Original image via Flikr Creative commons, courtesy of Manuel W.

For the last couple posts, we’ve been talking about how to use Twitter effectively. Too many writers are like Stormtroopers—lots of shots fired  tweets that hit NOTHING.

I can admit, when I got on Twitter (when it was invented) I didn’t get it. I would—KID YOU NOT—freak out when people I didn’t know followed me. WHAT? Are you, like, a stalker? Yes, I was missing the ENTIRE point of Twitter. Hey, we all start somewhere.

Do you have to do Twitter? No. No one will take you to writer jail because you didn’t. Is it wise to use Twitter? ABSOLUTELY.

I strongly recommend Twitter for two main reasons. First, couple Twitter with a good/consistent blog and this is your best formula to go viral. Secondly, Twitter helps us find READERS (and helps readers find US).

Going Viral

We will rarely go viral from Facebook because the nature of Facebook is more intimate and the platform moves much slower. People are less likely to discover us/our work from Facebook than they are Twitter.

In fact, I would imagine that many of you who subscribe to this blog, likely found me via Twitter. And since my tweets are written in a way to attract only the brightest and best-looking and talented…. :D. Y’all get the point.

This is why I want authors to blog and to blog off their author WEB SITE. Someone sees a tweet for a post that looks interesting and click and enjoy the post and guess what is in the sidebar for sale? BOOKS.

***Or, in my case the footer of each post since I did all the dumb stuff so y’all don’t have to.

This is a non-invasive way to cultivate readers and sell books. We have a post. We serve. We entertain. We aren’t doing the:

Hi, I’m a writer. BUY MY BOOK! BUY MY BOOK! BUY MY BOOK! I can’t feed my family unless you BUY MY BOOK!

Show don’t sell. Our blog gives potential readers a glimpse of who we are. They sample our writing voice and see we are professionals since we post more than every harvest moon. We have taken time to engage without asking for money. Twitter is the road sign guiding people to the rest stop of their choosing.

Enough people like a certain rest stop? That is when we go viral.

Going viral is AWESOME. Trust me, when you see THIS on the bottom of a post? GREAT FEELING.

And yes, there are a lot of shares on Facebook, but many folks discovered the posts on Twitter then chose to share with their more intimate community on Facebook.

My post Brave New Bullying and Amazon Attacks has 328 comments and still climbing. And I say this VERY humbly because all I do is my job. But, it is not uncommon for this blog to have triple-digit comments. Twitter is a BIG reason for that. And I’ve been blessed to go viral many times and not always for writing or social media posts. I blog about everything.

I STILL have people arguing over What Went Wrong With the Star Wars Prequels even though I posted it years ago. FABULOUS comments. Very well-thought out. Some thousands of words long.

Cultivating Readers

Original image via Flickr Creative Commons courtesy of Sodanie Chea

There is one bone-headed statement that makes my head hurt. And I have heard it from all levels of writers from noobs to NTYBSAs. In fact, one BIG author once said, “I don’t like Twitter. Only writers are on Twitter.”

*head desk*

I replied, “There are over 280 MILLION active Twitter users. They’re all writers. Really?”

What I then pointed out was that this author tweeted writing quotes, talked about writing, blogged about writing. It was the All-Writing-All-the-Time Channel. If my goal is to catch a lion, but I bait the traps with peanut butter, who is the fool for griping about catching mice?

Many of us are writers because we were interested in SO many things, writing was the only way we could do them all. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an archaeologist-medical examiner-ballerina-oceanographer-ninja-Navy SEAL. I’d imagine most of you had similar career plans at age 7.

We became writers because we have an insatiable love for so many things. And we have unique eyes and an imagination to bring those worlds to life. We breathe life into variations of 26 letters in various combinations to create entirely NEW worlds and characters SO real they make a bigger impact on lives than a lot of living, breathing humans.

Yes, we have a God complex.

Thus, when using Twitter, I DO recommend #MyWANA, #amwriting, etc. We NEED a group of professional peers. But never mistake your colleagues for your audience. Too many writers are all talking to each other, selling the same people who already have more books than they could finish in a lifetime. We are worn out.

Twitter Access

In my book, Rise of the Machines—Human Authors in a Digital World I go into far more detail, but here’s the highlight reel. What do you write? Who is the most likely person (who is NOT an avid reader who will read anything) to read your book?

