Five Lessons I've Learned About Twitter: Lesson #1

This week I've been sharing with you five lessons I've learned in my first three months or so as a Twitter user promoting my crime fiction novel, Blood Passage. Yesterday in Lesson #2 I explained how I discovered that it's better to spend the time on Twitter than to auto-tweet.

Today's lesson: My Top Ten Followers Include at Least Thirty People.

It’s tough to swing a proverbial dead cat these days without hitting someone anxious to tell you about the 80/20 rule as it applies to social media. Known as the Pareto Principle, the 80/20 rule states that for many events, 80% of effects come from 20% of causes. Applied to business, the rule states that 80% of your results (e.g., sales) come from 20% of your clients.

(For the purposes of this post I'm going to overlook the interpretation of the rule which states that 80% of your tweets/posts must provide personal value to your readers while 20% is devoted to self-promotion. Frankly, I'm not making the cut here and I'd rather not talk about it right now, if you don't mind.)

I recently read an interesting article about Effective Tweeting that suggested I should know who my Top Ten followers are. Understanding their characteristics and how they can help me will assist in growing my influence in Twitter. I could see right away that this idea was a kind of application of the Pareto Principle, in that my Top Ten would lead the 20% of followers who represent 80% of my payoff from Twitter participation.

I spent a few days mulling this one over. My Top Ten would be based not only on who retweeted me the most, but also who replied to my socializing tweets, who was fun to banter back and forth with, and who was just plain charming (yes, you know who you are!). I didn’t factor in Direct Messages because I’ve quickly discovered that most of my DMs are auto-messages. (Is it wrong of me to have stopped responding to most of these auto-DMs? I feel so guilty, but there you have it.)

Finally, I made a list of my top ten Twitter people. Here’s what I learned.

First of all, I’ve met a lot of people through Twitter in only three months who’ve made a very positive impression on me. People I’m pretty sure I’d like if I met them in person. That’s remarkable, even if very subjective and not verifiable, but I feel good about it just the same. Second, I’ve met several people willing to help me promote my book either in exchange for me helping them promote theirs, which is normal and fine, or simply because they’re really nice people and just want to help, which is weird and wonderful.

Third, I’ve discovered I’m one of the people in the second group. I retweet for people who are tweeting to promote their band, their hand-crafted jewelry, their paintings and photographs, whatever. It feels good. It’s cooperative. It taps right into that indie spirit I’ve been blogging about all along in this space.

So when I was finished listing my Top Ten followers, I had a list that was more than 30 people long. Everyone on that list has been helpful, kind, fun, interesting, cooperative. It's a good list.

What does it mean? Well, if I summarize what I've learned so far about Twitter, I can say that it's a medium that has helped me market Blood Passage and will definitely help market the rest of the series as I get better at using the medium effectively. It has plenty of potential and I'll learn more about that potential, the more research I do. It's an easy application for me to use, compared to other social media such as Facebook, and it's most effective for me when I sit down in the chair and invest a little personal time in it, rather than program auto-tweets and let the computer do all the work. It's better to tweet in person, I've learned, because then I get a chance to interact directly with all the great, fascinating, engaging people I've listed as my Top Thirty Twitter contacts, and many more that will soon join the list.

Like everything else, it's all about the people, folks. Another slice of the never-ending human experience.

Five Lessons I've Learned About Twitter: Lesson #2

This week I've been sharing with you five lessons I've learned in my first three months or so as a Twitter user promoting my crime fiction novel, Blood Passage.Yesterday in Lesson #3 I explained how I discovered that Twitter is easier for me to use than Facebook.

Today's lesson: It's better to spend the time on Twitter than to auto-tweet.

When I first opened my Twitter account I tried to keep track of everyone I was following and those who were following me. This lasted a couple of weeks before my list became hopelessly unmanageable.

After a little research I found Friend or Follow, the free online tool I mentioned yesterday. Instead of scanning a two-column document trying to spot who was missing, I could use an automated process that takes about three seconds, then begin pruning the Follows who obviously weren't going to follow back.

It wasn't long before I noticed there were quite a few tweets being repeated by certain people, day after day. The same quotation, the same book promo, the same invitation to "Like" on Facebook. Either these people were dogged and relentless, or they were using another kind of automated process. On top of that, I discovered during a few sleepless nights they were also up, tweeting away. The same tweets. What the--? Are they cyborgs that never sleep? A little more research revealed they must be using an auto-tweeter app. Write your tweets, set the time, and go to bed. The program tweets for you, sends an automated Direct Message to new followers, and does all sorts of other very useful, time-saving things.

I looked into several of these apps, thinking I could streamline my own processes, being rather conscious of the amount of time I was spending on Twitter. It seems, though, that Twitter is getting serious about the repetitive nature of some tweeting, i.e. spamming. Some of these apps have now been hamstrung so that they're no longer the insane robot spam machines they might have been. Given the clutter I see in my own timeline, I'm just as glad.

