(Songs have nothing to do with topic. I just like them. Also don’t play all 3 at same time.)
I’ve been toying around with Twitter and Facebook to see if anything brings in different numbers in terms of sales. This has been an accidental experiment since it began during the 2 week break that my son had. Basically, I missed days or tried something to save time on what I was doing. I’m going to do this as a list though because it’s hard to put my ‘findings’ into any other form. As usual, this is only what I’ve experienced and most of what I say could be different for others.
First some Twitter mechanics revelations:
- Pinned tweets do not come up as pinned when using the phone app. So if you pinned a tweet last month and are depending on that then you will run into a small problem from those who only use their phone. Scrolling through tons of retweets to find that one original post can be annoying.
- To counter the issue of #1, if you wish to return a retweet to someone who did that then find the name of their book. Do a search for that book and you’ll be able to find more recent tweets about it.
- You cannot send a Direct Message on Twitter to someone if they don’t follow you. So people that I follow who send me a message and don’t follow back are going to run into a problem.
- Personally, I don’t think you have to make a public thank you to everyone who retweets your stuff. There are other methods of thanks here. A ‘top RT list’ where you thank the big ones of the week or even just doing it in groups would help. I get a lot of retweets throughout the day, which is why I do the simpler ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ retweet.
Now for the sales and numbers stuff:
- Posting in the Facebook groups and not posting in the Facebook groups had the same effect on my sales. Absolutely nothing. In most of these groups, my post got shunting down the list within minutes. One even had it pushed ten spaces down in 30 seconds. I skipped days and that didn’t make a difference. There might be a ‘sweet spot’ to hit, but I’ve never found it. The smaller groups where you interact are probably better and I should get back into those.
- My new Twitter system is one tweet every 3 hours, return the retweet favor, do a few hashtag searches throughout the day, and pin the best post of the previous day. I just started this two days ago.
- Retweeting is very important because it shows you care and helps with networking. Even doing it near the end of the day while you eat turn or before you turn in for the night will help. Be more than a self-promoting bot.
- Twitter has a faster ‘drowning’ rate than the Facebook groups, but you can ease the harshness of this with hashtags. Genre, various book groups, and #Kindle can actually work here. Things that are part of your genre can help too like #dragons and #magic for me. There are tons of hashtags out there, so take a little time to find the ones that will work. One thing to beware of is to choose a hashtag that will have no traction like #obscurereference or #tapirsgogreatwithsalsa. You need something that won’t be saturated while also being something that people may search for.
- Finally, I don’t think Twitter does a lot for actual, immediate sales . . . I’m guessing people left the room before I finished. I do see one BIG benefit of Twitter though and that it’s easier to gather a following/network. This can help spread your tweets, so it increases your exposure. All you have to do is remember to retweet and follow back, but I always recommend examining the people before you follow back. Some are bots and others are best not to associate with. Now I know some people are scoffing at this and that’s fine. This advice is solely for those that are looking at Twitter as a marketing platform first and then a social gathering.
- Side note: Nobody on Twitter gives a damn about what I’m doing, which is why it’s only marketing. I tired wit and ‘my day’ tweets, which went about as far as a flea’s cough.
Legends of Windemere 
I would have to agree about Twitter. Actually I hate twitter – it is a great way for me to follow news outlets, but I find authors that do nothing but “BUY MY BOOK!” tweets all day long every day. I tend to ignore them completely. It is considered social media, but I just don’t think it is very social at all. Connections are hard to make and harder to maintain.
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It definitely feels like more of a promotional platform than a social media site. That’s why I use it as such. The few conversations I’ve gotten into there have been rather frustrating because of the character limit. So you have to use chopped words, shorthand, or just pray you’re making sense. One of the oddest things is the direct message still has that character limit and the following issue I mentioned in the post. That part of it sounds almost like an afterthought of the programmers.
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I am glad to hear other people complaining about Twitter. I use it (somewhat) but view it as a hassle (even if I did get a couple free movie tix out of it yesterday, months after I had posted it – I assume because of a hashtag I had used). As a lawyer and writer (with only her blogging to promote at the moment), that character limit is a major issue for me. Plus, everything seems to get lost. I have had to organize private lists so I see the things I like, and I know that all of the people I want to see aren’t on those lists.
Personally, I get a lot more hits to my blog off of my blog’s Facebook page. I know a lot of my friends and family keep up with the blog that way, as they aren’t Twitter users.
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So that’s where I’m in the opposite camp and I don’t know why. I get very little traffic from Facebook in terms of my books. A few people might get to my blog from the author page, but I see some of my posts actually get a little distance on Twitter. Most times I see someone coming through my FB page to my blog it’s because they want me to follow their page and add to their numbers.
I forgot to mention the lists because I only recently noticed them. This was after somebody added me to a ‘Sex Toy’ list and I had to figure out how to undo that. Apparently, you can put anyone on any list and that’s rather disturbing.
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I have recently started seeing posts getting more Twitter traffic, so it might just be a number of followers thing – I have only recently gotten up past 1,000 followers, which might make a difference.
As for Facebook, I think a lot of my traffic originally came from my dog’s Facebook page, which has 30K+ followers (it is separate from my blog’s Facebook page). Those are not people I follow, just random people who have gotten there because they like seeing a dog dressed up. They are great people who I’ve gotten to know over a long period of time (I got her a page right near the start of pages, though my blog page came later), so it may just be that I’ve built up the goodwill of people over the course of several years and that has made a difference Facebook-wise.
