweets”. Watching what the feed looks like, how people grab your attention with their tweets and what others do with those tweets is the best way to learn.

First, setting up your account(s):

Choose a name to identify yourself to your followers. I messed up when I did this. I chose “cute” names, not name easily searchable for those wanting to find my books or blogs. Today, I would choose my author names as most of my friends have done. You can search for @CarynMcGill or @BreaBrown or @JoannFluke. You can’t find me with @Good2Tweat or @RomanceRighter. So do it right. Pick Twitter handles that are the names you write under--like I should have.

Create an intriguing author profile. Be sure to list a book title so it’s in view. Pick an avatar for your profile. Right now I’m using book covers for two and an odd science picture for the last. Some people have fancy backgrounds. You can do that, but at first, concentrate of learning the system.

Second, selecting people to follow:

You know author names who write what you write or people whom you admire and want to know more about through what they reveal in tweets. Use the search function at the top of your account and type in a name. If they have an account it will pop up along with the Twitter handle they use. All Twitter handles begin with @.

Click to follow the selected people. Their tweets will start showing up on your homepage. Re-tweet what you find interesting. This calls their attention to you. If you regularly retweet them, they may follow you. No guarantees.

To find others to follow, I go to the homepage of a person I’m following and see who they follow. I select more people from those lists. You can rather quickly build up your Twitter feed. [Caution: Twitter puts limits on following people I’ll address in a later post.]

I follow most of the people who follow me. I do not follow blatant advertisers nor people whose tweets I find annoying or objectionable. I can’t stop them (normally, but there is a way) from following me, but I don’t have to follow back.

Some people I follow will never follow me back, but I still want to read their tweets. It was a huge thrill when I got a follow from Emeril Lagasse! I immediately followed back. Well, he (or his PA) was just getting started so they followed anyone food related. Now that he has over 650K followers, he only follows 950+. I am not one!

Third, a few basics:

You’ll notice a range of options under a tweet. You can send a message to a tweeter. You can re-tweet the message. That sends it to anyone following you. You can like it so much you file the tweet in your “favorites” list. And there are more things.

Many tweets come highlighted. Some of the highlights are live links so you can go to the site they are promoting. Some of the highlights are hashtags so that tweets marked with # get collected so you can go read just those tweets. I am doing a post or two on hashtags and their use.

I hope this starter kit will entice you to try out Twitter. Set up an account and just read tweets for a week until I post the next segment of this series. See you back here for more!

I'm Baaack! New Topics and An Invitation

Hey, all of you wonderful people. I am re-activating this blog for general writing issues. I'm starting a series on Twitter; what it is and how authors can make it work for them. I hope you find it useful. I also will do more with other business-end topics just as in the past.

Stop back by next Tuesday and see what I am talking about.

Also, authors, if you are looking for a spot to guest post, I have three blogs. Pick the one that matches you best and send me a proposal at LEADMoore@gmail.com for what you'd like to do. Your post will be up for a week, and I promote it on FB and Twitter. I assume you will, too!

You could guest post on an appropriate topic or be interviewed by me. You would send me the well-edited post, a head shot, book cover(s) mentioned, and links for my readers to find you.

Pretty simple, eh? Take a look at my blogs and see which fits you best.

So contact me at LEADMoore@gmail.com if you want to appear on:

Write Away (general writing issues related to producing and marketing fiction)
www.samwriteaway.blogspot.com

Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time (food issues/recipes, mystery writing, women's fiction, historical fiction)
www.sharonarthurmoore.blogspot.com

Romance Righter (relationship and/or romance issues, chicklit, or romance literature; can be adult content)
www.angelicafrench.blogspot.com

Also, I would be most appreciative if you'd buy one (or more!) of my books and leave an Amazon review! Reviews are so important to authors. Thanks in advance!

Tweet Away

No, not the birdie tweets. You know about Twitter. Everyone does at this point, but even some of my critique group members still haven’t gotten on the Twitter Train. 

