Help Your Social Media Manager Help You

 

What are you investing in to skyrocket your success this year?

If you’ve decided to invest in your own social media manager, you must respect and protect that investment as you would any other kind.

  1. Be available. Your social media person is not you. Questions and issues arise that can only be addressed by you, so watch for emails asking for a response to something. The sooner you answer, the better for your online reputation.
  2. Create new content. Your manager strives to keep your content fresh and appealing and is a master at repackaging the same information. However, your fans (and your manager) love new information. A great way to do this is to keep your blog active, giving your followers and your manager something fresh to work with.
  3. Provide third party content. One aspect of your manager’s job is to spread the love on social media by finding and sharing relevant content created by others. If you see information that fits perfectly with your brand, personality, or vision, share it with your manager.
  4. Value their time. Your social media person works hard to provide you a high degree of personal service, which takes time. No doubt you’ve felt the pressure of time as an author or business owner. It’s at a premium for you, and it’s at a premium for them. Help out by gathering your thoughts into one email, making note of answers to questions you’ve already asked, honoring appointment times, etc.
  5. Be pleasant. Your manager is, after all, a regular person who responds to positivity just like any other. If you are grouchy, delay that call. Review that email for tone. Go on vacation. Take a nap.

Your social media manager wants you to succeed. Help them help you succeed and get all you can out of your investment.

Essential Twitter Hashtags for Authors

Coffee Twitter-128

By now you have at least heard of Twitter hashtags, although many authors remain confused about them.

 

So what the heck is a hashtag anyway? It looks like a pound sign and is placed before a keyword or phrase in your Tweet relevant to your subject matter like this: #author or #dentalhygiene. It is meant to label a topic making it easier to search for on Twitter.

 

Twitter hosts a large community of authors and writers, and it’s time for you to get out there and get acquainted. Hashtags are like those sticky name tags you wear at events that tell people who you are and make you easier to approach. You want to be easy to approach, right?

 

General Hashtags

These are highly popular general categories you can use when tweeting content. Everybody uses them, which makes the crowd large, but when you combine these general hashtags with targeted ones within each tweet, you are more likely to reach the audience you are looking for.

  • #author – Label yourself or a fellow author you are promoting
  • #writer – Same idea as above
  • #amwriting – If you are tweeting about a book in progress, offering a writing tip, working on a blog post, or anything of that nature
  • #amreading – Great way to promote what you are reading and who wrote it
  • #book and #books – Use when promoting yours and others (you ARE promoting fellow authors?)
  • #ebook and #ebooks – Same idea as above
  • #kindle – For your ebook version on Amazon

 

Targeted Hashtags

By targeted, I mean hashtags that are specific to your subject, genre, expertise, or branding. You may need to do some research to figure out the right hashtags for you. Two suggestions: go to www.hashtags.org and enter different words to see if anybody else is using them, how often, etc.; and find similar authors on Twitter and see how they hashtag their books and subjects. For one client, I discovered that writers of historical fiction often use #histfic and #histnov to label their genre.

 

The list below offers targeted hashtags more specific to certain subjects. I can’t possibly list for every genre and expertise out there, but you’ll get the idea.

 

Common Genres

  • #paranormal
  • #romance
  • #scifi
  • #horror
  • #mystery
  • #fiction
  • #nonfiction
  • #thriller
  • #fantasy
  • #inspirational

Narrow it down more

  • #vampire
  • #civics
  • #ancientegypt
  • #medical
  • #WWI
  • #erotica
  • #zombies

Create your own based on branding

  • #AuthorU
  • #KneeExpert
  • #RomanceGuru

 

Employ the right Twitter hashtags and get you and your work noticed by readers looking for something specific and by fellow authors who will promote your Tweets.