Tag: twitter

Categories
Platform and Branding

Branding and Twitter

Platform and Branding

Raise your hand if you’re a writer on Twitter! Same. Twitter is a great place for building that writing community and growing your visibility. However, simply building your brand through a follow-for-follow plan can cheapen not just your brand, but your writing.

So how do you build your platform and build the credibility of your writing?

As I’ve mentioned before, personal brand is not just what you write. It’s who you are. Your public, personal brand is what you decide to portray of who you are to your audience. Who are you impacts what you do or don’t write, how you engage with others on social media, and what you do or don’t post.

If you scroll through writers on Twitter, you’ll quickly see users who are there to promote their work, gain followers, and call it a day. Other than linking their book or blog, they don’t appear to be there to bring you, their potential reader, quality content.

Then you’ll see the few diamonds in the rough. The users who post quality content over and over, engage with other users, and work at pouring into the writing community, not just build their platform.

The great thing is, when you post quality content and genuinely engage with other writers, they’re apt to follow you. Thus, you build your platform.

So how do you bring your brand to Twitter? Ask yourself some questions:

Are you on Twitter to share what you’re learning from a come-alongside perspective, or to give writing advice from the standpoint of an expert? If you choose the come-alongside approach, you can share anything writing-related that you’re learning. If you choose the expert approach, to maintain brand integrity, only share advice you are an expert in. Do you write YA fiction in a specific genre, and have you sold thousands of books? You’re probably on your way to becoming an expert. However, you probably want to steer clear of handing out nonfiction advice.

Next, there are countless ways to engage with the writing community on Twitter. Choose what group you want to invest in, and go all in. Retweet pinned tweets, offer retweets on pitch fest days, jump into the comments to offer your expert advice, or share your own tweets as you progress through the writing journey.

Twitter is a sea of advice, book and blog promotions, writers’ lifts, etc., so choose carefully where you want to invest.

If you choose the expert sharing advice approach, writers’ lifts probably aren’t the best place to jump in. Twitter users who almost only engage in writers’ lifts, follow-for-follow trains, and endless promotions of their work are going to be viewed differently than those who genuinely engage, share writing advice, and provide great content every day.

Yes, follow writers, tweet, retweet—do all the things! Just choose how you choose to engage. What does what you tweet, retweet, and promote say about your writing brand?

With that in mind, happy tweeting!

Sarah Rexford is a Marketing Content Creator and writer. She helps authors build their platform through branding and copywriting. With a BA in Strategic Communications, Sarah equips writers to learn how to communicate their message through personal branding. She writes fiction and nonfiction and offers writers behind-the-scenes tips on the publishing industry through her blog itssarahrexford.com. She is represented by the C.Y.L.E Young Agency.

Instagram: @sarahjrexford
Twitter: @sarahjrexford
Web: itssarahrexford.com

Categories
Guest Posts

The Complete Guide For Beginners To Stand Out On Twitter

Twitter is a major social media platform, which holds 330 million monthly active users, and 450 million daily active users. People see Twitter as the mini entertaining channel; you can find all kinds of updates and trending news. On Twitter, you can notify lots and lots of marketers, business professionals to grow their business in their way. It is the right place for startups or beginners to develop their brand or platform quickly on social media. Through Twitter, beginners can introduce their brands or products to millions of people worldwide.

Let’s start with some specific tips and tricks for beginners on Twitter.

Construct an Impressive Profile 

Once you decide to start your business on Twitter, your first and foremost action is to create a Twitter account for your business. Creating a Twitter account is not enough; you need to build an impressive profile. When people identify your tweet or account, their first action is to visit your profile. To build an impressive and useful profile, you must concentrate on certain items.

Choose Your Username Wisely

Your username must belong to your business name (brands, products). Suppose if your business name is already taken, you can try adding your location with your username. At Least you can pick a name that specifies your business. Don’t use an underscore or hyphens, which may look unprofessional. If you have accounts on other media, then use the same username here you have used there. It helps to bring your existing followers to other media. Avoid changing the username often.

Add Necessary Details in the Bio Section 

Did you know a bio with a link receives more followers than those who don’t have one? At the same time, don’t overload it with lengthy words; keep it short and sweet. If you cannot express your business within two lines, think over what you are doing. How can you express the benefits of your products?

Display Picture & Background

Your brand or company logo will be the best fit for your profile pictures. It helps to make your people think about your brand image. It must be clear and easily recognizable. For your background cover photo, select photos that are unique and styled. Twitter branding is the most crucial thing to make your brand famous and trendy. You can keep your brand or product image as your background.

