Category Archives: Networking

Twitter… Tweeps… Tweeties… Oh My!!!

Ok, let me first say that the creation of Twitter was a godsend to me because I am so random at times, and this social media site let’s me be just that, and others actually want to follow my randomness.

What is Twitter you ask? Well, according to PC Magazine it is –> A very popular instant messaging system that lets a person send brief text messages up to 140 characters in length to a list of followers. Launched in 2006, Twitter was designed as a social network to keep friends and colleagues informed throughout the day. However, it became widely used for commercial and political purposes to keep customers, voters and fans up-to-date as well as to encourage feedback.

After establishing a Twitter account at www.twitter.com/, individuals can import their e-mail addresses as well as use the Twitter search to locate and invite people. Twitter messages (“tweets”) can be made public and sent to anyone requesting the feed, or they can be sent only to approved followers.

Messages can be sent and received via cellphone text messaging (SMS), the Twitter website or a third-party Twitter application. To follow a Twitter feed, the Twitter site and feed name become the URL; for example, Microsoft’s Twitter feed is www.twitter.com/microsoft and for an actual person the twitter feed would be www.twitter.com/kishagreen

What does all of this technical twitter stuff mean to you? Well it means that you can tell the whole world wide web what you ate, plan on eating or don’t want to eat. The beauty is that even though you think this is useless information it is actual relevant to your followers since they find you interesting.

Commonly Used Twitter Lingo

Followers
These are the people who “follow” your tweets. Every time you tweet, these people automatically see it on their timeline, whereas someone else would have to search and find you on Twitter. The same goes for the people you follow; their updates will appear on your timeline

Retweet (RT)
Twitter became a viral conduit when users initiated “retweeting,” which forwards tweets they get to their followers. People retweet to pass on worthwhile information, and the ease of retweeting can quickly build large audiences. This is the same as sharing on Facebook

Direct Messages (DMs)
Initially a one-way broadcast from writer to follower, this is not seen on your timeline this goes to one person’s inbox. Writers can send followers a “direct message” (DM), and followers can do likewise. Followers can also delete the DMs they sent, making them disappear from the writer’s inbox. Please note: You cannot send DM’s to people who are not following you.

@ Signs
When someone replies to a Twitter posting, they use their Twitter account name preceded by an @ sign; for example, “@KishaGreen” This is how you know someone is talking directly to you.

# Hashtags
A hashtag is a # prefix used to group tweets together. For example, people commenting about a Twitter about my online radio show would use #WritersLifeChats in their postings (tweets) and all those messages could be viewed as a group by searching for #WritersLifeChats

Why should you tweet? Because it’s fun! LOL… Seriously, because it is a way to reach any and everyone all at once as opposed to just saying it to the same people on Facebook. Meaning if you have 1700 friends on Facebook and you want to advertise or promote something you are limiting yourself to just those 1700 whereas Twitter let’s you tell the whole world wide web, well all of those with a Twitter account.

How do you tweet? Easy just say what is on your mind, good or bad, but the trick is to keep it under 140 characters, so this requires you to be clever yet creative. You can tweet from a computer, iPads (tablets) and cellphone

Is Tweeting effective? According to Twitter, there are over 200 million registered users, but how many are active users that we don’t know yet. According to Business Insider, there were 119 million Twitter accounts following one or more other accounts. Either way, if you have a business to promote or a product to sell or in my case books to sell, Twitter is where we need to be to connect with a bunch of people for FREE! Yes, I said free. I don’t know about you, but that’s a good enough reason for me.

I promote my radio show, author promo services and my books all on Twitter, and have been more successful with it than on Facebook. How do I do this? Simply, by tweeting all relevant info to them all. If there is someone I want to interview, I tweet them and begin a rapport with them, and then we exchange contact information and from there I arrange my interviews. For selling books, I post pictures (twitpics) of my book cover along with purchasing URL’s. I then tweet about the most random things that to a complete stranger it is interesting and makes them want to follow me and eventually purchase my books. As for my Author Promo Services, I am constantly tweeting pertinent literary information, and those in the industry are interested, and then later on utilize my services. I cannot lie, it does require time and effort, but it is well worth it.

