Marketing

Today we’ll look at how you as an author can use hashtags in your tweets in order to attract followers for your Twitter author profile.

Here’s the basic information to compose your first #hashtag tweet.

Use the hashtag # symbol before a word you want to target. This will enter your tweet into a conversation based on that thread. Don’t put a space between the symbol and your keyword or between words in a phrase:

#mickeymouse #donaldduck #baby #author #bookmarketing

For this exercise, we’re going to use a fictional author named Arthur J. Author, who wants to build a Twitter platform to sell his new book, Frugal Retirement.

He has just started his Twitter account and has zero followers. He knows his target audience is over 60 and worried about money.

He has come up with a word list that he thinks will connect with his target audience: retirement, senior, senior living, frugal, budget, retirement savings, […]

Twitter is about making connections in short, snappy bits of conversation. You have 140 characters for each message, which includes text, hashtags (#), private connections (@), links, and photos.

In this post we’ll discuss how to use hashtags in a search to find new contacts, conversations, and information.

Twitter Search

Type in a word or phrase in the Twitter search bar and you will get a list of tweets matching what you have entered, e.g., candy, finances, weather.

Use that same word or phrase but add a hashtag (#) before the keyword or phrase and you get a greatly expanded list. This is because the actual tweet may not be using the keyword specifically in the text, but the author of the tweet thought it was relevant enough to that topic and inserted that keyword with a hashtag.

For instance if you type #scifi, #money, or #cat into a Twitter search bar you will be […]

Last year over 200,000 million books were self-published. The average self-published book probably sold less than ten copies.

The reasons for a book not to make it are many. Most self-published books need much more time, energy and yes, money, put into them than the author expects. If you plan to self-publish, here are ten important factors that stop most self-published books from making it big.

1. Poor writing. You cannot be your own judge. Nor can you expect your mother, siblings, and best friends to give you honest feedback. Your best and honest feedback will come from readers who judge your writing by the book they hold in their hand. Offer your book for free or at a low price and pay attention to the feedback. If it’s bad, don’t despair. Keep writing. You will get better.

2. Little or poor editing. No one can catch their own mistakes. You are too […]

What is author branding? Author branding is presenting yourself in such a way that when readers think of you they associate a feeling, a message, a book with you. A type of book, a style of writing that, like your fingerprint, is you. Even if you write in different genres, the essence of how you write will always be yours.

Today’s popular authors have a style of writing and message unique to them no matter what they write about. Their readers come to know, love, and trust their writing.

Have you ever fallen in love with a book and, immediately upon finishing it, wanted another one just like it? That’s the power of branding.

Developing your author brand is important if you want to sell a lot of books this year, more next year, and a lot more the year after that. Write each book and blog post with the goal of building […]

Almost every author wants to sell more books.

New authors think if they can just get one lucky break the yellow brick road of fame and fortune will magically open and their worries will disappear.

If only that were true.

The truth is even if an author does get a few lucky breaks there will still be periods of time when they will have to grab their bow and arrows and go hunting for readers.

In order to do that successfully you need to find the hunting grounds where your readers are feeding.

Your readers.

Not the reader of another author who writes in a different genre than you do or appeals to an audience that has nothing in common with your style of writing.

Finding the common threads between your book(s) and your book buying audience is the basis of target marketing for authors. There are many different factors in breaking down an audience demographic. Some […]