How to Engage on Twitter 

Once you have a good profile with sufficient information, what next? Of course, you need to start the real work. You begin to build engagement for your account. Start to grow your followers . Use search tabs to find relevant accounts and people who are interested in your topics or genre. Once you find those accounts, follow them, and engage with their tweets. Respond to their tweets by liking and commenting to them. Engaging with others helps them decide to follow your account.

Know What To Tweet

You need to offer engaging and fascinating content on Twitter to grow your audience engagement rate. Use multimedia and visual content in your tweets to catch your audience’s sight. You can share any beneficial content that will be useful for your audience. Asking questions will help to know your audience mindset and preferences, so concentrate on increasing your poll votes to see how your brand works. Moreover, you can use Rousesocial Twitter poll votes to gain lots of attention and engagement from your audience. On the other hand, you can try giveaways or contest to expand your brand reach and visibility.

Listen To What’s Going on

Once you start to grow your follower’s rate, you have to increase your engagement rate by posting exciting and attractive content daily. Use the search tab to discover the trending topics and discussions on Twitter. Your primary intention is to increase your retweets counts, as it automatically maximizes your engagement rate. Through keywords on the search tab, you can spot many conversations and chats belonging to your genre or themes. When you identify those conversations, don’t promote your products directly. Rather, offer content that is more valuable to others.

  • Like worthwhile posts
  • Provide answers to people who need your help
  • Give your suggestions to people’s questions
  • Solve people’s problems

Always remember to go with the trend, retweets to trending tweets, content. Keep an eye on viral tweets, talk about them, think about how to make those viral tweets connect to your content.

Post Regularly

Consistency is the key to success not only for Twitter but for all businesses. Maintain your active presence on Twitter by posting the content regularly. Avoid posting too much promotional content. Connect with your followers, ask them instant replies to their questions.   

Conclusion 

Posting frequently is essential but posting the right content at the right time matters most. Try to find your audience’s active time. Statistics from third party sites may help you. You may benefit from Twitter ads to grow your followers rapidly. Influencer marketing is also powerful. You can partner with them to enhance your recognition on Twitter. We hope this article is useful to beginners who want to develop their platform on Twitter.

Kaira Ralph works at  Rousesocial as a social media strategist and a content writer. She contributes a lot of articles focusing on the latest social media trends to many blogs across the web. Her passions involve reading, painting, and traveling

Categories
Writing for YA

How to Succeed with PitMad

Are you familiar with PitMad?

#PitMad is a pitch party on Twitter where writers tweet a 280-character pitch for their completed, polished, unpublished manuscripts. Agents and editors make requests by liking/favoriting the tweeted pitch. Every unagented writer is welcome to pitch. All genres/categories are welcomed. #PitMad occurs quarterly.

Pitchwars.org website

The next PitMad is coming up December 5th. I considered the last PitMad to be a success for me because I got a heart from an agent on my list, and another from a publisher I recognized.

On PitMad days, the camaraderie among writers gives me such a boost. It’s the perfect time for connecting with other writers and supporting each other.

After I’d done a few pitch parties, I had the sense to search for other people who are writing work similar to mine by looking for their hashtags. I’m not good at Twitter. Even so, I am figuring out how to participate in Twitter parties. To participate in a Twitter party you don’t necessarily have to be great on Twitter. 

TIP: Follow other authors in your genre and support them.

One of the best things about participating in PitMad was that it forced me to be concise and specific about my book descriptions. The tweet that got the most attention was short and simple.

My Tweet

Theater kids, small town, Asperger love. WHAT TO SAY NEXT x GEM & DIXIE #PITMAD #YA #CON #MH #DIS #ND #autism Coming of Age + Sweet Romance

This tweet went against a lot of advice I’d received about how to craft the perfect tweet. I am impatient when reading tweets, so I wrote one likely to get my attention, as descriptive as I could, using as few words as possible. (I posted another tweet that did well for a different pitch party on my blog here.)

TIP: Practice writing your tweets ahead of time.

Another key may have been how many times it was re-tweeted. I got a huge boost from my WFWA group. There was a specific list to join if you were participating in PitMad so that we could easily find each other’s tweets and support each other by retweeting. It’s difficult to keep up with everyone’s tweets, and without that list I would have been lost.

TIP: Pin your latest tweet so your friends can find it easily and retweet.