Examples

Book Tweet–> A Write Way to Love by @KishaGreen on Kindle for $2.99. One Click today! #ReadingIsSexy #GoodBook #Ebook

Author Promo Tweet –> Authors: Do you need help promoting your book? Let DivaBooksInc help YOU today. www.divabooksinconline.com #Promo #Books #Marketing

Radio Show Promo Tweet –> Writer’s Life Chats with @KishaGreen Mondays at 7pm www.writerslifechats.com #literaryjewels #authorinterviews #writerslifechats

See how the hashtags are all relevant to all of my tweets BUT most importantly less than 140 characters.

Kisha Green

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Kisha Green is no stranger to the literary world. She is the well-informed, knowledgeable publisher of DivaBooksInc.(www.divabooksinconline.com). Green is a senior writer and founder of the Writer’s Vibe (www.writers-vibe.com) a literary site to help promote artists.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Deatri will be conducting a FREE Character Development workshop for people who are signed up for my monthly newsletter. Workshop: Character Cake Cost: Free Date: Apr, 28 2012 Time: 4-5 p.m. Central Location: Become A Successful Author Website (link and password will be given the day before the event)

Don’t have a copy of Become A Successful Author? What are you waiting for? Become A Successful Author will be used in the “How To Write That Novel” course at Chicago State because it covers everything from branding to writing to editing to formatting and uploading electronic and print books to marketing and so much more. Your time is money. Look at all the time, thus money, you’ll save by ending your search for answers: Purchase Become A Successful Author for only $4.99 (eBook) or $9.99 (print) from: Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), Barnes & Noble

Be Active On Twitter & Automate It

When I meet with writers at a conference or on the phone, they will often tell me, “No one knows me or my writing.” Maybe they have written a few magazine articles but never published a book. Or maybe they haven’t published anything but want to get published. Other people have written for magazines or newspapers but never written a book (nonfiction or fiction).

First a reminder: I know of no overnight successes in the publishing business. If you have someone who appears to become an overnight success, then look closer at the journey of that person. I’ve often found they have been in the trenches for years before they achieved their dream of success. OK, with this reality check, now what can you do to begin building your visibility in the community? There is not a singular answer to this question. There are many answers.

One answer is to become active on Twitter. According to Twitter’s site, as of September 14, 2010, there are 175 million users who tweet 95 million times a day. Those numbers are right–a million. What are you waiting for? Let’s get started.

1. Who is your target audience? Who do you want to reach and with what message? It is important from the beginning to select one or two “themes” to your tweets because this consistency will attract your audience and help you.

2. Create your Twitter profile and add your photo and bio. Get more details in my free Ebook, Mastering Twitter in 10 Minutes or Less.

3. Add a distinctive twitter background to your twitter profile. Here’s a free tool to create it.

4. Use a free tool like Hootsuite to send out your tweets and also to schedule them.

5. Locate Twitter Leaders in your area at Twellow. Follow those leaders and learn from their tweets.

6. Use a tool like TweetAdder to automate your twitter process of gaining followers. It is excellent and adding about 100 to 150 followers a day to my Twitter account. You can get 20% off TweetAdder by using code JONB20.

If you don’t like to tweet, then automate your content on Twitter using Google Alerts. Select several key words and pull in content to your twitter account.

Follow these ten steps:

1. Do you have a Gmail account? If not create one. While you are signed on to that Gmail account…

2. Go to Google Alerts

3. Select several phrases that you want to turn on alerts

4. Leave the Type as “comprehensive” or from anywhere on the web

5. Change How Often to “as-it-happens” because you want it throughout the day and fresh

6. Change Deliver to: and select “feed.”

7. When you save it, you will see the feed in Google. Notice the orange icon or the word “feed.” Right click on that and copy out the feed URL because you will need it for the next step.