More importantly, though, I realized how impersonal automated tweets seem to me. At first when I saw something clever or interesting I'd tweet a reply, hoping to engage them in some kind of dialogue. When nothing happened, I clued in. It's obvious the person posting them is not online, they're off at work or they’re curling or they're snoozing or something while I’m sitting here like a schlub reading their tweet.

Part of what makes Twitter so effective as a social medium is the opportunity to interact with the online community I've joined. I've become acquainted with some very friendly, quirky, fascinating, intelligent and utterly charming people through Twitter. I have an opportunity to learn from them, joke with them, share my own experiences with them, console them, encourage them, and be encouraged back.

I can't do any of that nearly as well through automated tweets, automated DMs or the rest. Although Twitter is an important marketing tool for me to spread the word about my book, I like to think that the people at the other end of this constant stream of electrons would prefer to interact with another real person rather than an autobot mindlessly doing my bidding while I catch a few zees.

As a result I've concluded that it's much better to spend the time to sit down at the keyboard and tweet my tweets in person than to auto-tweet. If you tweet to me, I might be on long enough to tweet back. Fun, that. And I'll just have to settle for less than machine-perfection and 3:00 am book promos. So be it.

Tomorrow: Lesson #1: My Top Ten Followers Include at Least Thirty People

Five Lessons I've Learned About Twitter: Lesson #3

This week I'm sharing with you five important lessons I've learned in my first three months or so as a Twitter user promoting my crime fiction novel, Blood Passage. I began with Lesson #5, where I learned that Twitter has a lot of marketing potential, and followed with Lesson #4, in which I suggested that Twitter also has a lot of research potential.

Now it's time for Lesson #3: Twitter is a lot more easy to use than Facebook.

My mother always told me that if I don't have anything nice to say I should just keep my mouth shut, and I've tried to follow that rule not only in my everyday life but also in my online presence. It's been a strain sometimes not to publish that negative post about zombie legacy publishers or snooty agents or disinterested publicists. But I've resisted the temptation.

Until now.

As Popeye used to say, "That's all I can stand, I can't stands it no more." I struggle with Facebook. I don't like it. Oh, I understand its value as a social medium and a marketing tool. Many of the indie authors I researched before making the decision to go independent myself have successfully used Facebook to publicize their books and engage their audiences. I understand that very well.

Perhaps it's an individual thing. Some of us get Facebook and some of us don't. To me, it's a very user-unfriendly application.  I have absolutely no idea how to navigate around in it. Whenever I try to do something new, it doesn’t work and I end up in a window I didn’t expect. I have a personal site when I only wanted a fan page. I created a fan page and have no idea how to make certain that people come to the fan page rather than the personal thing. I get notifications that someone has posted a message for me and I have no idea where to find the message within Facebook. Don't get me wrong; I'm computer literate. At one point in my career with Canada Customs I designed computer-based training using scripting programs no one else in the department at the time knew how to use. It's just that Facebook is an unfriendly environment for a casual user such as myself. Perhaps if I lived on it, as my son does, it would be a different matter. But I don't, and it isn't.

Twitter, on the other hand, is a snap. Sure, it occasionally gets a hairball and I have to close it and reopen it. It has a few other flaws that are well-known to everyone, but it was simple to learn, simple to use, simple to understand, simple simple simple. I like simple. Simple works for me. I log on, do my thing, and move on to something else. Love it.

Plus there are a whole whack of apps that can further simplify my Twitter experience. Want to know who's not following me back? I can use "Friend or Follow." Want to shorten those lengthy links to accommodate my full message within the 140-character limit? I can use bit.ly or a similar app. I suppose there are also a lot of Facebook apps I could use, but frankly, do I care? I'd probably get lost in the Facebook jungle trying to find and use them. Bit.ly? It took me about two minutes to find it in a Google search, register and start using it. Simple.

The bottom line? If we take this lesson as a glass half-full thing (Twitter) instead of a glass half-empty thing (@#$%^ Facebook), I've learned that Twitter is a very user-friendly application for me that can do what I need it to do with little effort. Hoorah for Twitter.

Have you noticed differences between Twitter and Facebook in terms of useability and utility? Let us know about your experiences.

Tomorrow: Lesson #2: It's Better to Spend the Time on Twitter Than to Auto-Tweet

Five Lessons I've Learned About Twitter: Lesson #4

Yesterday I mentioned that I have learned five important lessons since I opened my Twitter account, @MichaelJMcCann1, just over three months ago as a way to gain additional exposure for my novel, Blood Passage. Lesson #5, as I explained, was that Twitter has a very interesting marketing potential. It is the most active medium in which I'm working, and it allows me to drive traffic to my website, which serves as a portal to the points of sale for my novel, and to this blog where I'm developing my brand as a crime fiction author.

