Twitter Strategies for Promoting Your Fiction

Whether you write novels or poetry, there are other people on Twitter with whom you share interests. Below are three strategies to help you connect with like-minded people:

• Use tweetbeep.com (or a similar third-party application) to track conversations around keywords related to your fiction. For example, you can track the words novels or fiction or poetry.

You’ll get an email notification from tweetbeep.com when someone uses these keywords in a tweet. Click on the username of the person sending the tweet, check out his/her profile, and then if possible send a reply to that person (public tweet) engaging in that conversation.

• Do tweetchats to engage in real-time conversations. Consider having these at a set time each week. Use tweetchat.com (or a similar third-party application) to “host” the chats. And consider having a different expert each week to drive the chat.

For example, you could follow the tweetchat model of #smallbizchat Wednesdays 8-9 p.m. Eastern and have a #fictionchat weekly.

• Use twitwall.com when you have a longer announcement than 140 characters. Twitwall is a great way to announce tweetchats and give instructions for people new to tweetchats on how to participate. You can even include photos and video with your twitwall announcements.

These are just some of the Twitter strategies you can use to promote your fiction.

If you want more information on using Twitter, read my Examiner.com articles on Twitter.