MY TWITTER ROUTINE, or how I got 44,000+ followers

Photo by Pandiyan

Almost every day I get a direct message on Twitter, a public tweet, an email, all asking me the same thing. Hey, how did you get so many followers? Hey, are you famous or something? Hey, can you give me the secret? Hey, how do you do it, do you do it all by hand? Automatically? Are you a robot? Do you sleep? And on, and on, and on. You can imagine various juicy questions I didn't include here. Honestly, I wanted to write this blog post for a while, but simply didn't have the time. I'm done with SIREN SUICIDES now (it's off to my editor), so I can do it! Plant your palms on your knees, sit up straight, hold your breath. Here is how.

Wake up with Twitter on your mind. That's what I do. The first thing I do is post an update while I'm still in bed. Actually, sometimes I reach for my phone with my eyes still closed, thinking about what to post. And, please, don't do the typical "Good morning!" It's boring. Nobody wants to hear that. It's what we hear every day. It's not what Twitter is about. Twitter is about going away from everyday life and expressing how you feel without any filters, and, at the same time, giving value to people in those 140 characters. So, my tactic is, being funny. I always try to come up with something that is true to how I feel yet will bring a smile to someone reading it, like: "I thought I had my brain yesterday, but I can't seem to be able to find it this morning..." Now, this is me. Very much me. You need to be you. Very much you. Ask your friends, if you have to. Who are you? What makes people like you? Don't copy anyone, don't be artificial. Be yourself.

Tweet all day until you go to bed. Yes, Twitter is the very last thing I do before closing my eyes, in bed, again. I used to tweet about 20 times a day when I was starting out, but about a year ago, when I began writing full time, I started tweeting more, and today I average about 100 tweets a day. That's a lot, and I don't suggest you do the same, but I can tell you that if you do less than 20 tweets, then Twitter might not be a choice platform for you to talk to your readers, you'll be better off on Facebook. Seriously. Don't torture yourself, think about it very carefully. Have you thought about it? Still want to do Twitter? Okay, let's talk about the content of your tweets.

Promote others, encourage, give. This will be a hard pill to swallow for many writers who are used to blasting a gazillion tweets a day about their book or how awesome it is. Please, don't. Not only will you turn me off, you will also make sure that I won't pick up your book any time in the future. Why? Because I don't know you, and when I don't know you as an author, I want you to simply be a nice human being. Why would I want to read your book if you're constantly shoving it under my face when I didn't ask for it? So please turn off you automatic DM's (annoying), stop talking about how great your book is, and let your readers do the job. Or people who know you. For this, I use Hootsuite, which might be a new word for you, but I used to do social media for companies in the past, and I highly recommend you play with it. There you can create a search column with your name and the name of your book/books, and retweet it any time anyone mentions it. What, nobody mentions you? No problem. Mention others. Start actively seeking out authors on Twitter, read their books, review their blogs, and tweet about them. Here is the catch, though. NEVER EVER ASK THEM FOR ANYTHING IN RETURN. And I mean, print this out and stick it on the wall in front of your computer. This is what giving is about. Just wait. People will give back. Because we love to help each other, but afraid to make the 1st step. It's up to you to make it.

Retweet, mention, quote, answer. If you simply populate your Twitter stream with yourself, it will look a bit, how to say it politely... you don't need me to explain it, do you? Good. You see my point. Twitter is about conversation. So state something, then see what others respond with, find a great response that you like and retweet it, answer people's tweets, quote them, but make sure that you don't pollute your conversation and are not too random. That will turn people off too. If you look at my stream, you will see that I watch my content with an eagle's eye, always making sure that there are clumps of conversations on the same topic, before moving on to the next. So people who are late to the party can catch up easily. And, of course, when you talk to people, same rules apply. Be polite, be nice, be funny, deflect anger with humor, play the underdog, and, in general, be that person that you yourself would have liked to follow. One more thing I do. I never answer tweets with simple "Yeah!" or "Nope!" or "Cool!" This is also boring and pollutes my feed. I try to answer each tweet in a way that if someone happened to read it, separately from the person who originally tweeted to me, they would get the idea of what it is we are talking about.

