Dana Lynn Smith Gives You 21 Things to Tweet About

This guest article from Dana Lynn Smith is part of the virtual book tour for her new book, The Savvy Book Marketer's Guide to Successful Social Marketing. See the complete tour schedule at http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/booktour/.


Twitter is a great way to meet people, develop relationships, and promote yourself and your book. But it's important to avoid being seen as someone who just promotes themselves.

Most of your tweets should be about helping others, but you also need to inject some personality, to put the social into social networking and help people get to know you. Here are 21 ideas for tweeting:

1. Link to helpful or entertaining articles, websites, and blog posts. Add your own comments or ask for feedback.

2. Re-tweet good posts by other people, but don't go overboard—most of your tweets should be original. Include "re-tweet" or "RT" in your post to indicate that you're re-tweeting someone else's post.

3. Another way to re-tweet is to add a thank you to the previous tweeters at the end of the message. This works well if you have edited the original post.

4. Comment on someone else's tweet by hovering your mouse over it, then clicking the arrow. Be sure to refer to the original message in your reply, because your followers will not be able to see it.

5. Invite people to subscribe to your ezine, blog, or group, and offer an incentive.

6. Announce your live and virtual events, such as book tours and teleseminars.

7. Introduce other authors or experts in your field who are also on Twitter.

8. Teach a mini lesson in 140 characters.

9. On Fridays, recommend your favorite tweeters by using the #followfriday hashtag along with their user names. It's best to say why you recommend them.

10. Send congratulations to other Tweeple when they share good news.

11. Link to your own articles and blog posts, but do it sparingly.

12. Link to photos or videos (yours or others) on Flickr, Twitpic, or YouTube.

13. Ask for advice or ask questions that encourage responses.

14. Comment on someone's interesting Twitter background or clever bio.

15. Offer a free downloadable ebook or sample chapter, with no strings attached.

16. Thank others for mentioning you on Twitter.

17. Recommend a book, product, or service, other than your own.

18. Mention your hobbies, pets, kids, or personal activities. Just don't talk about what you ate for lunch!

19. Talk about your writing or what you're doing in your business.

20. Post an inspirational quote or message.

21. Welcome new followers.


Dana Lynn Smith is a book marketing coach and author of The Savvy Book Marketer's Guide to Successful Social Marketing, www.SavvyBookMarketer.com. To view other articles in the Successful Social Marketing book tour, visit http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/booktour/

To buy Dana's book go to: http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/savvy_book_marketer/successful-social-marketing.html

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog.