tweets | Social Media Aspirin™

So there you are on Twitter gleefully following everyone you can find who may be remotely related to your expertise, your book genre, your hobby, and maybe your city. You do this with every confidence that these people will follow you back, if not immediately, at least by next week. Right?

No, dear reader, not right. There are those you already know will not follow you back like Oprah, the Dalai Lama, and NBC. That’s okay. We all follow those types of accounts on Twitter for a variety of reasons.

I’m talking about everybody else. It just seems like common courtesy for authors to follow authors and readers of thrillers to follow thriller writers. You are, of course, tweeting regularly (right?), retweeting every day (correct?), curating interesting information (aren’t you?), and not talking about yourself too much (can I get an amen). If you are doing all of these things, then you’re doing it right and those accounts don’t know what they’re missing.

Here’s what happens over time. You end up following many more accounts than follow you, a situation viewed negatively by Twitter. Soon Twitter caps how many new people you can follow stating that your account needs more of its own followers. What’s a Twitter user to do?

Unfollow, my friend. Kick ‘em to the curb. Get rid of the accounts that don’t reciprocate or don’t offer high-value information. This lessens the clutter in your Twitter feed, and the Twitter gods like you better because there is less discrepancy between your “following” and “followers” numbers.

Make it easy on yourself and use an automated program that unfollows for you. A note of warning: Twitter doesn’t like it if you unfollow too many people at the same time, so don’t go crazy.

I recommend ManageFlitter. This site creates a report with useful information such as “not following you” or “inactive” and more. You simply click on the account you want to unfollow, and they take care of it. Also, do a Google search on unfollowing Twitter accounts to find other sites offering similar services.

And hey, I’ll follow you back. Follow me @SocMediaMelody and Tweet me so I know it’s you. We can have some Twitter fun.

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.