To me it’s as much a word puzzle as a Social Media connector. And I do love word puzzles. To draw traffic to my foodie blog (www.sharonarthurmoore.blogspot.com) I sometimes tweet recipes like this:

Black Bottom Cupcakes-pt 1  Mix 1.5c flr/1c sug/.3c cocoa/1t bs/.5t salt/.3c oil/1T vinegar/1T van. Beat. Put n muf pan ~18 1/3 full batter

BlackBottomCupcakes-pt 2 Mix 1c cr ch/1 egg/.3c sug/1/8t salt+1c choc chps. Top batter c 1 heaping t cr ch mix. Bake 350° 30m +/-

Gelato 2c mlk/1c cr+4egylk/.5c sug Beat egz/sug til froth Wrm mlk/cr 2 foamy Slo por egz n2 mlk Ck 2 thck Sieve Chil ovnit N2 ice cr mach ~4

Lmn Sqrz 350° 1cfl/.3c confsug/5T btr n2 meal Prss n2 grsd8”pan Bk 20 m. 1c sug/2Tfl/3Tlmnzst/.5t bp/.25t slt/2 eg/8T lmnjus. Por on crust. Bk 20 m

Or I might post referrals to other sites:

-To celebrate National Peanut Butter Day make these “Classic Peanut Butter Cookies” at http://bit.ly/eVE36D

-How dunking veggies sabotages your diet. Read more on "Six Diet Mistakes That Make You Fat" at http://t.co/YM8dO2K8

Some of my critique group members are retreating with me the next couple of days, and one of the areas we are dealing with, other than manuscript critiques, is Twitter--what it is, how to get set up, what you tweet, and so on.

Here’s what I am presenting to my group:

Twitter and How to Tweet

1) What is Twitter? Twitter is a condensed form of social media interaction consisting of messages to followers in 140 characters or less. The best way to explain this is through the Twitter in Plain English video.

2) Why Use Twitter? Twitter is a communication tool that allows participants to provide information in 140 characters or less. It is a way to announce information, share content, drive traffic to your blog, and build relationships by re-tweeting info others share.

3) How can I set up a Twitter account? You can sign up for Twitter for free at http://twitter.com/ When you sign up you will get a page on Twitter with your username at the end of it. My pages are http://twitter.com/good2tweat and http://twitter.com/romancerighter.  When you tell people to follow you (like friending on FB), you list yourself as @good2tweat or @romancerighter.

4) What is a Hashtag and how can I use it? A Hashtag (#) is a marker, or a tag used to keep Twitter messages together. The use of a Hashtag in your Twitter message makes it easier for people in that discussion to keep track of everyone's messages. When I did my Month of Soups series on “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time”, I used #soup. Everyone who followed #soup got the messages, not just my official followers. People just search for the Hashtags they are interested in. You can also create (and register) as new Hashtag.

5) Shortening the URL Twitter only allows 140 characters and the URL from a source you are using plus your message may be too long. It needs to be shortened. I use https://bitly.com/

I paste the URL in and it shortens it for me to share on Twitter. I also use it sometime for FB.

There are tons of articles about tweeting/Twitter. Google for yourself.

Top 5 To Try

• How to Reply to a Tweet on Twitter
• How to Set Up Tweet Later Auto Welcome for your Twitter Account
• How to Protect Your Tweets
• How to Decide if You Should Join Twitter
• How to Send a Tweet on Twitter

Author Platform—Yes, Again!

I know. Here I am again writing about building an author platform. Obsessed, you say? One woman's obsession is another woman’s focus. Call me focused. Really, really, really focused.

I have a sign revealed unto me. Truly. The last two days my “horrorscope” has scared me straight. Straight back to getting more writing done. The whole raison d’etre, eh, for marketing. So, here are they are. What do you think they mean?

“You are in the process of learning, growing, and improving. There’s a limit to how much of this you can do in a day. Go easy.”

Yikes! Did that not sound to you like a warn-off for Twitter/FB/blogging/website-ing? I mean, really, how can there be any other interpretation. “You have learned much about social media networking. Now get back to your writing.” Very clear! Wasn’t it? Or did it mean . . . Never mind, here is #2:

“You might procrastinate. It’s not because you can’t be bothered to take action. It’s because you are busy with important things.”

Okay. Call me crazy. Don’t those two contradict one another?

Tuesday’s horrorscope told me to stop on-lining (a non-drug type of mainlining). Wednesday’s said it’s okay because that stuff is more important than your writing. Or at least as important.

So what do I do with the sign? I mean, the Old Testament is filled with guys who ignored signs. Job was whale food. Noah presided over “the end of the world as we know it.” Eve . . .well, we all know how that turned out. The signs are there for a purpose. So what to do?

