I’ve changed the way I use Twitter. I’m not about making rules for how people use social media. Twitter Narcs are
English: A pie chart created in Excel 2007 showing the content of tweets on Twitter, based on the data gathered by Pear Analytics in 2009. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
annoying. However, by the end of this post, I hope you’ll vary the way you try to sell your books. We’re drowning in the sameness of “Buy my books!” We have to sex up our tweeting.
Most book sales tweets have a crippling weakness that’s hurting sales. Twitter is so awesome everyone is using it to sell books in the same way. That makes it anti-awesome for your book sales. Using a one-click approach, sending me straight to Amazon without providing enough information or value, is not working.
What doesn’t work well:
Title of book. Go buy it. Here’s the link.
What’s only microscopically better:
Title of book. Review: “Scintillating!” Here’s the link.
The problem:
Too many tweets are trying to make sales by just telling us to buy.
We’re so flooded with ugly tweets, it’s too easy to ignore them all.
What I’m suggesting:
Be more clever and change up the ask. Sure, promote however you want, but give me more to go on than generic messages like: “Great book!” “New post!” “Another new post!”
We need more showing, not telling, in those 140 characters. Give me a clue or hashtag the genre. I want to like you, but dress up a little and show me you care about me. It’s not about you. It’s about us.
Best:
Please pull me back to your blog and seduce me.
I’ll buy, but I need more to go on to make that first click toward falling in love with you.
On World Literary Cafe Tweet Teams this week, I didn’t try to send people straight to Amazon. I provided links to my blog posts, a cool graphic, and my podcast (where I’m giving Bigger Than Jesus away for free one chapter at a time). There’s added value to my audience that way.
Examples:
RT RChazzChute Hear the #thriller Bigger Than Jesus as a #podcast. http://bit.ly/TkBSGs #WLCAuthor (Or buy the book http://amzn.to/Nm6xj4)
RT @rchazzchute It’s a meme, baby! Self-help for Stoners #excerpt & #inspiration http://bit.ly/NNhBDI #suspense #fiction #WLCAuthor
RT @rchazzchute Hear all the suspenseful #fiction & #comedy #podcasts http://bit.ly/OBRMeT #WLCAuthor #whatwaitsinlocker408
RT @rchazzchute #Thought for the Day: #Creation. http://bit.ly/TUTtVX and The Value of #Writing & #Reading http://bit.ly/Pd1JfN #WLCAuthor
RT @rchazzchute Just working on the next instalment in The Hit Man Series. (Excerpt of the hook to Chap.6) http://bit.ly/SPU7on #WLCAuthor
RT @rchazzchute Did Han shoot first? Catch 2 chapters of Bigger Than Jesus for the explanation. http://bit.ly/S8JgDm #suspense #WLCAuthor
RT @RChazzChute WIP Sneak peek! 1st there was Bigger Than Jesus. Next comes Higher Than Jesus. http://bit.ly/S5dHGT #crime #novel #WLCAuthor
RT @rchazzchute Quote Trailers http://bit.ly/OF1YPp & Quote Art http://bit.ly/NlwJM1 promote your books. #WLCAuthor
More content and seduction is why Triberr works:
On Triberr, everyone on your tribe retweets your blog post summary (assuming they’ve read your post and have no objections.) Information spreads. Something in the summary captures the tweetosphere’s interest so they come to your blog. They find you helpful, funny, sexy or useful. Do that enough and maybe they’ll get smitten, click on a book link to the “Buy with one click” button.
True, if you don’t send me straight to Amazon, it’s more than one click to buy. However, too many tweets that look the same get ignored because it’s an overload of data without enough information or value. Will there be exceptions? Sure. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with announcements of book launches. I’m what you call, “pro-reading.”
But, please, join me in the campaign against Bland. Bland is so Beige and, as we all know, Beige is the Mitt Romney of the colour spectrum. It seems to be everywhere, but no one’s excited about it.
Related articles
- Triberr… Want to give it a try? (iamareadernotawriter.blogspot.com)
- How Bloggers Can Grow Each Others Readership (stevefarnsworth.wordpress.com)
- Blogger, Twitter, Triberr (soulati.com)
Filed under: publishing, Amazon, Bigger than Jesus, Blog, blogging, book promotion, book sales, fiction, Hit Man Series, Podcast, sell your book better, Social Networking, Triberr, tweets, Twitter, writer, writing
C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m 
I definitely agree that it is better to draw people to a blog or landing page with interesting content. I also like what you say about “pretty” versus “ugly” tweets. People really don’t realize how influenced they are by design.
One thing I also notice is that I tend to skim tweets that begin with the RT @.. , more so than when placed at the end. It is an extra step in Hootsuite to copy the name from the start to the end but I think it looks better. My attention hones in even in a big stream because in a glance I see the topic rather than the name of someone I may not recognize. Sometimes it cannot be helped, but I wouldn’t add a tweep who did that consistently unless the content was outerspace good.
hashtags are wonderful, too, but more than two or three can come off as spammy. I’ve read the opinion on other blogs and can’t say if they corrupted my mind or whether I would come to believe this on my own.
Just my opinion
I’d agree with you there, Robert. I find some great one-liners come from reviews, the challenge being to draw interest and not smack folks in the face with a pitch. Still working on it!