SPOTLIGHT ON… Twitter for Authors: Building your Network

Building Your Network:

The short answer to the question of how to build your social network, particularly on Twitter is simple—find like-minded people and/or businesses who fit the networking requirements that you need.

If you’re a author, it’s important to follow publishing houses (they often link to great insider info and relevant articles), Independent authors who are trailblazing a path in the publishing world often offer some great info and resources, like-minded authorpreneurs and social networking geniuses, local, national and international resources for writers (think writers centres, retreats, competitions, festivals etc) and of course your favourite authors and writers.

Once you’ve started to establish a network, you need to start interacting and engaging with them.

Like or favourite a tweet by clicking on the star button
Retweet by hitting the retweet button
Start a conversation by hitting the reply button

Common etiquette on Twitter ranges from not divulging too much information (we’re not really that interested in what you ate for breakfast), to returning retweets and general manners like please, thank you and hello go a long way. A general pet peeve of Twitter users is pre-set hello/welcome tweets and/or direct messages as well a heavy schedule of pre-written (usually promotional) tweets. It’s absolutely ok to schedule some tweets to go out at certain times of the day but Twitter is a conversational medium as opposed to a broadcast medium, so be sure to balance any scheduled tweets out with genuine interaction.

As an author, it’s vitally important to treat Twitter as you would any other friendship: keep the conversation flowing (and friendly or at the very least on-topic), do not bombard your network with your own promotions (think about it: if you only ever spoke to your friends about business and trying to persuade them to buy your product, how long before those friends tired of hearing a pitch every single time they spoke to you? Same with your Twitter promotions!), and most of all converse, RT and favourite posts from your network–you’ll be surprised how many people repay the favour.

 

 

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