Twitter Promotions

Today’s article is a guest blog by Naomi Kramer

Self-promotion can be hard. Mostly, in my experience, because I have to walk a tricky path between no-one ever hearing of me, and irritating people. I hate telemarketers and doorknockers and spammers and people on Twitter who simply send a ridiculous number of “need help with ? has the answer! Go to for a better life!” messages. Hate them. Passionately. Why? Simple. They waste my time and they’re – ugly. Non-aesthetic. I fear becoming like them. I also fear never being a household name, though. Although not as much as being a famed Pain In The Arse. So, like I said, it’s a tricky path to walk between the two extremes.

Recently, I discovered a self-promotion ’secret’ that, now I think about it, I’ve known for a long time.

Ready?

It’s this – be useful.

Think up a service – preferably writing-related – that you can do for people, and offer it free of charge. See, this service isn’t about making money. It’s about making contacts, and earning respect, and maybe even a bit of gratitude. Because the thing about human nature is, a lot of us are capable of appreciating a favour freely given. And once we appreciate it, we’ll often reciprocate in some way.

Take Twitter.

At first glance, Twitter might seem like a roomful of people all yelling about themselves and whatever the hell they’re selling. But look a bit closer. You’ll note that a lot of people are actually spending a fair chunk of their time selling somebody else. It may be a #followfriday effort – introducing people they follow to their followers. It may be a retweet – passing on someone
else’s funny joke, deep statement, or promotion. It may be a link to an article or piece of fiction they enjoyed. It’s all part of doing something nice for someone else without any contracted payment of any type – often just the hope that others will notice, appreciate and the service, and consider returning the favour. They’re just – being useful.

In the writing world, useful twittering might include introducing other writers to your readers, or linking to other people’s writing. It might involve increasing other writers’ networks, and introducing them to useful contacts.

With this concept in mind, I recently started a new Twitter account. It’s called @onlinefiction, and its sole purpose is to provide links to free online fiction, and promote fiction writers who are on Twitter. I do include my own fiction in these promos – perhaps every 4th or 5th link is to one of my stories. However, I also link to a number of other writers’ work – either pieces that I’ve enjoyed, or that I mean to read soon.

Before I started this account, I never understood the need for some of the Twitter tools out there. Why on earth, I thought, would anyone want an auto-follower, or to pre-write and schedule their tweets? Then, looking at this account, it occurred to me – I needed lots of people to know about it before it would be useful. Damn. And then something else occurred to me – I needed to be tweeting not only when Australians are awake and tweeting, but also when the rest of the world is doing likewise. Double damn! I refuse to lose sleep, and the process of increasing one’s followers is a painful one to try manually. So I went in search of some tools.

Twollow is a fairly simple web-based tool which allows me to auto-follow complete strangers, based on keywords they use in their tweets. Here’s my list of keywords:

• book
• fiction
• writer
• followfriday

The first three are to target people who tweet about writing and reading, and therefore might be interested in free fiction links. The fourth is to target people who, simply, don’t mind being followed by complete strangers, and who will pass on information about interesting tweeters (potentially, me!) to other people in their network.

TweetLater is another web-based tool, with two main features I find useful. The first is that it allows me to auto-follow anyone who follows me – simple politeness in this sort of venture, but difficult to upkeep manually. The second is that it allows me to schedule tweets hours, days or weeks in advance. This last feature gives me the chance to reach a wider audience, because I can be sharing links 24/7. Tweets are spaced to avoid being intrusive – 2 or 3 an hour.

How does it actually work? People will subscribe to a service like this if they’re looking for whatever it offers – in this case, free fiction links. They’ll click on a link if a twitter’s text happens to catch their eye and interest. They’ll retweet or give a follow recommendation if they really like a tweet, or the service provided. Theoretically, at least, readers find writers with a minimum of effort on the reader’s part.

I’ve only been running it a week, so I can’t give many useful statistics. My site’s received perhaps 3 extra visits a day. Other writers may or may not have experienced similar small increases. I’ve definitely made some new friends and met new writers, so I’m happy with the results so far.

I’m not saying that you should start a new Twitter account and start madly promoting, mind you. Although feel free to do so – the more the merrier! But the underlying concept is a solid one, I think, in a marketplace where information is the main currency.

Be useful. Be kind. Give others a chance to do the same for you.

Naomi Kramer publishes short stories and serials free of charge on Nomesque Fiction.