Guest Post: Anita Chapman - Taking Twitter to the Next Level

Thank you for inviting me to your blog today, Elaina! When you asked me to write a post about social media for writers, I tried to think of what might be useful to writers who have been using Twitter for a while, but who struggle to keep up with all those tweets in their timeline. It’s worth trying out the following to make life easier, and to save time.

Setting up and Using Twitter Lists

It can be difficult ploughing through all the tweets in your timeline to find the content you really want to see. If you set up Twitter lists for areas relating to your ‘brand’ (the subjects and themes in your books, as well as those you’re interested in); you can add a column for each list to Tweetdeck (my preference) or Hootsuite.


It’s possible to set up private or public Twitter lists, and I always go for private because otherwise when you add someone to a list, they receive a notification. You don’t have to follow someone to add them to your lists. There are other people’s public lists to subscribe to as well, which can be worth doing. Useful examples are this Essential publishing list by Sam Missingham @samatlounge, this #BookConnectors list by @annecater of authors and book bloggers who are members of the Book Connectors Facebook Group, and if you’re a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, there’s an @RNAtweets list of RNA members.

Searching on Tweetdeck and Hootsuite

You can add columns for searches, such as for your name, hashtags, key words. Searching for your name is useful when someone tweets a link to one of your blog posts or books, without including your Twitter handle. It’s worth having a column for your own name, and for your username if it’s different. For example, I have columns for Anita Chapman, neetsmarketing, and neetswriter, in case anyone mentions me without using my Twitter handles. When I publish a blog post, I search for the title and my name as well as the host’s name if I’m a guest; for example in the case of this blog post, I’d search for ‘Taking Twitter to the Next Level’, Elaina James, Anita Chapman for a few days to catch any mentions so I can retweet them and thank the users for the mentions.

More info on Twitter lists can be found here on my blog.

Bio:

Anita Chapman is a Freelance Social Media Manager with clients in the world of books and she runs Social Media Courses for Writers (next one is on 7 May in London). She writes historical fiction set in eighteenth century Italy and spent five years on the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s new Writers’ Scheme, before becoming an Associate Member in 2016 wearing her neetsmarketing hat. Anita is Social Media Manager for the Historical Novel Society, and Publicity Officer for the next HNS Conference in Oxford, 2-4 September 2016 #HNSOxford16. 


Website 

neetsmarketing blog on social media for writers and book marketing 

neetswriter blog on writing 

Twitter @neetsmarketing and @neetswriter  

Facebook Pages: neetsmarketing and Anita Chapman Writer