SFFMP 159: Twitter Marketing Best Practices for Authors with Jesper Schmidt

November 28, 2017 SFFpodcast Author Interview, Podcast

This week’s guest, Jesper Schmidt, is a fantasy author and also the author of non-fiction titles Fantasy Map Making and Twitter for Authors: Save Time, Get Followers, and Grow Your Email List. We haven’t had a dedicated Twitter show before, so we spent most of the hour going over tips and best practices on this sometimes challenging to understand social media platform.

Here are some of the specifics on what we covered:

How someone can be hired to draw a map for your world (fantasy or otherwise) for less than you might think.
Some of the challenges when you’re working full time and writing a novel a year.
How authors can better use Twitter to find their target readers.
Picking one day a week to schedule tweets to go out throughout the week.
Having tweets appear at all times of the day to target potential readers in other time zones.
Some of the tools that Jesper uses for scheduling, automation, tracking links, and finding followers who are likely to be interested in his books: HootSuite for a better Twitter app, SocialOomph for scheduling, Canva for creating images with text, Bitly for shortening and tracking links, and Crowdfire to find targeted people to follow.
Creating interesting content that would appeal to your target audience and then sprinkling in promotional tweets (Jesper keeps it to 1 in 10 tweets).
How Jesper uses Hootsuite to find content and relevant tweets to reply to.
Using free books or stories (with an email sign-up requirement if you’re list building) to appeal to Twitter users (you’re less likely to simply sell a book flat out).
Making use of the pinned tweet with an image/book cover and link to your freebie.
Signing up for the advertising program in order to gain access to a Twitter Card, which you can write text and a link in and give away to people who follow you.
How much time should an author be spending on Twitter each week?
Just using the free options for everything Twitter-related — Jesper hasn’t heard of an authors finding it profitable to actually pay for Twitter advertising.

You can visit Jesper in several places online, such as his author website, his series of YouTube videos for fantasy authors, and of course on Twitter. He also works on the AmWritingFantasy site with another author, and you can find numerous resources for writers.

You can pick up Twitter for Authors or Fantasy Map Making from Amazon and other stores.