Follow and unfollow every couple of days. If you think you will be sitting there and new followers will simply fall into your lap, you're mistaken. Other people follow you, yes, but you also have to get out there and follow new people. Unless you're Neil Gaiman, of course. I use JustUnfollow tool, and every couple of days (I used to do it every day, actually, but the amount of my followers is simply too large now) I would go there and unfollow people who unfollowed me and follow new people, mostly other writers, because I'm a writer. Why every couple of days? Because if you followed someone and they are not following you back within 2-3 days, chances are they never will. The way Twitter works, you can't follow others without any limit. So in order to follow new people, you have to unfollow some. Now, if you look closely at the tool, what you will see is the option that says Copy Followers. I will explain how it works. I used to chit-chat with a writer, and if we liked each other, I used to go and see if other writers followed her, and then would follow those people by hand. I can no longer do it without using some kind of a tool, having to manage my 44K+ followers. The tool allows me to do it faster, simply because it's my choice to follow everyone back. At the moment I get 250-500 new followers a day, depending on the day, and I think soon I will have to abandon my policy of following everyone back simply because I won't be able to. You can't follow more than 1,000 new people a day. Also, I do everything by hand, I don't use the automatic follow everyone back feature. There are a lot of spammers out there you don't want to follow.

Post pictures, videos, links of interest. Try to spice it up with things that would also be interesting to your followers. Links to great articles, pictures that you took, that somebody else took, videos that are somehow relevant to what you're talking about. In short, try to make the whole experience as close to real life as possible, if these people happened to meet you on the street and you started taking about common interests. And you happened to have the same shoes, OMG, how awesome! Or same purse. Or same makeup. Sorry, guys, let's see here... same car? You got it. The idea is, share yourself unreservedly, and people will share themselves back in return. 

To summarize, be human. Be you. Be real. Be humble. Be funny. Be there every day and connect as much as you can. Admit to your failures, if you have any, and share your successes, if you have any. That's really all there is to it. I could, of course, attempt to give you my 8+ years of marketing experience here, but my blog will burst. Ask questions in the comments, and I'll answer as best I can!

Oh, and here is what you SHOULD NOT DO ON TWITTER.

P.S.: I wrote this post yesterday, and now that I'm rereading it before publishing, two more things need to be mentioned. One, don't think that if you do what I do, you will suddenly get a crazy following, and don't come back screaming at me that it didn't work for you. When I started out last year, I had 2,000 followers. This growth took me by surprise. I didn't think anyone would be interested in the stuff I had to say. Two, go out there and try things. Don't be afraid to fail. Let people catch you. There is so much love out there, if only you will allow people to hold your hand, you will feel it. And Twitter happens to be the best platform for it, I think. I love it. And I love every single one of my followers, they make my day, every day.

NAMING your novel

I've had a very exciting discussion with my boyfriend yesterday, because he told me that... *drumroll* ...he might write a fantasy novel too! Turns out, years before we met, he had this idea while playing WoW, to write about hard core gamers, but never had the time or enough belief in himself to even try. Anyway, we were talking about the premise, the idea, and then the topic of the book's name came up. Which made me think back to a lot of indie books I saw, books that fail to attract people's attention simply because they have not been named properly. Their title is not interesting enough, it doesn't grab people, and I thought back to my branding experience, from my marketing days; thought about my own process of naming books, and, once again, from the light hand of my boyfriend who said I should blog about it, here I am blogging about it. How DO you pick out a title for your book? I'm not a publishing expert, but I did do branding for companies in the past, and it looks like the same principles apply in the publishing business.

It has to be a proper English name or a noun. This is a principle that Marty Neumeier talks in his books, ZAG in particular, one of my favorites on branding. Seth Godin says the same thing. After all, all stories are about characters, or things that act as characters, so you need to get the title of your book as close as you can to a real human name. If you look at the list of all-time best-selling books, you will see A Tale of Two Cities, The Lord of the Rings, The Little Prince, The Hobbit, etc.Notice how they are all nouns, and most describing a certain person, a lord, a prince, a hobbit. Think about Lolita, Harry Potter, Anges and Demons, etc. Now, there are also titles like Twilight. This is a proper noun. There are also exceptions like To Kill a Mockingbird and Gone with the Wind. There are always exceptions to every rule, but since I'm a rookie writer, I will stick to the majority, until I develop enough sense about how to step away from it.

If it's two words, they better be opposite. Okay, this is a bit of a hard concept to explain, but in the simplest terms it goes like this: if you must use two words, which I do in the case of Siren Suicides, combine the words that are typically not used together and come off a bit as a shocker. In my case, a siren is an immortal mythological creature, why on Earth and how would she commit suicide? Doesn't make much sense, but that's exactly why it's grabbing you. You want to know more, it's the first hook of the story, it's also easy to spell and easy to say. Here are other examples. The Da Vinci Code. Why would a painter have a code? Fifty Shades of Grey? That's way too many for such a dull color. The Lovely Bones? How can bones be lovely? Life of Pi? Pi is a number, it can't have a life. There are exceptions to this that are perfectly successful, but I'm not bothering about those right now. I'm going with the general rule for the purpose of this exercise.

