Social media. Love it or hate it.
Utilizing it is a fact of life for authors. There are a multitude out there, with new ones emerging all the time. I understand how daunting it can be.
Today I have a special guest post for you from Twitter expert Jo Linsdell. Jo is a best selling author, illustrator, and internationally recognized marketing expert based in Italy. She has just launched her latest book How to be Twittertastic.
Top Twitter Tools for Authors
By Jo Linsdell
Are you ready to be Twittertastic?
Twitter is the most immediate of all social media and allows you to connect with readers and others from the literary industry from all over the world. The fastest growing network with a 44% growth from 2012-2013 Twitter now boasts 255 million monthly active users.
A lot of authors shy away from social media as they think it will eat into their writing time too much. The beauty of Twitter is that everything is bite-sized. Coming up with something of 140 characters or less isn’t going to take away too much of your time.
Today I’m going to share with you some of my favourite tools and why they make my “Top Twitter Tools for Authors” list.
1. www.Canva.com
Twitter recently did their biggest ever redesign of their site and have given much more space to visual content. You now get a huge header banner and a larger avatar. Photo’s and video’s have their own separate section in search and images have more space both on the tweeter stream and on profiles.
Canva is a great site for creating professional looking images quickly. The basis version is completely free of charge and has loads of templates you can edit to suit your needs. Whether you want to create an infographic, an image with a quote on it, or show off your author pic and book covers, Canva is the tool to use. It even has a button that lets you share the image straight to your Twitter profile when you’ve finished designing it. Or you can save it as a jpeg to your computer for sharing later on.
2. www.ClicktoTweet.com
This site allow you to create clickable pre-made tweets for easy sharing. I personally use this site a lot. Include a click to tweet inside your book on one of the last pages to encourage readers to spread the word about it. Add click to tweets to your website/blog. Add them to guest posts and interviews. Include them in your media kit.
Here’s one I put in my media kit for my book How to be Twittertastic:
All people have to do to tweet it is click on the hyperlink. It will then automatically post to their Twitter account, try it 😉 The easier you make it for people to share, the more likely they are to do it.
3. www.SocialOomph.com
There are loads of sites that allow you to schedule tweets in advance. This is one is my favourite though. It’s a lot more basic than a lot of the others and has less features but that’s one of the reasons why I like it so much. It’s clutter free and easy to use.
Scheduling some of your tweets in advance is a great way of maintaining a constant Twitter presence without actually having to be on the site all the time. Perfect for busy writers that don’t want to get distracted from their writing. Once week schedule some tweets to post through out the week. These tweets can be links to articles you’ve written, quotes from reviews on your book, or pretty much anything else you fancy.
Don’t forget to check in a couple of times in the week though to interact. Social media should be social 😉
4. www.Paper.li
This site allows you to create your own ezine. When you set it up you give it a title, pick a category, and insert keywords. The site then automatically builds an ezine pulling tweets that fit your instructions. It even tags the people it includes in it when it tweets the ezine to your Twitter profile.
It’s easy content for you as once you set it up you can forget about it. No maintenance required. By tagging the people it mentions in the tweet you get to connect with more tweeters. Most people mentioned will retweet the ezine or reply to you with a thank you tweet for including them which increases your profile engagement and reach. It’s a great way to make new connections especially if you don’t feel comfortable reaching out to people you don’t know.
Do you have a favourite Twitter tool? Share it in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.
Jo Linsdell is a best selling author and illustrator and internationally recognized marketing expert. She is also the founder and organizer of the annual online event “Promo Day” (www.PromoDay.info) and the Writers and Authors blog (http://WritersAndAuthors.blogspot.com).
Her latest book “How to be Twittertastic” is available now on all Amazon sites.
How to be Twittertastic teaches you what Twitter is and how to use it to build your author brand, connect with readers, and sell more books.
Learn strategies and tips that will help you leverage your Twitter presence and get the most out of your tweets.
What’s covered:
- How to set up your profile and personalise it
- Creating your network
- Ideas for making the most out of the new features
- Tweets- Types of content you can share
- Retweets, hashtags, and other Twitter terminology made simple
- Twitter etiquette- Dos and Don’ts of the Twitterverse
- Time savers
and more…
To find out more about Jo and her projects visit her website www.JoLinsdell.com.
Great post! Thank you Jo and Debra!
Glad you enjoyed it, Donna. I appreciate Jo’s expertise and am always glad to find new tools that make social media easier.
Thanks for dropping by Nata. Glad you liked it 🙂
Thanks for having me here today Debra. Love the new site.
Thanks for being here, Jo, and glad you like the site changes I’ve made. I use Canva.com and ClicktoTweet. Great sites. I’ve never used the others, but will check them out!
Paper.li is great for low effort, targeted content. I have several set up. Marketing for Writers, Mums R Us, and Life in Italy (one for each of my main target audiences). You can go in and edit them each time or just set it up and leave it to pull content based on your search terms. You can also preset the frequency that it tweets. As it automatically adds mention tags for Twitter users whose content it includes when it posts the link, it’s a great way of making new connections with people in your niche.
I definitely need to check it out! I need all the shortcuts I can find.