Category: Author Platforms

By Christina Goebel

While sharing with thousands of writers at Twitter, now X, I discovered several things that will help authors expand their platforms to ensure real growth. The writing community at X is loving and supportive. They are generous too, opting to share your pinned tweet, which most authors use to advertise their books. Unfortunately, I noted many of their tweets gain few likes or retweets, which translates into less promotion for their work. They deserve more credit and traction for their books.

In light of many recent webinar training I attended, I realized that few authors have a well-rounded platform of the type that will get them attention. They tweet about their books. A lot of writers have great videos and reviews that they share. Fewer showcase quotes from their work–as if social proof is more important than the language in their work. I’m not too sure about that.

I don’t think a lot of us have understood how X functions. People go there to socialize or gather some news. They don’t visit X to purchase things. It’s not a store. It’s difficult to encourage a person to leave an app to make a purchase when that wasn’t their intention. While authors market their books with tweets or posts on other social media, that doesn’t automatically lead to sales conversions (purchases of their books).

If you’re an author, verify what I’m saying by examining a tweet where you included a link to purchase your book. At the bottom of the tweet, select “View post activity.” Now, note the number of impressions. This is how many people at least had the tweet within their possible view. Engagements include how many times users clicked anywhere on the post, including links. If you don’t have engagements, you lack link follows and purchases.

If you’re self-published, or with the gracious support of your publisher, you can track sales or free downloads after you post tweets about your book. This is easiest when you haven’t had sales or if you are publishing a new work.

We should all pay attention to any data we can gather to gauge the effectiveness of our marketing and sales. Certainly, data helps. We need more too. We need to develop well-rounded campaigns that use an array of tools to inform the world of who we are and the works we have produced.

I’ll share more on this topic soon and how I decided to change the odds for the X writing community.

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