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A while back, I stopped doing a promo tweet every 3 hours to having one go live at 12 AM and pinning it once I woke up. This gave me one tweet a day and the new one was always at the top of the feed. I haven’t really reported on this since I can never tell if it helps with sales or not. Yeah, I’m terrible when it comes to this since I focus more on the writing side of things these days. So, I’m going to do a quick Pro/Con thing here.
Con
- Your promo will come and go in other people’s feeds rather quickly. Unlike the people who tweet multiple times throughout the day (I’ve seen 3, 6, and even 1 hour intervals), you don’t have the flood effect. So you can’t depend on people stumbling onto it after maybe an hour at most.
- You have to put more effort into retweeting to bring attention to your pinned tweet. This path means you depend a lot on reciprocation and you will have to carve out periods where you tweet by hashtag, your feed, or whatever you want to do. No sitting on your hands this time.
- You need to remember to pin in the morning. This is one of the first things I do because I have forgotten before. I’d nearly buried it and it was a pain to scroll in search of it. Now this really only goes for people using something like Hootsuite. Those that don’t can easily avoid the trap, but they do have to remember to make a tweet every day. Imagine forgetting to promote for the entire day? Oops.
- This gives you fewer tweets to cycle through if you begin running out of ideas. It might just be me here, but I start reusing tweets after a month or two. It’s been so hard to find my old stuff since I don’t have as much out there. This is probably just me and could be considered a rather whiny con.
Pro
- You don’t have to rush to Twitter every hour or three to make a tweet. It’s a one and done deal that leaves you free to focus more on other things. Yes, you have to go to retweet at times, but you can do that on a break and it takes less brain power than coming up with a witty promo.
- When I was doing multiple tweets, I got maybe 30 retweets on a good day. I think many people will retweet you once and leave it at that until the next day. With a single pinned tweet, you don’t have the retweets spread out. So I range from 60-120 depending on the quality and day of the tweet. How is this good? Ever do a search for a hashtag and notice it goes to ‘Top’ before ‘Latest’? A lot of retweets means you can be higher up that first search option.
- You take your time making the tweet and don’t fell like you have to stretch your ideas. This allows you to focus on one good tweet instead of many average ones. Sure, the pinned up could still be meh, but at least you aren’t spending the day with 10 meh tweets and 1 good one that shows up at 3 AM.
- This really helps with a sale because it keeps the sale info at the top of your feed. Even if you decide to throw out a few throughout the day, you have less pressure on you because there’s still the one you began your day with. Everything else can be if you feel like it or see that traffic can use a little boost.
That’s what I could come up with. Honestly, the big thing for me is the freeing up time and not having to come up with 6-7 tweets a day. Some people can do it, but I’m more into the one and done thing. Time and energy is limited these days, so I’ll use whatever tricks I can to get function in both arenas.
What are your twitter strategies?
Legends of Windemere 
I don’t have much of a Twitter strategy, other than tweeting videos or retweeting other tweets that my followers might be interested in. Usually I tweet what strikes me at the time.
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I try to be more human and open there. Doesn’t really work though. 140 characters seems like so little.
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This is a great idea. Thank you, Charles. I often wonder if anyone can pin tweets to sales.
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I think there is a way. Takes a lot of work and focus from what I can tell.
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I think so. 🙂
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I fumble along. I post something sporadically and spend most of my time retweeting others.
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Sounds like a common plan. The one obstacle I remember from early on is when people couldn’t find my stuff to retweet or they have already done it for the one I did that week. One a day definitely helps with getting return tweeters. How are your pinned tweets doing?
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They get some action. I just don’t have time to make graphics for a 30 day cycle. I leave one for a week or two, then change it. I don’t really know if it helps, but when I find someone whose tweet I’ve already shared, I untweet then retweet. My hope is that it goes back in the stream in a new spot.
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I settle for the Amazon cover picture that appears when you just use the link. I’ve done the untweet/retweet a lot. Though there are many who have pinned tweets going back to 2015, which gets a little odd to retweet. A few times I’ve done it and received a complaint that I shouldn’t have.
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I’ve never heard about a complaint. Was it from Twitter or the tweeter? I have good copies of my cover art I can use.
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The tweeter. Book was no longer in print, the link was bad, or some reason it wasn’t a good idea to retweet. Yet the person still had it pinned there.
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Yeah, seems like maybe they should correct it, not you.
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Yeah. Though mentioning that makes things worse.
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I love this idea, Charles. I’m such a horribly sporadic tweeter (almost as bad as my blogging schedule). I’m seriously going to check this feature out. Hope you’re having a great week. BTW, I’m re-blogging this. 🙂
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Thanks for the reblog and I hope the tactic works for you. Always hard to keep a schedule going. Have a great week too.
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Reblogged this on lilicasplace.
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Reblogged this on Don Massenzio's Blog and commented:
Some pros and cons to promoting your book via Twitter from Charles Yallowtiz on his Legends of Windemere blog
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Thanks for the reblog. 😄
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You’re welcome.
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Like you, I find that the volume of posting on Twitter overwhelms announcements. Even so, I have a slightly different group of Twitter followers, so I do Tweet once or twice a week. Then it routes to Facebook, so that group of friends sees it also.
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I used to route my tweets to Facebook. I stopped because it caused a mess with all the retweets. Friends kept complaining.
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Well, I’m obscure, so that’s never been a problem for me.
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I tweet as and when I read a blog post and will tweet it if I particularly liked it. I do retweet, but probably not as often as I should. If I’m looking for a tweet, I’ll usually just go to one of my own blog posts and retweet it from there (adding in any hashtags). I always try my best and retweet a tweet of anybody who tweets my pinned tweet. Whether it’s got me any sales? I really don’t know and I don’t think there is any way of finding out.
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I don’t really retweet my own posts. Figure it’s up there once and I don’t always have a book connected to it. I definitely do the reciprocation thing, which I find essential to social media in general. Good to hear I’m not the only one shrugging about the sales effect.
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I’m with meh. I tweet if there is anything worth saying, same with retweeting.
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I retweet a lot to help authors with their promos. Figure every little bit helps.
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