36 Twitter Tips for Book Publishers

6. Be strategically self-promoting. … Enter conversations tied to your book’s topic, and be engaged enough so that when you do bring up your own work and post a link to your site, it seems relevant to the conversation and not just like a sales pitch.

… Really engage the space: … Post frequently and understand that the shelf life of a tweet is about 1 minute. … RT (retweet), and use @ (replies and mentions) and # (hashtags) in your tweets as often as possible. If you don’t know what those [Twitter] symbols are, or have never been on Twitter, it takes just a few minutes to figure it all out. Sign up and join the conversation. (Editor’s note: Check out the sidebar for more Twitter tips and basics [such as hashtags], and visit Help.Twitter.com for a quick Twitter education.)

Overall, you want to bring some humor and wit to your tweets, be seen as a resource (by tweeting links and comments about interesting stuff), and show people that you are paying attention to their tweets by posting regular RTs.”

Tips from … Brett Cohen, Vice President, Quirk Books
Twitter.com/irreference

7. Tweet in a manner that is aligned with your brand identity. At Quirk, we aim to entertain and inform. Our Twitter (and entire social media) philosophy is rooted in that ideal. Your fans expect it.

8. Make the tweet compelling enough that others will want to pass it along. Provide a snippet of useful or interesting content from the book. Announce a contest or giveaway. Promote a media event or article. Offer an exclusive discount on products.

9. Use Twitter as a piece of the story, but reinforce the message in other platforms. Recently, we had a month-long initiative on our blog (Irreference.com) celebrating Quirktober. We had blog posts about making candy corn, carving a pumpkin, choosing a Halloween costume—all pulled from our various books. Not only did we post the blog teasers to Twitter, but we also blasted it out via Facebook and our other social media platforms.