I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me Twitter or give me Facebook. Or the other way around.

Excuse me, please. I gotta get stuff posted today so more and more people will be screaming for the book I will write on weekends and during commercial breaks. Author Platform or Bust!

Building Author Platform While Tearing Down Writing (Time)

Members of both my critique groups have asked how I can be spending so much time on building my author platform? “Aren’t you losing writing time?”

Yes, indeed, I am. I try to keep up with two blogs, two Twitter accounts, a website, and two Facebook pages. Social Media Networking, indeed! I hardly ever see real people. Mostly my day is spent with virtual “friends” and “followers”. I am losing big writing time as I prepare blogs, tweet, and FB postings.

I post (mostly) on this, my writing blog, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I post on my foodie blog (www.sharonarthurmoore.blogspot.com). I try to write one or two of these articles a day so I have a storehouse to pick from when it is time to post. Then I must replenish the stock.

Everyday I post on Twitter accounts @RomanceRighter (where I give relationship advice and share links to relationship articles among other things) and @good2tweat (recipes, links to food articles, food quotes, etc.). I keep a tweets page for each account minimized on my desktop so I can post something every hour or so throughout the day. That keeps my name floating around so no matter what time someone signs on, I am there.

On Facebook, I have a personal page and a fan page. Truly, if I could figure out how to do it, I would eliminate the personal page and just do the fan page. That would be more in line with my writing goals, and it would have a sharper focus. Most of my posts there are to drive people to my Twitter accounts or my blogs.

Except for Twitter, I don’t post much, if at all, on weekends. I give myself that time off. Ha! Instead I spend the weekend preparing future postings, trying to get ahead of the daily grind of having meaningful posts.

So why am I spending these hours doing what I never thought I’d be doing? Why don’t I just write, as I saw myself doing when I “transitioned” a few years ago. Because it works! I have seen more traffic at both blogs, and people I don’t follow on Twitter are following me. How they found me, I don’t know or care.

As I have addressed on these pages before, the new reality is that I must market my own materials along with the publisher. When I attend the Southern California Writing Conference in San Diego next month, and meet there with agents and editors one-on-one, I want to be able to say, “I can let 2500 people know instantaneously that I have a book contract. And those 2500 are connected to tens of thousands more people.” So I build my platform, friend by friend, follower by follower.

But the underlying purpose of it all is based in my writing. I’m thinking of buying one of those books on being a weekend novelist, since that seems to be where most of my writing time comes from these days.

Tweet Me Well: @good2tweat

You met Alli Wesson, my personal chef character (from the “Dinner is Served” culinary mystery series I am writing) when she dropped by for an interview. She is quite a character, so to speak!

Anyway, Alli and I were talking about how we’re going to develop a marketing plan for the “Dinner is Served” series. One thing that occurred to me, and Alli just loved it, was to start a Twitter following of her recipes. That is such the hot thing these days among foodies.

So I set up a Twitter account. Follow me there @good2tweat. I promise some cooking tips, food facts, and recipes in miniature. Additionally, I have a food blog, "Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time" at www.sharonarthurmoore.blogspot.com. If you go to the food blog, take the garlic quiz.

I ordered Eat Tweet: 1,020 Recipe Gems (Maureen Evans), and I follow Maureen on Twitter. She is amazing! She does unusual stuff, complicated recipes, even ethnic ones and she does it in 140 characters or fewer. That includes spaces and punctuation by the way. To show you what I mean, here is a recipe from Alli that appears in Prime Rib and Punishment, the book I am currently writing:

Savory Butter: Pulse n mini fd proc .5cbutter/3T bell pep/1grn onion/1clv garlic.

Sprd bread or Portobello shrooms n grill. Srv 1T on cookd meat.

Alli and I are going to tweet some recipes to those of you who like word puzzles AND cooking! Look for me on Twitter now @good2tweat and you will find cooking tips, recipes, and food facts accumulating.

Whether you like to cook or not, you may have friends who do. Let them in on Twitter recipes. Build up my traffic for that Twitter account! Retweet me to all your friends.

I gotta admit that I am having trouble with getting my head around how much marketing we are expected to do for our books. I get it that budgets are tight, and I get it that NO ONE cares more about my books doing well than I do. Still. More on marketing in a later column.