The title should have contradiction in it. This is the same idea but turned a bit sideways, in the sense that a certain title just doesn't seem appropriate for the content of the book, yet this is precisely why it's grabbing attention. Let's take a look at Hugh Howey's Wool. How come a sci-fi apocalyptic story can be named something that belongs more in your grandma's cupboard or is sheered off sheep for knitting socks? That's exactly why it's interesting, because it makes you wonder what it's about. Or, look at 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. What kind of a year is that? Where did the number 9 go? Doesn't make any sense, and that is precisely why it's interesting to pick it up and leaf through it in a book store. In this sense, if you have a tale about dragons and call it The Dragon's Tale, I might argue that it's a weak title. It might not have been at the time A Tale of Two Cities was published, but it is now, with the flood of indie books choking Amazon and all other online sites where anyone can write anything, call it a book, and upload it for people to buy. You have to be able to stand out from the crowd, and you have to be smart about it.

The title is the first idea of a story for a reader. It has to be about your story. In a word or two, you have to describe your story, describe what happens there. This is the hardest part, because how can you possibly squeeze your whole book into one word? Into two?!? Or three at the most? You can. Listen to yourself when you tell other people about your book, what is the word you repeat a lot? Before Siren Suicides was Siren Suicides, I wanted to call it Ailen's Song, and still before that Fishy, and even before it... I had several ideas, as you can see. I noticed that when I talked about it, I mentioned the word "suicide" a lot, because this is really what the book is about. You surely have the same, that one word you keep mentioning over and over, that one reason why you write it. That might be a good idea to name your novel.

DISCLAIMER: I have yet to confirm that my assumptions here are true in the publishing business after publishing my books, selling them, and learning from that experience. I also didn't discuss specific genres. This is simply what I'm currently applying to my own book naming process, so hopefully it will help you too.

Forget about Copyright. SHARE!

Photo by Kyle Thompson

I expect you to give me grief for this title and for the whole "ignore copyright" idea. I get it, trust me, I've been there. I've trembled my share of fear, my terror of thinking how someone will steal my dear writing and gleefully run away and post it somewhere and somehow screw up my writing career. Don't ask me how they'd steal it, I never imagined it this far, but it did sound horrible without it. At least that's what I've been told by others, and that's what I've read everywhere, and that's what I assumed. Well, I'm about to drop a bomb on your head, and I will totally get it if you tell me to go stuff my face with dead parrots or transport myself into a bog of eternal stench and never show my nose in public. I will totally understand. But, if you're curious to learn from my journey and apply it to your own brilliant writing, read on. I'll flaunt some juicy facts to show you something amazing. Are you ready?

You have a higher chance of not being discovered than being stolen from. All right, I don't remember the exact statistic or where I heard it or read it, so perhaps I'm exaggerating here a little. But it comes from my start-up days. Yeah, I had a start-up once, and yeah, I was paranoid like all beginning entrepreneurs that someone might steal my idea. Well, after having brushed with investors for years and having them laugh in my face at this, I got cured. Permanently. Then I became a writer last year (don't ask, it's a long story) and was faced with the same problem all over again. OMG, I thought, if I post my stuff online, someone might steal it! It was my boyfriend who persuaded me to post an excerpt to my novel, and the results have blown me out of the water. The feedback was phenomenal, and I have learned a ton from what people told me. I also recently sent out first 18 Chapters of Draft 5 to anyone who asked. This time it happened from the light hand of Hugh Howey whom I bug with stupid questions sometimes. His phenomenally successful book WOOL has started life as a short novella which he sent out for free to anyone who asked. WOOL is now published by Simon & Schuster, with all the perks. See? Go post your novel excerpt online. Share. Share. SHARE!

You're no longer just a writer, you're a marketer too. Whether you want it or not, whether you publish traditionally or go indie, in both cases you've got to promote your book yourself. You've got to find your reader base, make your book discoverable, and find people who will read it. And exactly how will you do it if you're a nobody? By sticking your book under everyone's nose? Why would people want to read it? Because you have some amazing characters in there, solving some amazing problems? Nope. We don't care. If you're a new author, we only will read your book for 2 reasons: either we know you as a person and like you and want to read it because you wrote it, OR a friend told us we should. That's it. So then, tell me, how will people find out about you and your book if it's not shared anywhere? People have to glimpse the guts of what your book is about, what are you are about, how it was created, etc, etc. They have to be invested in you enough to be willing to spend their time on your shit. How do you propose you do that without letting them take a glimpse? You can't. So then, share. SHARE. And the more, the better. You'd have to be J.K. Rowling to be worried about your manuscripts being stolen online, trust me.