8. Go to Twitterfeed and log on to this free application using your twitter username and password.

9. After you log on to Twitterfeed, you are creating a new Feed. Give your feed a title and paste the RSS feed URL from Google alerts into the feed spot.

10. Click the Advanced Settings. Change “Update Frequency” to every 30 minutes and post up to “3” new updates at a time.

This ten step system will automatically pull content into your twitter account. I have this system set up for some twitter accounts that I do not monitor as closely as I do for my main twitter account.

It is critical to provide content, point to articles, give free resources and not to engage in hard selling (buy me, buy me). It’s a soft sell approach that works on Twitter. With millions of people on Twitter and using some (or all) of these techniques, every writer can increase their presence and activity on Twitter.

W. Terry Whalin

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W. Terry Whalin, a writer and editor, lives in Scottsdale, Arizona. He has written more than 60 nonfiction books including Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams. His website is located at: www.terrywhalin.com.

Conferences – Spend Your Money Wisely!

Conferences – to go or not to go? That is the questions. The answer isn’t simple. In the short time I’ve been writing, I’ve attended several events or conferences. Some I left feeling unimportant, degraded and lower than dirt, as if I was totally out of my league. What made you think you were worthy of being in the same room with BIG name authors??? That was of course after I had spent my money to attend and was promised the world only to have it all pulled away.

But then….there are some that are the epitome of what author conferences should be about. You meet other authors in the industry. Some at the same in your career as you, some that have been in the industry for years and some that are just beginning to enter into the wonderful realm of being an author. And here’s the thing, you can learn something from every one of them. Then there are the readers. Those wonderful, delightful, hilarious readers that are not shy about telling you exactly how they feel about your work. Not to mention the workshops that teaches you about your craft, the industry, the business of writing. And the networking with agents, editors, publishers—there is nothing like a good conference.

There are several that take place each year, and no, you cannot attend and should not attempt to attend all of them. You will be broke before you sell your first novel. However, you should find one or two that will fulfill your need to improve your craft, build your brand and feed your drive to write. Every conference is not for everyone and it takes a minute to find the ones that fit your needs, but once you do, the rewards are endless.

Here are three conferences that seem to be popular and please anyone that reads this post add the ones you know about in the comment section.

There’s the Romance Writers of America Conference (http://www.rwa.org/ ),

The National Black Bookclub Conference (http://www.nationalbookclubconference.com/),

The Romance Slam Jam Conference (http://www.romanceslamjam.org/ ).

Why am I talking to you about conferences? I’m glad you asked. For the last two years I’ve attended the RSJ, Romance Slam Jam Conference. The event has proven to be not only worth the reasonable fess, but it is so worth your time. The RSJ will leave you energized and ready to take on the next year of challenges, adventures, setbacks and comebacks. You will leave there with lifelong friends, new readers, mentors with wisdom and experiences to help you along your journey but most of all—you will leave there with a sense of ownership of your writing career.

To be fair, I put in a conference I no plans to attend again, one I have not attended and one I will move heaven and earth not to ever miss. You have to select the one that works for you.

Until the next time,

Iris Bolling
www.sirient.com
www.irisbolling.com

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ANNOUNCEMENT: Hello All, Dee here. I’ll be conducting a FREE eBook formatting workshop for people who are signed up for my monthly newsletter.
Topic: eBook Formatting Basics for Fiction Titles Cost: Free Date: March, 24, 2012 Time: 3-4 p.m. Central Location: Become A Successful Author Website (link and password will be given the day before the event)

Don’t have a copy of Become A Successful Author? What are you waiting for? Become A Successful Author will be used in the “How To Write That Novel” course at Chicago State because it covers everything from branding to writing to editing to formatting and uploading electronic and print books to marketing and so much more. Your time is money. Look at all the time, thus money, you’ll save by ending your search for answers: Purchase Become A Successful Author (eBook) for only $4.99 from: Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), Barnes & Noble or print copies for only $7.99 by using the Contact page of this website and tell Dee know how many copies you’d like and shipping address. She’ll email the ordering information. Or you can purchase the print version from any book store for $9.99.