I was pleasantly surprised to get a heart from Flux books. At the end of the day, I had a hard time winding down. Several hours after the party was over, I got another heart. This one was exciting, because not only did I recognize literary agent, they were on my query list. 

TIP: Not all hearts are the same. Do your research.

I couldn’t sleep, so by 3 o’clock in the morning (!) I’d sent my submissions, one of which was a full. I also used the PitMad requests as an opportunity to nudge to an agent who’d had my manuscript for a few months.

TIP: Have your materials ready to go.

PitMad isn’t the only Twitter party. 

You can try out your tweets for #faithpitch, #REVpit, #kisspitch, #sffpit, or #IWSGPit and more.

Have your manuscript finished and polished, write your tweets, and join the party. If you aren’t ready to pitch, use a pitch party to connect and support other writers.

There’s nothing to lose and quite a bit to gain.

Have you participated in a pitch party? Do you plan to? Leave a comment!

Donna Jo Stone writes YA contemporary novels about tough issues but always ends the stories with a note of hope. She blogs at donnajostone.com.

Categories
Writers Chat

Practical Tips to Create Explosive Growth on Twitter

In this Writers Chat conversation, author Victoria Duerstock shares practical tips on how she grew her Twitter following 400% in one year.

Join us!

Writers Chat is hosted live each Tuesday for an hour starting at 10 AM CT / 11 AM ET on Zoom. Participants mute their audio and video during the filming, then we open up the room for anyone who wishes to participate with our guests. The “After Party” is a fifteen-minutes of off-the-record sharing and conversation.

Additionally, you can grow your network and add to the conversation by joining our Facebook Group.

Categories
Uncategorized

Be Aware of What You Know

Be Aware
Be Aware

I once heard on Dan Miller’s 48 Days podcast something along the lines of “You already know what you already know.”

Knowledge is Power
Knowledge is Power

Think about it—you’re already in the game. Don’t know a lot about social media? That’s okay. I don’t, either. But I know enough, and I’m always learning. The great thing is, there’s always new stuff to learn in addition to what we already know.

You may think you don’t understand, you don’t get it. What is this Facebook thing? What’s a tweet and how is it done? First, congratulate yourself in knowing those platforms exist. Second, you’re reading this post. Which means you know enough to get online and search. The rest will follow.

The best piece of advice I can give at this time is this: Be Aware.

  • Everything you post online will always stay online, some way, in some form. Even if you delete it, it will somehow haunt the echelons of the internet forever. So be sure, before you submit, that it’s not something you’ll regret in the morning.

Be Aware
Be Aware

  • Know where you’re submitting/what you’re sharing/who you’re messaging. It’s great to post comments and share links but if your primary group of friends on Facebook are foodies, will they really appreciate an article about Harley ridin’ Mamas? They might, if the article includes a review of a really great hole-in-the-wall restaurant.
  • You can’t be everything to everyone all the time. I know this one sounds obvious, but trust me. When the World Wide Web opens its arms and says “Join me!” it’s hard to resist. I want to share the world with my world, but that’s not always feasible (reference Bullet No. 2 above). The best cure for this is to find my niche audience, and write for them. If others come along for the ride, that’s a bonus. I can’t be online 24/7. My audience understands my need to eat, sleep, and dare I say it—pee.
  • Find your platforms. Facebook and Twitter will give you the broadest audience. Instagram is a great place to share your cell phone photos. Google+ and LinkedIn are nice networking resources as well.
  • Ask others for advice. Don’t navigate alone. Read a blog you admire? Check out how it’s powered. Talk to a writer/media specialist? Ask their input. Want to write a killer article but not sure how to submit? Google it.
  • Not everything you read on the internet is true. While researching your article/media/platform set-ups, remember to find what works for you, then make sure it does. Don’t go full force into the first application you hear about, unless you’ve heard about it from a variety of sources. Investigate everything.
  • Be yourself. It’s okay to pattern yourself after other media sites you admire, but people want to know you. So share your voice your And if you don’t what your voice is just yet, that’s okay. Play around. You’ll figure it out.

With a big gulp of Sweet Tea and Social Media,

~Molly Jo

[bctt tweet=”There’s always new stuff to learn in addition to what we already know. @RealMojo68″]

[bctt tweet=”Be Aware: Be sure, before you submit, that it’s not something you’ll regret in the morning. @RealMojo68″]

Categories
The Binge Writer

Facebook First Impressions

Have you looked in your computer mirror lately?

