As part of the Blogging 101 class I just finished up teaching for Bellevue College, I organized a bunch of my links into a handout. Here it is online for ease of clickability, but I’m going to break it into separate posts for easier posting and post one chunk each day because it’s 11 pages long as is. I’d be happy to answer questions or discuss any of the links or the overall list philosophy in comments.
Resources for Blogging 101, Bellevue College, Summer 2011
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Twitter Basics and Best Practices for Writers
Why Talk About Twitter Basics and Best Practices?
Cat's first nonfiction book talks about how to set up and maintain an online presence -- without cutting into your writing time.
This year I switched the focus of my social media efforts to Twitter, because it seemed to me Facebook was an increasingly ineffectual way to reach fans. Because of that, I’ve been spending a lot more time looking at the people following me on there as well as thinking about Twitter, its philosophy, and its uses overall.
Why does a writer want to be on Twitter? The reason is more than just “sell books”. It’s often a way to network with existing fans (who will buy more books in the future), cultivate new fans, connect with peers and other industry professionals, to find out industry and writing news and yes, of course, to procrastinate in a thousand different ways.
I used to automatically follow people who followed me but nowadays I spend a few minutes to click through and look at their page and the tweets it contains. I’ve noticed that a lot of people are doing it “wrong,” or at least in a way that ends up detracting from their purpose. Most of these are easy fixes. Here’s some tips for setting up an account on there and as well as for maintaining a presence.
The Basics of Setting up a Twitter Account
If you have never experienced Twitter, it’s basically a way to post short messages. I suggest reading some of these basic tutorials on it. Once you’re ready, create your account, keeping the following things in mind.
A picture’s worth a thousand words. Include both a profile and a background picture. Please don’t just make it the default Twitter “egg”.
Give people a reason to follow you. Tell them who you are, but do it in an interesting way.
Give people a way to find out more. Include your website in your profile.
Remember that profiles include SEO keywords. Think about what sort of searches you want readers to be finding you by and include them (gracefully!) in your bio.
Don’t sell stuff via an overt link in your profile picture, background picture, or bio. It comes off as over-eager and clueless.
Make it look nice. Proofread!
Best Practices on Twitter for Writers
Part of successful social media is consistency. You have to do something on at least a monthly basis, and really probably a bit more often than that unless you’re determined to be as barebones as possible, in which case you might as well just renounce the world electronic and move to the woods to live off the grid. (IMO).
Don’t sell, sell, sell. If your stream is nothing but links to your book on Amazon, I’m not following you back. My rule of thumb is at least four non-selling Tweets to every selling one. Examples of nonselling? Promoting other people’s stuff, cat or child pictures, observations about life, interesting or enlightening quotes, links to articles that interested you, and snippets from your own #wip are all valid.
Don’t be negative. Don’t be jaded or whiney or bitter or angry or mean. Just don’t. Studies show people prefer a positive or cheerful Twitter stream.
Answer and acknowledge. When people RT, my habit is to thank them and also to add them to a special Twitter list. When I’m skimming through Twitter for things to amuse/entertain/idly chatter about/RT, I often look at that list because it’s people who’ve proven they want to build a Twitter relationship.
Be a little selective about your followers. On a daily basis I look to see who’s following me. No profile info? Nothing but book selling? No tweets at all? I don’t follow back. Periodically I run the justunfollow tool and clear my follower list of people I don’t know but am following while they’re not following me back.
It’s okay to repeat yourself (a little). Think that latest blog post was particularly noteworthy? Repeat the announcement the next day, and then again the following week. Build a list of such posts for a “best of” category on your site.
Automate SOME things. Don’t auto-message followers, for example. But do use a tool like Buffer to schedule tweets so you catch a variety of times, such as those repeated posts.
Hydra House cover for Near by Cat Rambo. Art by Stephen Counley; cover deisgn by Tod McCoy.Today’s the official day that Near + Far is launched upon the world. Huzzah! If you’re wondering how to buy or spread the word about the book, here’s some details.
Some of you have received the mail I sent out talking about what you could do to spread word of the book. Here’s some of the pertinent details from that for those as wants such.As you know, publishing is changing and increasingly authors are part of the promotion process. I’m asking — if you should feel so inclined — for your help if getting the buzz out.
So what can you do?
Well, sure, buy the book is top of the list. But we don’t all have the budget. Here’s some other ways that you can assist in getting the word out about Near + Far:
1. Request it through your library. Most will even let you do this online.
2. Request it at your local bookstore. It’s available through Ingram, a major book distributor, so they should be able to get it.
3. Write an Amazon review or tag the book on Amazon. Amazon reviews are great! But if you don’t have the time to write one up, you can still help. One way that often gets overlooked is tagging. Scroll to the bottom of the Amazon page for the book until you see “Tags Customers Associate with This Product.” Add tags that you think might help someone find the book, if you notice anything missing, or just go through and check the boxes next to the tags you think are relevant (which is hopefully all of them.)
4. Review it or add it to your to-read list on book sites. Reviews on Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, LibraryThing (http://www.librarything.com/work/13024203/book/89765198), and Shelfari are great!
5. Blog about the book. Any mention of the book, particularly one that explains why you liked it, is awesome. There’s actually some cool little things about the book:
The tête-bêche format, also known as the Ace Double. Flip the Near side of the book over, and you’ll find Far on the other side.
The interior artwork is by long-time friend Mark W. Tripp.
If you’re one of the people who’s already received a necklace, take a picture of it with yourself to send me for the Near + Far page. Or alternately, the necklace with someone/something/draped across a rotting log/in a bookstore/whatever?
Stories range from very early to very recent, spanning markets from Asimov’s and Lightspeed to small and somewhat obscure anthologies. I’ve included some of my favorite stories, such as “The Mermaids Singing Each to Each,” “Surrogates,” and “Bus Ride to Mars.”
6. Share news of it on social networks. Sharing links on Facebook and other social networks is great. I’ll be posting links to blog entries about the book on the main networks I use: Facebook, Google +, and Twitter. Just favoriting, plusing or liking posts helps give them a little Google juice. Even going to the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/nearplusfar and clicking “Like” helps.
7. Share news of it on mailing lists and other groups. Pass the news along to your fellows on writing or SF-related discussion boards, BBSes, mailing lists, and other forums.
8. Share links on bookmarking sites. If you use bookmarking sites like Delicious, Reddit, or Stumbleupon, please think about bookmarking pages about the book. Here’s some pages that might be worth bookmarking:
