I have an acronym to sum up my feelings about Twitter: WtH?
I chose to try out Twitter first under my pen name because I had a novel coming out. Maybe I could get some sales from there. The first day I signed up, I got several follows. Really? Were people just chomping at the bit waiting for my pen name that only had a novella out that no one was buying to arrive on Twitter?
No. Continue reading
This is probably not the type of writing advice you were looking for, for those of you who 
said they liked the writing advice blogs, but some people have mentioned looking into establishing themselves online. Online presence has been very much on my mind since I decided to go indie. I’ve been doing more research this last year into blogs, Facebook, Twitter and even Pinterest. I’m by no means an expert or even very good, but I have a few tips that might help you if you are in the beginning steps.
Before I get into it, I want to say that your story writing should always be top priority. If you are pressed for time and need to skimp on something, skimp on your online presence and write your stories. If you are an indie author, especially, you need to get more and more titles available so if a reader likes one book, they might buy the next and the next and so on.
I believe in getting new titles out so much that I almost quit blogging entirely. The reason I decided not to kill my blog was Spark Tally. I don’t talk to writers in person much, so Spark Tally has long been my connection to other people doing the same thing. I couldn’t visualize it as an email group or a Facebook thing, so I decided to keep blogging.
But now I’m all in with the blogging.
So here are my tips: Continue reading
I really enjoyed Shari’s blog this week about writing goals. As I look at my own, I realize how much I’m struggling to write this year. I haven’t worked on a new story since just before Christmas. While I’m delighted to have Rapunzel: Stay at Home Mom premiering Jan. 31 and a novel under my pen name premiering in February, I fear March is going to hit and I won’t have made any progress on the stories we’ve planned for release at the end of the year. All of my work time has been devoted to editing and promoting. I felt jealous of Dave and Shari this week at Spark Tally with their word counts and progress on new stories and wondered if Holly was as anxious as myself to get back to writing.
But, despite jonesing to immerse myself in plot and hooks and character building, I’m thrilled with what my little publishing business Hot Java LLC has done this month.
My publicist is rocking the Pinterest world. I think my favorite pins are this paper art of Rapunzel she found for the Rapunzel board:
And this eye make-up she found for the Sleeping Beauty’s Spa board:
My pen name twitter followers are up 10% this month and my @MelindaJMoore followers are up 150%! Woo Hoo! I also had a small bump up of Facebook followers this month. Thanks to all the new comers! And thanks to Julie for the headshot she took that’s now on my twitter account!
I’m doing a blog tour for Rapunzel. Right now I have three blogs booked. If you run a blog about writing, fairy tales, reading or parenting and would like me to come over and do a guest blog for you, please contact me at melinda@enchantedspark.com. All the blogs will be unique but focused around an aspect my Rapunzel story. For example at Life of Larisa my blog will focus on how judgmental I was as a new parent and how that aspect is magnified in Rapunzel. I’m sure we could come up with an idea for your blog! Please keep in mind that it’s a fairy tale for adults and uses mature language.
That’s it for me today. Please check back in for the buy links for my book. I’ll post them as soon as I have them. Happy writing!
Sorry I’m late. Please come back tomorrow for another excellent guest blog by Holly Jennings about finding an agent. Thursday I’ll post a photo prompt since I’m doing the Monday blog today.
I’ve been on Twitter now for a few months with my pen name and maybe a month with my real name. I’m no expert, but I’ve definitely come to some conclusions about Twitter based on what I’ve seen.
The first observation is: sex sells.
The word “sex” appears in my bio for my pen name and not for the bio of my real name. Otherwise, the two bios are similar in structure. I got on twitter with my pen name, followed a few people and otherwise did nothing with it for a month. After a month of doing nothing, I had around thirty followers. With my real name, I got on, followed a few people, but have been so busy now twittering on my pen name that I’ve neglected my real name account. I have four followers. Both accounts were essentially inactive for a month at the beginning. The sex one had thirty followers at the end, and the non-sex one had four.
The next observation is people are wiggy about follow backs. When I started paying more attention to twitter, I noticed that some people gave me 24 hours or less to follow them back or their follow disappeared. I do a lot of follow backs because you never know what connection is going to be a great one, but I find the people who have such a limited time on a follow back to be annoying, and I say good riddance. Not all people are on Twitter 24/7, and a fast unfollow says you’re really not interested in the content the person is sharing, just interested in them as a number for your own followers list.
My big observation is Twitter is like a slot machine. You tweet; you follow; you favorite all in the hopes that it will pan out into a bunch of follows for yourself, a bunch of retweets for your words of wisdom, or a bunch of favorites. It’s just like sitting in front of a slot machine, putting in your quarters and hoping for the 777. It’s addicting in the same way because it focuses on the reward centers of your brain. This means don’t neglect your followers. Every time they login to Twitter, they’re hoping for a dozen notifications that somebody has seen them. Give that to them just like you’re hoping to receive.
Now off to figure out how to get followers for myself without using sex 