Week 3 has been another success! I'm very pleased with now having 660 followers (up 250 followers from last week) on Twitter. I have added a few more ideas to my normal regime since last week's blog, and I have gained more knowledge about social media which I will share with you today. I hope you're having as much (or more) success as I've been having, but if you're struggling on Twitter, I hope this series of blogs will help you boost those numbers!
Like I said, I've been using the same methods as last week, as well as some new ones, for my daily routine on Twitter. This consists of continuing to thank those that follow me every day. Not only is this a cordial response, but also this will promote your followers to retweet your Twitter name or add your tweet to their favorites. It's a mutual benefit to you and your followers and also a way to start conversations which is key to social media - you want to engage with them. Not only is it fun, but it gives you an opportunity to converse with others from all over the world. One way in which I engaged was to put this question out there: "Hi writers! Do you think it's useful for an aspiring author to start a Facebook page? Or should I just stick with Twitter/webpage for now?" A few followers commented on the amount of time it takes to maintain Facebook and another advised to concentrate on the quality rather than quantity of my followers, keep in mind the target audience, and not to oversell to fellow authors or they will stop following (Rachel Stirling @Stirlingwriter). Even further, a follower advised to, "Just write and let the rest fall into place" (Jonathan King @JonnaKing). I thank them all for their great advice.
My gut was telling me not to go with Facebook for now, since I'd like to keep focusing on Twitter and this webpage, so I waited. A few days later, I found out that I had made the right decision. I was fortunate enough to attend Jill Celeste's Social Media 101 class. There were probably about 10 attendees sitting in the conference room from different types of business sectors. Jill was thorough with information on several social media platforms, but best of all, she had us figure out our target audience and which social media platform would be most beneficial for each of our business types. For my young adult/middle school novels, Facebook is not the place. The younger generation has moved on from there to other places such as Instagram and YouTube. And so will I. In a nutshell, Jill taught me that the most important factors in being successful in social media are concentrating on quality rather than quantity (sound familiar?), building relationships and gaining trust. And two hours later, I had a direction and newfound energy to go out and feel more confident about my approach to social media.
In addition to Jill's class, I have also been participating in her 21-day Personal Branding Challenge during April where she provided a checklist of 50 social media related tasks to choose from for the month. One of the tasks was to write a comment on a blog. So, I searched through the Twitter accounts until I found an author whose writing captured me, and I left a short comment about his work (William Woodward @chirpingscribe). What a gift to find such a talented author! Another task was to provide a guest blog post for someone, so I got to thinking that maybe I should provide my geology expertise to a small business such as Einstein in a Box (@EinsteinInABox1) which sends out monthly scientific experiments to children whose parents subscribe. Jill helped me contact them and next week I will be meeting with the founders to help design a geology box for the kids. I can't wait! This personal branding challenge has opened up a new world for me.
So, between the class, online challenge and continuing my previous methods, here's a list of what I have incorporated into week 3:
It has definitely been a good week for me on social media. I hope you've had a good one too! If you haven't already, I would find an expert to help you understand social media. There are several that provide free information. You can also contact Jill at www.yourbrandingpower.com.
Check back next weekend for my next update. If you'd like to add any advice or information about your experience on Twitter or Facebook pages below, feel free!
Until next time, keep up the tweets! --Sandie
Like I said, I've been using the same methods as last week, as well as some new ones, for my daily routine on Twitter. This consists of continuing to thank those that follow me every day. Not only is this a cordial response, but also this will promote your followers to retweet your Twitter name or add your tweet to their favorites. It's a mutual benefit to you and your followers and also a way to start conversations which is key to social media - you want to engage with them. Not only is it fun, but it gives you an opportunity to converse with others from all over the world. One way in which I engaged was to put this question out there: "Hi writers! Do you think it's useful for an aspiring author to start a Facebook page? Or should I just stick with Twitter/webpage for now?" A few followers commented on the amount of time it takes to maintain Facebook and another advised to concentrate on the quality rather than quantity of my followers, keep in mind the target audience, and not to oversell to fellow authors or they will stop following (Rachel Stirling @Stirlingwriter). Even further, a follower advised to, "Just write and let the rest fall into place" (Jonathan King @JonnaKing). I thank them all for their great advice.
My gut was telling me not to go with Facebook for now, since I'd like to keep focusing on Twitter and this webpage, so I waited. A few days later, I found out that I had made the right decision. I was fortunate enough to attend Jill Celeste's Social Media 101 class. There were probably about 10 attendees sitting in the conference room from different types of business sectors. Jill was thorough with information on several social media platforms, but best of all, she had us figure out our target audience and which social media platform would be most beneficial for each of our business types. For my young adult/middle school novels, Facebook is not the place. The younger generation has moved on from there to other places such as Instagram and YouTube. And so will I. In a nutshell, Jill taught me that the most important factors in being successful in social media are concentrating on quality rather than quantity (sound familiar?), building relationships and gaining trust. And two hours later, I had a direction and newfound energy to go out and feel more confident about my approach to social media.
In addition to Jill's class, I have also been participating in her 21-day Personal Branding Challenge during April where she provided a checklist of 50 social media related tasks to choose from for the month. One of the tasks was to write a comment on a blog. So, I searched through the Twitter accounts until I found an author whose writing captured me, and I left a short comment about his work (William Woodward @chirpingscribe). What a gift to find such a talented author! Another task was to provide a guest blog post for someone, so I got to thinking that maybe I should provide my geology expertise to a small business such as Einstein in a Box (@EinsteinInABox1) which sends out monthly scientific experiments to children whose parents subscribe. Jill helped me contact them and next week I will be meeting with the founders to help design a geology box for the kids. I can't wait! This personal branding challenge has opened up a new world for me.
So, between the class, online challenge and continuing my previous methods, here's a list of what I have incorporated into week 3:
- Increased the number of posts per day to 5-10
- Thanked new followers
- Thanked followers for retweets/favoriting on my blog
- Posted writing and publishing related articles on tweets
- Started Hootsuite and scheduled tweets multiple times a day
- Added Tweet Old Post plugin to WordPress to retweet my old posts from my science blog (www.rockheadsciences.com) to my Twitter account
- Participated in Friday Follow (#FF) to ask my current followers to follow my new followers
- Asked a question on Twitter to start conversations
- Decided to stay with Twitter only for now, but will research using Instagram and/or YouTube
- Signed up at www.twittercounter.com to watch Twitter account growth
- Updated my Twitter account details
- Started to establish relationships with others by adding tweets that were outside of writing
It has definitely been a good week for me on social media. I hope you've had a good one too! If you haven't already, I would find an expert to help you understand social media. There are several that provide free information. You can also contact Jill at www.yourbrandingpower.com.
Check back next weekend for my next update. If you'd like to add any advice or information about your experience on Twitter or Facebook pages below, feel free!
Until next time, keep up the tweets! --Sandie
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