Let's Talk about Tweets... and Give One Away!

Let’s talk about Tweets… and Give One Away!

By Brad R. Cook

I wanted to take a quick moment to talk about Twitter.

This isn’t an article about what Social Media is, whether it’s good or bad, or how it’s changing the world… just three ideas you need to ‘follow’ to get the most from Twitter.

Yes, you can endlessly schedule promotions for your book and follow everyone you can find around the world, but that’s not really using twitter, that’s standing on top of the mountain and screaming the title of your book. People will hear, but there are other ways.

Follow what you love! Follow your favorite authors, the sexiest stars, people you admire, or causes you believe in. Twitter is one of the best ways of keeping up with the things you care about – but you already knew this.

Follow the industry! Follow literary agents, publishing conglomerates, small presses, magazines, reviewers, and editors, follow the writers, the literary organizations, and more. Twitter might just be the best way of following the publishing industry; it’s definitely the fastest – a lot less blogs to read.

Follow the Hash Tags! Twitter is filled with conversations – writing tips, editing tips, review requests, contests calls, every genre has one, and more pop up every day! Some are well known like #amwriting, #writer, #author, #books, #poetry, and #contests. Others are less known like, #pubtip, #writetip, #yalit, #mglit, and #Fridayreads. Then there are the Twitter specific hash tags like, #FF (follow Fridays), #MM (Monday Mentions), #WW (Wednesday Writers), and #stl (for St. Louis). St. Louis Writers Guild even has one, #slwg. Join in, the whole world is having a conversation, and the best part is we are all invited.

Did you know that The Writers’ Lens is on Twitter? We are, follow us @writerslens.

You can also find us on Facebook, so stop by and like us, we’d appreciate it.

Let me know your favorite hash tag in the comments section!

And… because this is Monday, and we hold our giveaways on Monday, The Writers Lens is offering a promotional tweet, several of them actually. This is a call to authors and writers – sorry corporate America, but if you want The Writers Lens to tweet your information that would be sponsorship, and we can talk about that… but this is a call to all the authors and writers.

You can enter the contest by leaving a comment on this post. Just tell us your @twittername or email, and the title of your novel or blog. The winner will be chosen on Sunday, January 20, 2013 and the tweets will run every day until Sunday, January 26, 2013! We’ll even give it cool hash tags so more people than our followers will see it. Note: we will only tweet your name, and the title of your novel, or blog address, this is not an endorsement of your novel or blog. We just want to help spread the word about you!

Good luck and may your tweets go viral!

Brad R. Cook is a historical fantasy author and President of St. Louis Writers Guild. Please visit www.bradrcook.com or follow me on Twitter @bradrcook

St. Louis Reflections http://www.stlbooks.com/B009271-1211-51/Review.aspx