If I write military thrillers, might be a good idea to follow the military hashtags—#USMC, #Army, #Navy, #USAF. Make friends, talk to people. Maybe even ask for advice. Admit you’re a writer and you want to nail the details. Humans are a super-helpful bunch.

If I write about vampires? #TrueBlood #vampires #supernatural might be good places to pop in and take a look.

Christian authors? #Jesus #Christian #lifechurch, etc.

Write about cowboys? #rodeo #horses

Suspense, mystery, crime? #DowntownAbbey #DiscoveryID #SwampMurders #JoeKenda #AR15

Sci-Fi? Try #starwars #startrek #physics, #geek, #DrWho, #Nova

Use a little imagination. I find it funny that writers have the capacity to dream up parallel universes, new forms of magic, unknown technology and yet, when we get on social media? #writers, #books #readers is how creative we get.

But this is why it vexes me when people just write off Twitter as useless. Twitter is probably THE MOST effective way to find our potential readers, talk to them, and eventually cultivate a relationship that will hopefully spread to that person’s network.

Twitter DOES have the capacity to help us go viral, but it is still an investment daily of US. I have a little over 13,600 followers. Other authors SMOKE me on number of followers. But I would rather have 5,000 VESTED followers then 30,000 people who could care less what I have to say.

I’ve tweeted almost 27,000 tweets. Granted, I’ve been a member of Twitter for seven years. Not a SINGLE tweet of mine is from an automated system. All ME. Small chats every day add up. Just hop on, talk a little, share a link, talk to people, then back to work.

Buying Twitter Followers

This dovetails into my next point. In the beginning (say, back around 2008-2012), I feel outsiders cared more about the number of followers than they do now. “WOW, she has 40,000 followers. She must be IMPORTANT.” But, over time, our audience has wised up.

Sure, feel free to buy followers. But, in my mind, that’s like hiring a prostitute to offer us a long-term committed relationship. Purchased followers aren’t vested. They don’t care. They make the numbers look good and maybe stroke our ego, but our goal should be to create relationships that might translate into book sales.

Not ALL Sales are Direct

When we take time to be human and talk to people without an agenda, they appreciate it. It’s also good for our souls since most of us feel icky simply talking to people so they will BUY something. Never underestimate the word-of-mouth power of someone who may never buy your book.

I have all KINDS of people I talk to who aren’t authors. BUT they have friends or family who are. Whose books do you think they recommend?

In the end, using Twitter wisely is a fantastic investment that doesn’t take a lot of time. A handful of tweets a day over time grows deep roots that eventually yields fruits.

I LOVE hearing from you!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of JANUARY, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

For those who need help building a platform and keeping it SIMPLE, pick up a copy of my latest social media/branding book Rise of the Machines—Human Authors in a Digital World on AMAZON, iBooks, or Nook. 

The post Why Writers Should Use Twitter (and HOW to USE It Effectively) appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Image courtesy of Cellar Door Films WANA Commons

Twitter is a highly effective social media tool for writers when used properly (which is code for DON’T SPAM US ABOUT YOUR BOOK). There seems to be a lot of concern about numbers of followers, but I want to give some advice:

Ignore the Numbers

There is only one reason we need to care about Twitter numbers. We need to be following enough people in return or Twitter will not allow us to follow more. There is a certain ratio to be maintained and this is just one of many ways that Twitter combats spammers. If I click on someone and they are following 350 people and have 3 followers? That’s a HUGE clue this is a bot.

Yes, I have over 9,300 followers (I had to look it up), but I was also a member of Twitter before anyone knew what the heck it was. I’ve been on Twitter FIVE YEARS. New people get wrapped up in not having enough followers, but just relax.

Talk to people. Use hashtags. Create relationships. #MyWANA is a great place to start because I warn people once about auto-tweeting then I report them as spammers. A good number of the people using #MyWANA are real people.

Large Numbers DO NOT Mean More Influence

There are all kinds of services out there willing to get you a zillion followers for a fee. When you see someone has 25,000 followers, maybe they worked to get that following, but they also could have paid for it.

Means NOTHING.

WANA is all about a team. We work together, thus content travels exponentially, not linearly. I don’t need 25,000 followers to reach 25,000 people. I just need a couple more people with decent followings to tweet or REtweet what I have to offer.

