Attract 400 New Twitter Followers Every Day

by Author Ian Sutherland

On 17th June, Bublish has kindly invited me to present on the subject of Effective Book Marketing Strategies Using Twitter. But why me? Surely I’m just another fiction author?

Well, yes that’s true. But there’s a little more!

So yes, I am the author of a series of crime thriller novels, the first two of which were published last year. However, the type of villainy I focus on in my novels is cybercrime, leveraging a deep technical background gained in my 25-year career in the IT industry. More on this later.

Like many indie authors I did everything I could to get the word out, but with variable success. Keyword optimisation, website redesign, mailing lists, blog tours, discount promotions, free first book, and so on. But with so many books being published right now, it really is hard to stand out from the crowd, especially in a sustained way.

For social media, I decided to focus on Twitter, which, unlike Facebook, hasn’t yet forced you to pay for your posts seen by others. I quickly realised that Twitter is a numbers game. The more people who follow you and the more you tweet the more success you will have. Simple. And, as long as what you tweet isn’t just, “Buy My Great Book” over and over again, it’s proven true for me and others.

So I turned to my technical background once again and began a period of sustained research into Twitter. Much was gleaned from adopting the right best practices and the rest came from my own trial and error.

The results were astounding. My follower growth went through roof, frequently attracting over 400 new followers a day. My engagement and influence skyrocketed. And slowly, I began to sell more books, in a sustained way. And the best part was that my daily activity on Twitter was well under 15 minutes a day, giving me more time to work on my next fiction thriller.

When I explained how I was exploiting Twitter to other author friends, they all suggested that I write down my approach so that they and others could adopt it. And so I did, which is how my first non-fiction book came about. It’s called Advanced Twitter Strategies for Authors – Twitter techniques to help you sell your book – in under 15 minutes a day! It’s also why the kind folks at Bublish have asked me to present on Effective Book Marketing Using Twitter on the 17th June.

I hope you can join us.