Wednesday, October 23, 2013

The Art of the RT.



To RT or Not to RT?
 

That is the question.



Many authors use Twitter to make friends in the book industry and to promote their writing. Do endless RT’s, given and received, sell books?
            When I began marketing my first suspense book, She’s Not There, I quickly became overwhelmed by how many avenues were available for promotion. It didn’t take long to come to the realistic opinion that it was not feasible do every type of social media and still have time to write. I came across an eBook by Kathy Lynn Hall called Blog and Tweet, advising authors to focus two things, Twitter and Blogging. This instantly appealed to me, since those were two formats that I actually enjoyed doing. Since then, I’ve accumulated 225 blog followers, and more than 800 followers on Twitter.
            I spend a lot of time RTing for my fellow authors and Twitter friends. While it is impossible to tell if this practice actually promotes book sales, it does do the one thing everyone says in necessary— it helps build an author platform.
            A few things I’ve learned NOT to do when adding RTs.
1.     RTing junk. I only RT a tweet that will aid the other person. RTing something they’ve RTed for someone else, or a piece of a conversation isn’t helpful. Take time to find the right one!
2.     RTing multiple thank you’s I’ll never understand why some people send out thank yous to multiple recipients. Seems like a waste of time to me. And RTing those things? Right up there with junk.
3.     Don’t use an automated RT service. Yikes! These will RT anything, even a simple “Thank You for following.” message. Another time waste.
4.     Don’t do too many RTs at any given time. It could result in a Twitter shut down for you, and you cannot tweet anything for hours. If this matters to you, keep your RTs to about ten every half hour.
5.     When building a following and a group of fellow RT tweeps, it might make sense to focus on authors of your own genre.

Dear readers,
I spend too much time on RTs! In order to get more writing time in, I’ve been forced to cut down. You can set Twitter to email you any time someone RTs you. As your following increases, responding to them all by RTing back can become extremely time consuming. I’ve mainly been returning RTs now with people I’ve known a long time on Twitter, and on writers of my genre, suspense. Sorry, but I can’t promise that RTing will reap huge rewards. It will make you some Twitter friends and get your name out there. Do it wisely.
Have a wonderful week,

Marla

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