Spreading our writer's marketing wings with Twitter

Last Tuesday, and still full of revivalist fervor following a pep talk from Fred Campos, who could sell sand in the Sahara, I posted about doing more with social media. Specifically, with Twitter.

Right. Because, obviously I already blog. (Although blogging may or may not be a bit dated, but it’s gotten me free passage into literary events I otherwise might have been outclassed at. Plus, it’s actually kind of fun.) I’m also on Facebook and even Pinterest, because I LOVE pictures! 

So why have I resisted Twitter so long? I remember attending a sci-fi convention years ago at which a speaker said sniffily that Twitter was doomed because the average age of its users was 40. Vultures were practically circling our corpses – an excuse for the cute v-birds image on this post. 

Although to misquote the ever-quotable Mark Twain, reports of death by Twitter were obviously exaggerated, my qualms were not assuaged by news reports about how fast lies travel on the T. Or by the disdain of my younger family members, whose classmates break up with each other (and possibly even date each other) on Snapchat.

image: pixabay

Still, and with trembling, I dipped my toe – or pen -- into the Twitter waters. It wasn’t bad. It even seemed like a good way to connect with people (#1 on Campos’s list of reasons to commit to social media). Maybe even a way to learn from other people (the second of Campos’s reasons to commit). But ultimately (to quote both Campos and my family members) was it a way to market? 

Remember, dear readers and writers, social media is only a tool, not an end in itself. (Except perhaps for the terminally sociable.) It’s a way to get your message across. Like the beer guy at a football game, whose message of cold beer for sale is ignored by sports fans until – they down the last drop of their cup of cold beverage.

And readers won’t know we’ve got something to assuage their thirst until they have a thirst that needs quenching. So, here’s Campos’s plan: first, pre-market to let people know you’re a person they can trust to provide that quencher. Then, let ‘em know you’ve got the goods they thirst for.

Still not convinced Twitter is the medium for your message?

That’s OK. “Just pick one piece of social media and do it regularly,” Campos assured his audience at the local Mystery Writers of America meeting.

Treat each medium as a search engine. Even sometimes-despised Facebook is now a search engine, Campos noted. “Stephen King promotes his books only on his writing fan page.” (Full disclosure: I have not verified that statement. But hey, it sounds cool, right?)

Do the pre-marketing stuff first, allowing if possible up to a year before gearing up to a full marketing campaign. Humans have such limited attention spans we don’t want to ask people to commit to something until we actually have the goods, i.e., books, to offer. It’s no use telling people we’ll have a book for them to read in two years. Who will remember that?

Who to market to? “The demographics are your potential buyers,” Campos said. “Not your fellow writers.”

His suggestion was, if using Twitter, to search for the genre we write in. Since I write thrillers, I obligingly typed “Thrillers” in my Twitter search, only to get a list of people who write thrillers. And who wanted me to buy their books. Not that I’m immune to buying other writers’ books, but then there were things like the poor writer tweeted that she was only allowed to pitch her book every three days. It was depressing. (A word that makes serious inroads on my 270-character tweeting allowance.)

The search term “who reads thrillers” turned up scads of book bloggers and reviewers. Better. These people actually read. I followed several. (Campos’s rule: “About 20-30 percent of these will follow you back. . . but do it in little bitty pieces.” If you’re not getting significant return following, back off until your percentage of followers picks up.)

I’ll also add, follow the social media etiquette rules of commenting, liking, and sharing (in Twitter parlance, “retweeting”) If somebody isn’t posting stuff you’re proud to retweet, consider whether you really want to follow that person.

So say, you’re hooked. Ready to get serious? Next up, I’ll post the nitty-gritty specifics about Campos’s pre-marketing as well as his grab-‘em by the throat marking campaigns. What to post. How often to do it. And how to do it. In the meantime, keep writing! Because nobody can market a book that hasn’t been written.