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I saw something similar. I became more active and that started it up, but things kind of took off once I hit 1,500. There was a point where I couldn’t follow any more because I didn’t have enough people following me, which caused a slow down.
Interesting traffic source. People do love animals and kids.
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Pretty much the same observations I’ve been finding with Twitter.
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Have to admit that I still don’t get what the big thing is about it. Seems really hard to do any real connections with people.
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I think you have to look at it as a door on which to knock, that might be opened and through whoch you might be able to walk and find a friend.
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Interesting. Seems a really narrow door though. 😉
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But I’m only little 😉
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Thanks for the advices, Charles! I just made a Twitter yesterday and I am lost. Here is a question regarding that: I want to retweet your book stuff. How do I find your most recent ones? I might be a baddie and an asshole, in the view of the social media gang, because I am not always in the mood to retweet whatever, as in retweet whatever you tweeted so I could say hey Charles look I retweeted you, im awesome. What Im trying to say is, in your case specificaly, which tweets of yours should I put special attention to? How do you tag them,so I can find them easier on your profile, and similar info if there is need of one.
Sorry if the questions are stupid, I am a newborn to this platform.
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For me, go to my twitter page and scroll down. I tweet every 3 hours or so, which means it’s easy to find. You can also search for ‘Legends of Windemere’. I tend to use the same tags and nothing is very ‘special’ outside of a debut period. The search function on Twitter isn’t the most advanced.
The reason I do the 2-3 hour tweets is because I noticed that people are working off different time zones. So a tweet that hits breakfast for one person might be hitting the middle of the work day of another, so I’d miss the one not at the computer.
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Reblogged this on Kev's Blog and commented:
An Author’s Dilemma regards online marketing 😀
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Reblogged this on Jo Robinson.
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When you get the value of social media figured out, do let me know. I think I’m not much of a promoter and amble along with those who find me.
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I’ll make sure to reveal my findings. Then a retraction once the rules change and undo my answers. 🙂
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I’ve met some interesting people in Twitter (and then have moved the conversation on to other venues) but otherwise I completely agree with your thoughts on Twitter. These days I enjoy the interactions via blogs and not a lot else…
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I’m getting there. Most of my conversations seem to be blog-based these days.
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Very thorough research my friend, excellent. I kind of thought that Twitter, with as fast paced as it is might not generate much in the way of sales for authors.
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It’s an odd one. It goes very quickly, but that also means it spreads quickly.
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Thanks for your insights. I don’t have anything for sale, but I am interested in driving traffic to my blog. I like the idea of tweeting every 3-4 hours. I tried that and it seems to help. My blog Facebook page is just an extra place that automatically gets all my blogs posts listed. That is for my followers that don’t use Twitter or follow the blog directly. Have you looked at any of the Twitter helper sites that help you manage your unfollowers and those that don’t followback? I would be interested in your thoughts on these. I have tried uapp.ly and commun.it. Both have free options. I’m just get started with that. I have to keep unfollowing people that don’t follow me back because to the 2000 people limit on followers.
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I do the same thing with FB and Twitter getting my blog posts. I tried using one of those sites a while back and I forgot which one. It was around the time I hit the 2,000 person limit too. I cleared a bunch, but it took a long time to do. I think I stopped after 20 minutes, so it’s smarter to do that before you hit the high numbers. Sadly, that seems to be something we learn after the fact.
I ended up using author hashtags and reblogging a lot to build my follower base, which opened up more spots for me to followback. Honestly, that seemed a bit easier then spending an hour sifting through everything.
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Okay this was brilliant! I read every word, (even the flea’s cough) which I never do! Thank you, Thank you Thank you. I’m going to re-blog this on BeeWritePublishing.
I agree, Facebook is totally useless except to get the word out to family and school friends that you haven’t seen in a while.
I’ve been bulidng my Twitter following using justunfollow.com, which has been a big help, and communit.com to send out thank yous, retweets, etc. That’s worked pretty well for me.
I plan to try your strategy above though and see how it works.
Again, thank you! Awesome post.
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You’re welcome and thank you for the reblog.
Honestly, I forgot about the family and friends part of Facebook. I haven’t had a bite in that arena for a few debuts. Those that do help are fellow bloggers with only one or two assists from people on this side of the computer.
Good luck on the strategy. I hope it works for you. I’m going to check out justunfollow.com.
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Reblogged this on BeeWrite Publishing and commented:
I don’t normally reblog because so many of my followers follow the same blogs, but this was too genius.
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Good piece. I pinned it on Pinterest tweeted it.
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Thanks. Glad to be of any help.
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Liked this. I stopped thanking RT’s (except yours)
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Awww. You don’t have to do that. I’m always happy to help. 🙂
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It really took too much time. okay you are dropped as well.
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Thanks for taking time to share your experience. Reminds me I need to get over to Twitter and FB more often…
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You’re welcome. Never too late to see what’s going on and then remember why you wandered off. 😉
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Reblogged this on theowlladyblog.
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Pingback: Toying with Twitter and Fidgeting with Facebook (link) | Joy V. Smith
I might actually try some of your Twitter techniques, Charles. Looks like they’re having an impact–at least from my perspective.
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Thanks. Hope they work for you.
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