You ask what is a computer mirror? This is your life on social media and it reflects who you are. In a sense, a computer mirror. Social media can either help or hurt you as an author. In the coming weeks, I will be blogging about first impressions on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pintrest.

In this first blog I will give you tips on Facebook to start your own Facebook page to promote your writing. Facebook is still the number one social media platform, and has a large reach. The demographics for Facebook and engagement has shifted from high school and college students to their parents and grandparents. User ages range from the late 20s on up with engagement. High school and college students still have their accounts and check pictures and posts, but they do not engage as much as they did five years ago.

First Impressions

Facebook Name

What is your Facebook name? Is it your name, your companies’ name, or your writing name?

You want to make sure that whatever name you have on Facebook you market and brand the same name on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. That way your fans can look you up in all the platforms.

Example: Cyle Young – Facebook: CyleYoung (if available); Twitter: @CyleYoung; Instagram: CyleYoung

You can also use a _ as I use @adam_ledyard on Twitter

Facebook Header

When shaping and branding your Facebook page you want to select pictures that represent who you are. You want to make sure the picture is a crisp and clear picture, and not blurry or chopped off.

Facebook suggests a 1200 x 630 pixel image for your header. So, if you like the cover of your book, open up a picture program to crop or resize your picture for Facebook.

Make sure you have a picture that lines up with your marketing and branding plan that will represent you. Again, first impressions are everything when you are trying to sell your book, sign with a company, or work with a book store on marketing your book.

Facebook Image Picture

This is the picture on the bottom left of the Facebook Header. It is another way to represent your brand and who you are. It is a tiny square that is 180×180. You may upload a larger pic, if the picture is sized in a multiple of 180, such as 360, 540, or 720. Facebook will resize your picture for you when you upload it. The larger size pixel picture is better as it is a better image compared to a smaller pixel image.

The square image can be a mug shot of you, or a picture representing your brand. For example, if you use a letter in the alphabet for representation, you may want to put this is the box. If you have a professional picture, you may want to use it in this image. It all boils down to your branding, marketing, and how you want to use that box.

Check your computer mirror today and see what you look like. It could make or break a deal for you.

Categories
Publicity

Creating Free Graphics or Memes for Authors

Graphics or memes have become an easy way to make any subject matter or content viral. What are they? Simply they are an image overlaid with text that engages people to learn more or to share them. As an author you want to have these in your arsenal. Facebook photos have an 87% interaction rate!

Think about this. When you are scrolling through your social media feeds don’t you take a moment to read the writing on the images even if you don’t mean to? Simply put, humans are visual creatures. The Facebook graphic is one tool that will be useful for a long time to come.

With Facebook’s news feed restrictions the graphic or meme is one way that you can get creative and get around the diminished page views. Photos are not part of the promotional restriction nor are blog content posts since the algorithm cannot read the writing on the images. What does this mean for the author market? This is an excellent way to expand your reader base and get your content seen.pics

That said, as an author who may not have the resources to hire a design team to build some great graphics how are
you to compete? There are several free websites that cater to photo design software intended for use for these type of products. Today I will be talking about two of these products that I use nearly every day.

First there is Picmonkey.com. Picmonkey is a simple and easy to use website that can allow you to make graphics with very few limits on what you can do. This is the first I recommend learning for authors that want to be able to be as creative as they would like. Here are some of the pros and cons of this specific website.

[one_half]

Pros:

  • Free version
  • Allows editing of any kind of image
  • Automatically gives dimensions for project based on style of project.

[/one_half][one_half_last]

Cons:

  • You provide the images
  • Very limited designs for premade items
  • Learning curve

[/one_half_last]

Canva1

Second there is Canva.com. This site is visually stunning and has many more options than Picmonkey. This site gives you previews of how you can set up your images to look and then allows you to change nearly any element in it. They also have stock images with licensing for $1 each. (This is definitely better than some of the sites out there like Shutterstock.) Even the free elements are top quality and crisp.

 

[one_half]

Pros:

  • Free image options
  • Previews of how it can look
  • High quality output and sizing for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google +

[/one_half][one_half_last]

Cons:

  • More of a learning curve
  • Cannot embed an image overtop of another image

[/one_half_last]

Here are some examples from each site for you to get the feel of what the sites are capable of. If you are not interested in creating your own graphics there are many people willing to do this for nominal fees. You are welcome to contact me and I will put you in contact with a match for your budget and content. Click on the images to see them full size.

[bctt tweet=”Create top quality author Facebook memes with these tips. #AuthorRT #MarketingYourBook”]