Converting Twitter Followers into Readers of Your Books

Quotation from author Jonathan Gunson:

      Converting your Twitter followers into buyers only happens if you interact with them the right way.  Twitter is all about engagement.   You need to become familiar to them, so they feel connected with you and your work, because you both love the same things…  and then they buy your books.

Isn’t this exactly the same sentiment shared here by author and graphic artist Karen Gadient just a few days ago?

The lesson for us is that all social media is exactly that: SOCIAL media. An author is successful in using social media to market books when the author makes the connection to the reader first, then markets as an afterthought or by-product of the personal connection.

It’s a tough balancing act. The emphasis needs to be on making new acquaintances or connections with another human being surrounding shared interests. Otherwise, we abuse our readers. Get pushy with the selling, and we may send our readers to other websites.

Since I will soon have a novel to sell, it’s a personal lesson I need to remember. And if I forget and start selling more than “friending,” please kick me in the seat of the pants rather than silently disappearing.

Using Twitter to Find New Readers for Your Book

Best selling author Jonathan Gunson offers the best advice I found today on using Twitter to find readers. As Gunson says, the technique is “smack your forehead” simple.

After you have read an excerpt of Gunson’s advice below, you will want to see what else he has to offer, so go here:

http://bestsellerlabs.com/how-to-find-readers-on-twitter/

 re-blogged from Jonathan Gunson (with permission)

Readers Can Be Found By Using Twitter Search

The method is to type into Twitter’s search panel certain words and phrases that readers of your fiction genre might be using in their Tweets.  Doing a few of these searches will start to reveal readers of that fiction genre in significant numbers.

Then just go through the search results and follow those readers that you feel belong to your book genre, based on what they say in their Tweets.  Many of them will follow you back.

Here are three suggested search methods: 1:  Search using the names of successful authors in your fiction genre.

This approach finds the readers of successful authors in the same genre as you.

For example, if you’re a YA author, you might search for author “Lemony Snicket”, who writes the hugely popular YA series ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’.

This search will reveal readers in the YA fiction genre, because many of the Tweets will clearly be from people Tweeting about their “Lemony Snicket” reading experience.

Simply go through the search results and pick out the users who are obviously YA readers in your genre.   Click on the names you like, and their profile will pop up – then click each one to follow them.  (The idea being that many of them will follow you back.)

Note:  When searching, remember to click the “All” link at the top so you can see all the Tweets that include a particular phrase, not just the most popular.

For more on this subject, visit Jonathan Gunson’s website.