How To Market Your Book With Hashtags On Twitter

Are you ready to promote your new book? Or is the honeymoon over with your new book release sales? Put Twitter, one of the ‘Big Three’ of social media into your book marketing plan! In my previous social media posts, we identified the ‘Big Three’ as being Facebook, Twitter and Linked In. Of course, I do know many of you have included them in your marketing mix for years. So you may know social media can be one of the greatest tools for connecting with readers, other authors, industry experts, new leads, customers and eventually sales. But it also can be one of the greatest time wasters in your day. Today’s book marketing/social media tip is about using Hashtags in your tweets. To avoid time wasting activities and bring greater focus to your efforts on Twitter use the hashtag feature.

You can tag your topic in front or behind your tiny 140 character message. Your followers or people searching can easily find your related tweets. For example, I often tweet with the tag #bookwriting or #bookmarketing so that my related tweets will come up in the list. I use hashtag to check up on what others are tweeting about my favorite topic or discover research leads for a certain topic.

Obviously if you just make up tags you’ll end up just tweeting to yourself and a few other accidental tweeters. So, don’t just use any kind of hashtags, you can direct your tweets by

connecting with similar-minded people (#WriteChat)
recommending a book (#MustRead)
identifying a brand (#Lexus)
discovering experts (#AskEditor)
indexing emotions (#ILoveThisBlog)(#TheThingIHateMost)

For the most part Twitter hashtags are easy and others are like a hidden code. For example #bookwriting and #WriteTips are tags that offer writing help. Others, like #ismarketing are harder to understand. #ismarketing stands for a group interested in independent schools marketing.
Here’s four tools that will help you find hashtags to use. Hashtags.org to discover trending tags that are hot right now. Twubs will connect you with like-minded people. tagdef.com will help you figure out obscure tags. Also, go there if you create a tag for your emerging brand or your book’s topic, if there’s not an existing one. Trendsmap is a tool that helps with trending topics in your area.

Meanwhile, here’s a list of author related Twitter Hashtags. Use them in your tweets and monitor them. If you are using Hootsuite.com, to monitor hashtags just create a new tab and add a keyword stream to follow the hashtag. Start your monitoring then jump in when you’re ready.

Creativity
•#Creativity
•#StoryStarter
•#WritingPrompt
•#WIP (work in progress)
•#WordAThon
•#1K1H (write one thousand words in one hour)

Industry Information

•#BookMarketing
•#AskAuthor
•#SelfPublishing
•#IndiePub (or #IndiePublishing)
•#EBooks
•#WritingTip
•#Publishing
•#GetPublished
•#PromoTip
•#AskAgent
•#AskEditor
•#WriteTip

Hashtags to Connect with

Other Authors
•#BookMarket (Thursday’s at 4 pm ET)
•#IndieAuthors
•#WriteChat
•#WriterWednesday (or #WW)
•#WritingParty
•#MemoirChat (every other Wednesday at 8 pm ET)
•#AmWriting
•#AmEditing
•#WordCount
•#WritersLife
•#YALitChat
•#LitChat (every M/W/F)

Readers

•#BookGiveaway
•#StoryFriday
•#MustRead
•#LitChat
•#FridayReads

Book Genre (kind of book)

•#MemoirChat
•#RomanceWriter
•#RWA (Romance Writers of America)
•#ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers)
•#SciFiChat
•#KidLitChat
•#SCBWI (Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators)
•#MGLit (Middle Grade Lit)

If you don’t put focused tweeting with hashtags to practice regularly, your book may never get the sales it deserves. Now go promote your book with Twitter hashtags and prosper. Ready to take your social marketing to the next level with more Twitter tips in 21 Steps To Successful Social Media Marketing: A Simple Path to More Cash, Connections And Credibility [Kindle Edition  Click for Kindle version $.99