Lesson #4, as I have discovered, is that Twitter also has a lot of research potential.

Twitter has a hundred million users. 100,000,000!!! That's a pretty deep ocean. It stands to reason, therefore, that there’s a great deal to learn by diving in and studying the behavior of the life swimming around on all sides.

Now, I'm not a marketing expert or social media scientist or business consultant. I have quite a few Twitter followers who work in these fields, and I imagine you do as well because they tend to be very active in the medium. They could probably explain to you in much better ways how effective Twitter can be as a research tool, and I encourage you to seek them out if you're interested. However, as a lay person and rank amateur, I still have eyes and a brain and I can figure out what's obvious and right in front of my nose. It's obvious that Twitter can teach me a few things about how to sell my book.

Occasionally I glance at the Trends column to see what’s trending around the world of Twitter, but I haven’t really taken much advantage of this so far because I’m not really a Belieber, I don’t follow Italian football and I don’t really want to share the #5ThingsICantStand. I took a shot at #FreeShippingDay in December, but that's about it so far.

I make a lot more use of the Search field. It occurred to me early on that I could steer some of my tweets to specific categories by using the hash tag. A newbie lesson, of course, but now I’ve trained myself to think not only in terms of my followers but anyone in the Twitterverse who owns a #Nook, might want to buy a copy of Blood Passage from #Barnes&Noble, and might check out the Nook and B&N trending categories before shopping online.  Looking for great #crime fiction? You might find a tweet about Blood Passage if you ran a Twitter search on #crime fiction!

Lest you think that’s a marketing point and should have been in the previous Lesson, well, you’re correct, I suppose, but more and more I conduct searches before using hash tags, to get a feel for the kind of tweets that end up in certain categories based on keywords I’m considering. More than once I decided to skip the hash tag, given the low quality of tweets I found. For example, I was going to tweet that Blood Passage was #hot new crime fiction. I checked #hot and saw a lot of junk tweets. I didn't think there were a lot of book buyers there, so I didn't bother with that one at the time. 

Was I wrong? Maybe I should do more research!

Additionally, I mentioned in Lesson #5 yesterday that I ran an experiment by tweeting about free copies of the book, trying to drive traffic to my blog and onward to Smashwords. As a beginner, I'm trying to learn what works and what doesn't. An important part of my research is watching what other people are doing to generate interest in their product or service, and trying to decide how effective it might be. Some of my favorite people on Twitter are getting very creative with their campaigns, hoping to entertain followers as well as attract their business. When I see their tweets retweeted, I can sense they're succeeding in catching interest.

This is an important lesson I hope to learn a great deal from in the next while: Twitter can teach me much about how to promote my book.

What have you learned from Twitter that you can apply to your own efforts? Please share your experiences with us!

Tomorrow: Lesson #3: Twitter is A Lot More User-Friendly Than Facebook

Five Lessons I've Learned About Twitter: Lesson #5

I opened my Twitter account, @MichaelJMcCann1, just over three months ago as a way to gain additional exposure for my novel, Blood Passage, and the others in the series that will soon follow. I did so reluctantly, because I didn’t really understand the concept and didn’t want to devote even more of my rapidly-shrinking time to another dubious social medium that made me grouchy just to think about it. Fortunately, friends and fellow writers @JasmineAziz and @kenmbyars insisted, so I went home, opened the account, and tried to figure it out.

Since then I’ve attracted over 550 followers at a rate of about five a day, I’ve posted almost 1,200 tweets, and I've spent a fair bit of time doing so, more than I’d like to admit. While I'm still a very small fish in the Twitter sea I’m pleased at how it’s gone so far. Thinking about it today I decided there were five clear lessons I’ve learned about Twitter that I thought I’d share with you over the course of the coming week, beginning with Lesson #5 and counting down to #1, which has had the biggest impact on me to date.

Bear in mind that after three months I’m hardly an expert. Just the opposite, actually, because I know I’ve only scraped the surface of this remarkable medium. So I invite you to leave your comments below and share with me some of the things YOU’VE learned about Twitter.

Lesson 5

Twitter Has A Lot Of Marketing Potential

Apparently Twitter has more than 100 million active users. Holy cow! Just looking at that number makes it obvious Twitter’s a marketplace unlike any other the world has known. If only one percent of these users bought my book, I’d be a million-copy seller! 

Ah. If only I could figure out how to reach those darned one percenters.

I’m using Twitter in such a way that it fits into my overall marketing scheme. I also maintain two websites, one for Michael J. McCann and one for The Plaid Raccoon Press (actually there’s a third, free website promoting my first book but it will eventually come down), and I maintain this blog, The Overnight Bestseller.