Keep your fans happy, and they will move mountains for you. This was the scariest thing for me to admit, and I still want to run and hide under my bed, because I didn't expect anyone to care for my story when I posted it. The truth is, I have fans now. Real fans. People sent me e-mails telling me they are fans. Every time I get one, I pinch myself to make sure it's true. And when they ask me to share my story with them, THEY RULE. I will share with them, because they asked me to. Because it's an honor for me to know that someone out there wants to spend their precious time on my story. I mean, it's amazing! And I do. And you know what happens? It's like a chain reaction, you keep one fan happy, and that fan will tell 10 more friends. That's how word travels, that's how people will find out about your book and actually want to to read it. So, don't wait another minute. SHARE.

There, these are my big 3 reasons. I know I listed a 600 words rule in my very first posted excerpt, but I know better now. No rule applies, except the fact that most people won't read a blog post that's longer than 1,000 words, so try to limit your excerpt to that. I dare you to share! Post links to your novel draft excerpts below. 

How to market your book: POP YOUR EGO

Photo by Kyle Thompson

That's right, I haven't even finished my book yet, let alone marketed it. I haven't even marketed anybody else's book, for that matter, so why exactly are you reading this? I'll give you one reason. I'm a reader too, and depending on how you market your book, I'll either pick it up or never grace it with a second glance. This, of course, applies mostly to indie authors as you guys have to do the work yourself. But more and more traditionally published authors have to pitch in as well. And, boy, do I get turned off sometimes. You. Don't. Want. That! Cause I read A LOT! And, well, I used to do social media marketing, so I hope I know something. Without further ado:

Play the underdog. This is surprisingly easy and works every time like a charm, yet people forget it and think that if they shove a link to their book in my face, I will drop everything and run screaming to check it out, to read it, to review it, and to tell all my friends and my entire extended family in Russia (hmmm, maybe THAT is not exactly what they want, but you get the point). Well, I won't. And not because I don't like you or I don't want to read your book. NO! Because you didn't ask nicely. Because you didn't delight me with a joke about your horrible self and your horrible book. Because reverse psychology always works. It does! Tell me I should never EVER click that link, and I will die from curiosity. It works like this: Tell a teenager she can't smoke, you bet she will. Tell her she can smoke, she'll... (well, this is another story, shall we move on already?)

Use a sense of humor. Get used to people beating you down and telling you your stuff sucks. Play it off with good humor, good sarcasm, a good joke. People lynch you NOT because they don't like you, it has nothing to do with you. Most of the time is has to do with them spilling their coffee on themselves in the morning and looking for that convenient target to spill their anger onto. Here is the trick. If you approach people with a sense of humor and don't take their remarks personally, they'll blow off their steam, and then they'll talk to you like to a human being. And you have a chance of them actually checking out your book (especially if this happened on one of your social media channels - because people tend to be more expressive online than they are in person).

Grow up. Oh, what did I just say? OMG. Did I tell you to grow up? Yeah, I did. Here is what some authors do. They run around and befriend people, tell them about their book (without actually being asked first) and then push it onto people to read it, or like their Facebook page, or whatever. Then, immediately, if they don't get a positive response or a promise or a LIKE, they unfollow you everywhere, cross you off their friends list, block you, strike you, close their mouth and don't speak a word to you as if you're some enemy. Sheesh, GROW UP! Stop your toddler tantrum and understand that people are busy! They might actually check out your book if you give them time! Which leads me to the next point.

Learn patience. Didn't your mama teach you? People are busy, and it's polite to ask one time and then wait. It's also polite to ask if the person MAY be contacted next week, and then wait till next week and actually contacting the person like you promised. So, instead of friending me on Goodreads, then flooding me with event messages and group invites and other stuff, and then, when I don't respond, blocking me, WAIT. Give me time. I can't go through all these, and sometimes I don't respond simply because I have no time! Some people keep asking me, how did you coax A. Lee Martinez to guest post on your blog? Easy. Patience. I've been patient and courteous and gave him time and each time played up his late response to my e-mails with humor, and won him over (I wonder if he'll agree after reading this?). Anyway.

Be yourself. I don't even have to write anything here, do I? Stop pretending you're some big best-selling author, just show people who you are, with all your pains and tears and doubts. We're all human, and we want to read your book to connect, to feel, to glimpse some sense into the course of humanity and continue living. If you keep puffing up your chest as if you're the best out there, we won't trust you, because we know we're not perfect. And if you're saying you are, then maybe you're lying about something else too. And we don't want lies, we want truth woven into genuine stories. 

To sum up. This is NOT a blog post about the technicality of how to market your book, where, etc, etc. There are plenty of those already written. This is a post about tucking your big writer's ego away for the benefit of the reader WHILE you're at it. However you do it. Please, take that rusty nail. Drive it in. Oh, I heard it! IT POPPED! Good job. Now, tell me what you thought, and give me a nail in turn. I need to pop my ego too, get carried away sometimes. Guilty.