Marketing your book via social media is a powerful tool, as it allows the author to build a relationship with the reader. Not only that, but it doesn’t have a direct monetary cost associated with it. The only cost is your time. Using Twitter to sell books is very powerful indeed!

Twitter is a brilliant way to connect with and build relationships with users. I have around three thousand followers on Twitter and every time I write a new post or come across an interesting article, I send it to three thousand people.

Never underestimate the power of using Twitter to sell books. 

As Twitter is such an important tool for selling books, I’m going to explain some effective tips and advice to use in order to boost sales.

Twitter Tips

Firstly go to www.twitter.com and create an account. Make sure you upload a clear, quality photo of yourself to your profile. People will want to see what you look like and who you are and if you leave the photo area blank, or use a fuzzy one, this doesn’t look very professional. If you upload a nice photo of you holding a copy of your book, that’s even better.

Next, ensure you write an effective profile and use keywords in your text. For example, you should definitely mention that you’re an author, whether you’re a fiction or non-fiction author, the title of your book and what niche / topic / genre it focuses on. It’s always a nice idea to add something a little more personal to your profile too. For example, if you’ve written a book called Vegetarian Cooking, ideally your profile should read something like this: “Non-fiction author of Vegetarian Cooking, including advice, tips and easy recipes for vegetarians and vegans. In my spare time I like traveling, cross stitch and eating chocolate!” Make sure your profile includes the url of the blog you will have set up especially for your book.

Next, you need to start following people. It’s always a good idea here to find the right people to follow… not just any people. In the case of the example above, the best people to follow would be vegetarians and vegans. So how do you do that? Well I’ve found a few ways, which I’ll share with you below:

1. Type keywords relating to your niche in the Twitter search box at the top of the home page. For example ‘Vegetarian’ ‘Vegan’ ‘Vegetarian recipes’. Twitter will then display all the posts containing those keywords and you can through and follow those people. Many of them will follow you back automatically, although not all of them. We’ll move on to that in a moment.

2. Create an account with www.twellow.com – this is The Yellow Pages of Twitter and it’s amazing. Again, use the search box, or the category listings provided to type in your niche keywords and find other Twitter users with those words in their profile. A list will appear and you can follow any of them direct from that page (without having to go to Twitter).

3. Create an account with www.socialoomph.com – this is a Godsend, as you can set up an automatic DM to send anyone that follows you. You can also have Social Oomph automatically follow people who use your keywords either in their posts or in their profile. From the home page go to Direct Messages (which is located on the left hand menu), then choose ‘edit welcome DM’ to write a direct message which followers will receive automatically. I find it works better to rotate your direct messages so you can test and see which one is the most effective.

To add a few DMs to Social Oomph follow the format below: {Are you writing a book or trying to get one published? Msg me with your questions and get your FREE gift here: http://bit.ly/aTEGRh|Hi, Get your free report ’7 Steps To Writing Your Book & Getting It Published’ here: http://bit.ly/aTEGRh|Hi I’m The Word Queen! DM me with your writing & publishing questions. I’ll be happy to help xx} Obviously change the links to your own though, and change the text so it is related to your book. Make sure the auto follow box is ticked.

For some more general advice on using Twitter to sell books try and Tweet at least five times a day and make sure they don’t all focus on your book, with a link to buy it, or a link though to your blog. That will irritate other people, who will get the impression that you’re only interested in selling your book and you’ll be perceived as a selfish marketer. Post links to other related content that you find interesting and help other people in the Twitter community by retweeting their posts, etc… It’s also a good idea to Tweet at least twice a day about your life and what you’ve been up to. And that’s pretty much it when it comes to using Twitter to sell books.

So long as you follow these basic guidelines you’ll gain a large following in no time (and go on to sell lots of books!)

Love & Light

Keidi Keating, The Word Queen xxx