The two websites serve as information stations about me as an author and The Plaid Raccoon as a micropublisher, and they also serve as portals to the points of sale where readers can purchase the books, such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords and local bookstores. As such, they’re relatively stable and require only periodic maintenance.

This blog is a more active medium. To put it in marketing terms, this is the spot where I’m actively developing my brand as crime fiction author Michael J. McCann. Trust me that I’m cringing as I write this, because it sounds impersonal and insincere, but in actual fact it’s not. Readers look for certain characteristics in the authors they read, and I’m working to develop and display them here on a consistent basis. Traits such as professionalism, a high level of literacy, and a positive attitude are examples of what I’m working toward here because they're what I value as a person.

Finally, Twitter is the most active medium in which I’m currently working. (I’ll get to Facebook in Lesson #3, later.) I’m trying to develop the same consistent traits in my tweets as here in this blog, and I’m using Twitter to drive traffic downstream, as it were, to the blog, websites and points of sale. 

I’ve definitely seen results in three months. Not tremendous results, mind you, but a trickle. Trickles are great. Trickles are just fine, thank you.

I've run a few experiments. At one point I posted a coupon code here in The Overnight Bestseller for a free copy of Blood Passage through Smashwords. I then used Twitter to direct followers here for the code, hoping they would then hop over to Smashwords and download the book. In retrospect it was far too early in the game. I saw through the numbers that it would work, but would work much better with more followers and different kinds of followers.

Ah, now there's an interesting point. How do I attract and keep followers who will be willing to buy and read my books? I've noticed that writers follow writers, and writers follow bloggers, and bloggers follow writers, and so on and so on. But I don't think a lot of writers buy the books of other writers. Am I wrong? I think a lot of writers checked out my blog and Smashwords profile to compare it to theirs.

Busted.

I've been trying to engage other Twitter communities in my Follows, hoping they'll turn out to be readers who follow back and buy people's books. Indie musicians, artists, craftspeople, photographers, foodies. The odd social media specialist.... People different than myself, with different priorities, different lives, different obsessions. But wait, I'm anticipating Lesson #1, and I've got three others to discuss before that.

Have you also tried to attract followers from different circles than your own? How has it worked? And have you had success in using Twitter as a marketing tool?

Please feel free to let me know in your comments. And stay tuned:

Tomorrow: Lesson #4: Twitter Has A Lot of Research Potential

Blood Passage is in the spotlight Today!

Blood Passage is being featured today on Kindle Mystery Authors, a blog that features "exciting mystery authors from around the world."

The Spotlight feature includes a five-star reader review and an excerpt from the story.

Links are included to Amazon's website where readers can purchase a copy for their Kindle.

Click on the link above and check out Blood Passage's moment in the spotlight!

The Fregoli Delusion, Progress Report #5

As promised, here's another update on the manuscript of the third novel in the Donaghue and Stainer Crime Novel series, The Fregoli Delusion.

When I last checked in, I had just finished Chapter Six, which was a difficult one because the suspect pool was at its widest and I was trying to contain the scope of the story so that readers wouldn't get swamped.

I'm happy to say that I'm now halfway through Chapter Ten, and should (knock on wood!) be able to finish it tomorrow, which (knock on wood again) should be an uninterrupted writing day. Today having been a family-related day, as referred to in an earlier post. (By the way, when it comes to Alzheimer's, God has a lot of 'splainin' to do. Just saying. I look forward to hearing it down the road.)

Fregoli will have a subplot. Perhaps you think I'm insane. I understand, after having previously described the lengths to which I was going to contain the scope of the central murder investigation. However, the narrative arc of the series includes Hank Donaghue's relationship with Peter Mah and the local Triad brotherhood, introduced in Blood Passage, and after a brief vacation in Marcie's Murder (coming in April) Donaghue will find himself back in the mix in Chinatown, like it or not. This Chinatown subplot has been followed in the free short stories available from Smashwords, if you care to check them out. Now it will be picked up again in Fregoli. It will be front and center in book five of this series, which is still only a tiny little worm living in the back of my brain. But yeah, I have a plan!

So to get back on point, I should be able to wrap up Chapter Ten of Fregoli tomorrow. At the moment the word count is 26,400ish. At this point the manuscript may run a little long, but I'm not going to worry right now, hip-deep in the first draft. I'm telling a good story and I'm going to let it flow. Writing is writing, and revision is something else again. This book centers on Hank Donaghue himself, and there's a lot I haven't shown of Hank to this point in the series that I want to show here and now, in this story. This is the book that's going to get it out there.( The next one will be Karen's.) Yes, I have a plan!

I wish I could spend more hours writing Fregoli than I am, but I keep reminding myself that guys like Mofina and Forrest write on the bus and in airports. I've got it good in comparison, so no complaints. What matters is that the story is living in me and is coming out, chapter by chapter.