The following is a series of articles on how to promote your book on Twitter. Below you will find an overall strategy I have used that has catapulted my book on Amazon.com from a ranking of about 20,000 to consistently below 3,000 and often into the top 1,000 books. I have seen similar improvements in the UK rankings albeit not quite as dramatic.

It is incomplete because these are strategies I have found that work but I have not refined them completely. These article are about an overall strategy rather than the operational mechanics of getting things done. I am also assuming that you already have a twitter account and know the basics of tweeting. If this is not the case a quick search on Google will give you a number of free and paid for books and courses that will get you up and running.

Foundations of a Twitter Strategy

The overall aim of this strategy is to gather lots of RELEVANT followers and then direct them to your book. I capitalised relevant because it is easy to get lots of followers on twitter but unless they are interested in what you have to offer they are no use to you.

The backbone of gaining relevant followers is having something to say that is of interest to them, I call these tweets of value. We will cover them in depth on the next article.

In addition you will need to have a twitter profile and background that clearly states your message and sends people to your book. Finally you will need to go farming for those relevant followers. There is no point in farming for followers until you have a good profile and a decent background image so we will deal with those first.

Twitter Account Name

Before we get to your profile specifically spend a little time thinking about your twitter name. This is something that needs some consideration. When I first started tweeting I had (still have) an account under @NLPtraining. At the time as my company and my focus was on delivering NLP Training Programmes.

Currently my main twitter account is @PersuasionTips. I made the change because I am using Twitter to promote the Persuasion Skills Black Book. It seems to make sense to me that you might want an account that relates specifically to your book or whatever you are marketing.

The alternative to this is to use your name. I went against this because I wanted the book to be the focus not me. When I have several books covering a range of themes and have wider exposure I will probably make an account with my name my primary twitter account. For the purpose of this article just carefully consider the name for your twitter account as it does have a bearing on what you are trying to achieve.

Profiles

You profile consists of your Photo, Name, Location, Web address and Bio. Lets just briefly go through them all with some ideas.

Photo: Twitter is a social media platform and is personal way of reaching your prospects. Therefore a photo is going to work better for you than a logo, pictue or design. Worst case, nothing at all, this sets up an impression that you don’t care or are not bothered.

Name: Again this should be your name for all the reasons set out above.

Location: Give some thought to this. Stephen Fry as an example of the Uber Twitterer changes this regularly to reflect where he is at the moment. If you are offering services that are tied geographically then maybe having a specific location helps. If you don’t want to be tied to a location then something perhaps something that reflects that is the answer.

Web address: Should be easy…your home page. But wait, give it a little more thought. You might want to think about directing people to a sales page for your book ; or maybe an opt in page for your online course. Lots of people will be seeing this web address and many people will click through it so make it an address that counts. That said for many people their home page will be right for them but don’t just assume that is the right thing without giving it some thought.

Bio: This is worth saying a little more about because of it’s importance. This is the thing people will read when they click through to your profile. It is one of the biggest factors in whether people will follow you or not. So what should it contain?

In 160 characters I think you should have something about you and your product offering, your character or personality and a call to action.

Below we are going to talk about the background image. My background image shows a lot about my primary product, my book, so I don’t need to mention it in my bio. Therefore I have settled for telling people what I do. This builds authority and credibility. I then mention a hobby and great passion of mine. Remember this is a social media platform, I am building rapport and appearing human. Finally I have a call to action to follow me. This is a tall order for 160 characters but trust me, get it right and it will pay you back many times over.

Background Image

Now you have a profile worth reading the next thing you need to sort out is a background image. Your background image to work effectively for you needs the following:

• An image of you
• A picture of your book, product of service
• Your contact details, website, facebook page etc

It also needs to look interesting, work on many different browsers and at different resolutions. You can get various different templates and designs that all work. Or you can browse around twitter, find one that works for you and replace all the elements with your images and designs. Here is Joe’s twitter page because I think he has an excellent design. http://twitter.com/bookshaker and here is mine http://twitter.com/PersuasionTips .  Can you tell where I got mine from? A few minutes surfing on Twitter will find you many more that work well.

When you find a twitter page that has all the right elements for you in the right places just right click on the image, save it to your hard drive then work on changing the elements to create your own design. The reason you are using another Tweeter’s design as a template is because you then don’t have to work on getting all dimensions and sizes right for it to fit on different screen sizes and resolutions.

Now you have the foundations done we need to discuss Tweets of vlaue. In the next article we will look at the key reason people will follow you.