Why is Twitter the best tool to find your target audience? This picture tells the story.

by Ben Zackheim | Apr 8, 2014 | Book Promotion, Digital Identity, Sell your book, Shirley Link & The Treasure Chest, Writing | 9 comments

You hear the one about the two authors who walk into a bar? One has a mailing list. The other one has zip. Nada.

Mailing List: “I saw that tweet about your book sale the other day.”

Zip Nada: “Yeah. I got two whole sales after a week of prep, a $50 ad spend on Goodreads and 28 tweets.”

Mailing List: “Wow. That sucks.”

Zip Nada: “Thanks. That’s really helpful. I got your newsletter about your book last month. Looked nice.”

Mailing List: “50 copies sold. Not too bad. Why don’t you use your email list to promote sales?”

Zip Nada: “I don’t have one.”

Mailing List: “Oh man! It took me seven years to build mine! You’d better get started, like yesterday!”

What’s the punchline of the joke? Zip Nada punches Mailing List in the face.

If a writer doesn’t have an email list, does he make a sound when he falls in the forest?

Many writers experience dismal sales from Twitter/Facebook/[enter social network name here]. A common complaint is, “My followers are family, friends or fellow writers who don’t buy other writer’s books.”

We’re told that we should have an email list. That way we can reach the highest quality, most targeted audience possible.

Uh. I’m afraid all the above is true.

But…

Here’s some great (and little-discussed) news. If you use Twitter then you can reach your target audience. No matter what the “quality” is of your followers!

How?

Twitter Analytics, is a spectacular tool for finding people to buy your book.

You could say, “but that assumes my social network followers care about my books and they demonstrably do not.” This is a big misconception,and probably one of the most damaging to authors who blog, tweet and share online. We’re told by a lot of smart people out there that people who follow us, Like our posts or share our tweets aren’t necessarily fans, or even readers.

That’s a glass half empty (and incomplete) perspective.

Here’s mine:

The Twitter connections we’ve made online with non-fans and even non-readers are valuable enough to sell books.

How can that be? Because Twitter has learned so much about them!

Here’s what I mean. This is a breakdown of my Twitter following.

Is that a marketer’s ten thousand dollar breakdown of potential audience?

No, it’s Twitter’s free report on my followers.

Yup. They actually tell me what interests my followers have, even broken down by favorite genres! So for all my Twitter struggles and misses and successes over the years, in the final analysis it was my mere presence that gave Twitter the data it needed to say, “Hey, good job reaching out. Here’s who you have. Now go have fun selling your book to them!”

How does this help you? If you look at your own follower breakdown you’ll spot interests and terms that you can tweet about. For instance, using the data above, I just brainstormed a new tweet that I’m going to try:

Tweet: How do teenagers learn #leadership skills? Shirley gets crash course in #mystery Shirley Link & The Treasure Chest http://ctt.ec/n4z2o+

In that book, my heroine (Shirley Link) gets a lesson in leadership when she tries to get her two best (and bickering) friends to work together. All while dragging her dad around so he can help with the case.

So I’ve used two terms that I know (from solid Twitter data) will resonate with a huge part of my Twitter following: “mystery” and “leadership”.

But it doesn’t end there. You could apply this data to find terms for your book description, your book metadata and even blog posts about your book. Then when your audience clicks on the tweet they’ll see their favorite subject brought up again and again as they decide if they want to buy or not.

Conclusion: Get signed up for Twitter Analytics to find your target audience

So the lesson here is, you might not have a big enough mailing list yet. But as you build that up, don’t fret. Use Twitter and some common sense and you’ll find your readers.

Sign up for Twitter analytics here.

by Ben Zackheim

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