Having 50,000 followers doesn’t translate into influence. It’s akin to me  me holding up a phone book claiming I have 50,000 “friends.”

WANA is a lot about doing more with less. It’s why I stress authenticity. People ignore automation, and they RESENT automation made to look like a real person. I just followed a writer and immediately got this auto-tweet:

Thanks for following! Which do you prefer? Vampires or werewolves?

I’m sure some social media expert recommended this behavior, but it is SPAM and it is ANNOYING. I wanted to tweet back, Actually, I prefer people not to crap up my DMs with automated silliness.

Focusing on the Numbers Can Be a Ticket to Crazy Town

Piper Bayard used to make me nuts with this when I first dragged her on to Twitter back in 2009. She’d have a day where she lost a handful of followers and then she’d comb through her tweets worried she’d said the wrong thing or insulted someone. Instead of focusing on writing, she wanted to eat chocolate and cry.

She’s totally outgrown this, btw.

I never look at my numbers (unless I am writing a blog and I have to get an idea where I stand). We can lose followers for any number of reasons, and often it has NOTHING to do with us.

Aside from Being an @$$clown

Unless you are misbehaving and being unprofessional FUGGETABOUTIT. And if you are misbehaving and being unprofessional, STOP IT. What takes years to build takes minutes to destroy.

Twitter is awesome because we can go viral more easily than any other social site…but it can be a nightmare because we can go viral more easily than any other social site.

Some random woman made a snarky, mean comment about Ice T’s wife and fans went for her digital throat. She practically had to go into Witness Protection, and the comment, I’m sure, was nothing she thought much about before she tweeted it.

Yes, we tweet in our jammies, but we are not alone.

We can be real, fun, chatty, and authentic. We can even engage in deep discussion. BUT if you couldn’t say it at the company BBQ and expect to still have a JOB the next day…DON’T TWEET IT.

As far as losing followers. Ignore the numbers and save the angst.

Reasons We Lose Followers (Aside from Acting Like an @$$clown)

Twitter Could Have Taken Down The Account

A lot of those who follow us are bots. They could have finally been “found out” and reported enough and Twitter smited them…and now you’re eating a pan of brownies and calling your therapist because Twitter did you a favor and smited a bot.

DON’T.

Some People Get Hacked and Have to Start Over

Some people get hacked and have to close down an account. Often, if you tweet good stuff…they will find you. Depending on how the person is hacked, they could lose all their followers. Don’t freak out. The person hacked will look for you and refollow.

Some People Don’t Have HootSuite or TweetDeck and Get Overwhelmed

People are getting more and more social media savvy, but those of us who use TweetDeck or HootSuite are spoiled. We have a tool that manages all the influx. We can be chatting away, not realizing some Twitter Noob with Regular Twitter thinks we are blowing up their feed and they are having a complete panic attack.

OMG!!! @KristenLambTX never SHUTS UP! She’s tweeted four times in the past 30 minutes.

Often they might unfollow, then complain to a friend…who then shows them the beauty of HootSuite and TweetDeck and then they realize we really weren’t tweeting too much. They had the wrong format to manage any active conversations on Twitter.

Some People Simply Lack Good Taste

And of course there is this: We cannot be all things to all people. Shocking as it may sound there are even people who don’t like me.

*GASP!!!!*

I know, right? Which proves there are plenty of people in the world who lack taste and the sophistication to appreciate how awesome we are. They probably hate kittens and unicorns too, so just feel super sad for them and hope they come to their senses.

At the end of the day, focus on people, not numbers, not technology. Have you ever nearly had a panic attack when you saw you’d lost followers? Do you ignore your numbers? Do you now feel super liberated because you have permission to LOOK AWAY?

I love hearing from you!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of May, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. If you leave a comment, and link back to my blog, and mention my book We Are Not Alone in your blog…you get your name in the hat THREE times. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly.

I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

And also, winners have a limited time to claim the prize, because what’s happening is there are actually quite a few people who never claim the critique, so I never know if the spam folder ate it or to look for it and then people miss out. I will also give my corporate e-mail to insure we connect and I will only have a week to return the 20 page edit.

At the end of May I will pick a winner for the monthly prize. Good luck!

The post I LOST THREE Followers—Twitter & Tips to Keep from Going CRAZY appeared first on Kristen Lamb.