Everyone claims to be a Social Networking Guru. Seems like a perfect dream job, right? Sit around and play on Facebook and Twitter all day long. But most people really don’t know the intricacies of successful social networking.
I was given a complimentary copy of Twitter for Writers (Scimitar Press) by Rayne Hall. As a programmer, website owner and author, I was curious to see what Ms. Hall could recommend that I did not already know. I’ve been disillusioned by Twitter and although I have fun using it, don’t believe it has helped at all in se
lling my novels.
Twitter for Writers is designed for the lay person, from the most basic of technical skills to those who know what they’re doing. It starts with how to set up a Twitter account, choosing a username and even a secure password. It explains how to tweet, what tweets and retweets are and what they do. Hashtags? It covers that, too.
I liked the sections on how to tweet to keep people interested in your feed. It also covers how to retweet, what to retweet, what kind of photos to upload and how to get and keep followers. It reads well and presents in clear sections, like “Advanced Strategies, What Not to Do, and Mistakes I Made and Learnt From.”
The Kindle version of the book is 240 pages long, and chock-full of content. Drawbacks to the book: I could have done without the bad cartoons, and it would have been nice to have a U.S. English version. I tripped up slightly the British phraseology like “full stop” to refer to the feature of putting a period before the username.
At the end of the book she lists Frequently Asked Questions and there’s even a glossary, which I found very useful. If you’re an author, publisher, agent, or just any kind of person who wants to promote their work on Twitter, this book is definitely worth its price. I did learn a couple things that I didn’t know previously and Ms. Hall definitely knows her social networking!
The Kindle version is on sale now for .99.
