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.