Optimize Your Twitter Profile to Attract Fans for Your Book By Phyllis Zimbler Miller

Today is Tuesday and that means we have a guest blogger sharing her book marketing experience with us. Today, we have a veteran of Marketing Tips For Authors with us. Phyllis Zimbler Miller shares her knowledge on Twitter. Specifically, she is speaking to us on optimizing our Twitter profile to help us find fans for our book. Make sure to see the end of the post for links to Phyllis's other posts on Marketing Tips For Authors.



Optimize Your Twitter Profile to Attract Fans for Your Book
By Phyllis Zimbler Miller

Thanks to all the publicity that the microblogging platform Twitter has received in the last few months, most book authors – even brand-new book authors – know that Twitter is something they "should be on" in order to promote their book.

The problem for many book authors is that Twitter is deceptively simple. You can join in less than five minutes and start tweeting away. Thus there doesn’t seem to be much to know about for participating on Twitter.

The truth is that careful thought and effort should go into creating your Twitter profile in order to attract potentials fans for your book. Without this thought and effort, you can be missing out on attracting your book fans.

Without revealing the person’s name, here is an example of someone who followed me on Twitter.

The person's username is the same as her real name. Except that she typed her username all lowercase and included a middle initial so it is very hard to figure out what her username is. She can go back into her account settings and type the first letter of her first name, her middle initial and the first letter of her last name in capitals for her username, which will make this much easier to read.

(Note that a person can type in your username with capitals or without capitals and still get you. But your username will show up on the screen the way you originally typed it into your Twitter account settings.)

Next biggest problem is that this author did not provide a headshot of herself but instead is using the Twitter default bird. If she wants to create relationships with potential book fans, they want to see that she is a person and not a Twitter default bird.

Then this author has no bio. Twitter gives you 160 characters to let people know, for example, that you are an author, what the title of your book is, and what your book is about. This is a major missed opportunity if you do not include a bio.

Also the person didn't take advantage of the one hot link available in the account settings. And she has both a website and a blog as evidenced by her tweets.

If she didn't have a website or a blog for her book, she could link to her book's Facebook page or a longer profile on another social media site.

And then we come to her few tweets (as she is new on Twitter) – they are all about her book. This is not the best way to win friends and influence people on Twitter. The essence of Twitter is sharing information with others – information from yourself as well as others. You want to create relationships with potential book fans, not stuff your book down people's throats so that they choose not to follow you.

FYI – It is not a good idea to have on your website header "the best book you will ever read." Even “one of the best books you will ever read” would be more reasonable.

One of the best things about book marketing on the web is that authors have the opportunity to interact on an equal footing with potential book fans. There's no reason to present oneself as superior to others.

Collaboration rather than competition is a web marketing motto. And if I can digress for a moment, Tony Eldridge is a perfect example of this type of collaboration. He is tireless in his promotion of others – and in return others are happy to promote him. It's a win-win situation that can’t be beat!


Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the Twitter marketing expert at Site-Booster.com. If you liked this blog post, you’ll love her company’s free report on “How to Become a Twitter Marketing Expert” – claim your report now from www.millermosaicllc.com/free-twitter-report

And to learn more about using Twitter effectively for business, see Twitter tutoring. Plus these two information packages may interest you:

“What You Should Know About Using Twitter Effectively and Strategically”
“What You Should Know About Marketing-Driven Websites”


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See these other posts by, or about, Phyllis Zimbler Miller:

How Can Persuasive Selling Help You Sell More Books?

Effective Internet Marketing Helps Avoid Missed Opportunities

Creating a Relationship with Potential Readers

Misconceptions and the Truth about Book Marketing on Twitter

How to Deal With Negative Reviews of Our Books

30 Days To Launching A Product

Anatomy of an Information Product Launch By Phyllis Zimbler Miller- Book Review