Monday, December 10, 2018

RT Day for #MFRWauthor and #MFRWorg posts Follow @MFRW_ORG

It's Retweet Day for MFRW on Twitter. All Marketing for Romance Writers are invited to set up tweets for their books.

Go into Twitter and create a tweet. Make sure to use #MFRWauthor or #MFRWorg You can now share up to 280 characters per tweet -- twice as many as before.

Once the tweet has been posted, click anywhere in the white background of the tweet. This will open it and allow you to highlight and copy the URL.

Now, navigate back to here and paste the URL in the comment section of this post.

Remember to visit the blog on Second Monday of the month. You can post your tweet until Wednesday of the same week.

Retweet Day is on the second Wednesday of each month. Retweet everyone on the list.

To help people find your tweet, click the the white background and then the down arrow (found on the right side). Choose "Pin to Your Profile Page." This will keep it at the top of your Twitter feed so more people can find it.

Retweet Day Rules

1. Have #MFRWauthor or #MFRWorg in the tweet. (This retweet day is to promote each other and our group.)
2. Do not use profanity or sexual explicit graphics. Keep it for all age groups.
3. Please do not use adult topics for your blog post. Keep it general for all ages.
4. Return on Retweet Day and click each link in the comments.
5. Click the heart on the tweet and then the retweet symbol and the Retweet button.
6. Click the G+ symbol on the comment so you can see where you left off, and to add a little more visibility to the post.
7. Limit hashtags to three (3) per post.

Here's to a great day of retweets,

Tina Gayle
Tina Gayle enjoys writing contemporary romance and stories featuring strong women, as well as tales that touch the heart. Her writing started at a young age when she created stories to put herself to sleep. Now, she spends her days living her dream.
Find her at www.tinagayle.net or pick up her free read at https://www.instafreebie.com/free/EwL6x


Monday, December 3, 2018

Authors and Social Media: It's Like Furniture @KayelleAllen #MFRWauthor #Authors

If you decided to open a store selling furniture, you would want windows on the store so people could see inside, right? You'd want a phone so they could call and ask about products, delivery, and so on. You'd want a sign posted so people would know when you have something new to sell. Having an online presence with social media is like all those things combined into one -- but for authors. Our furniture is books.

Authors need:

1. website
2. newsletter
3. social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest)

Why have a website?

Because it will be yours and no one can take it away from you. It is your home on the net. It's where anyone anytime can find out about you, your characters, and your books.

Why a newsletter?

Because again, this is yours. It's like real estate. You could send everyone to amazon to buy, and perhaps they will. But when you release the next book, wouldn't it be nice if you could just contact the buyers of book 1 and say, hey -- here's the sequel? With a newsletter, you can. It's the #1 thing you should have after a website. The purpose of your website is to get people to sign up for your newsletter, and to learn about your books.

Why social media?

Authors and Social Media: It's Like Furniture #MFRWauthor #Authors
Facebook is where adult women gather. They are usually our audience. But don't pass up Twitter. It's the #2 source for book sales, behind Facebook and ahead of Pinterest. It's EASY. You can only write a sentence or two at a time, so it's not time consuming. Pinterest is HUGE for sales. Make boards where you share pictures from online of things that inspire you, places you'd love characters to go in a story, material from sites where you gathered research, books you love, fancy quotes, funny animals, anything that catches your fancy.
On all these, get an account with your author name. Don't get cutesy with "mom2aboy" or "justawriter" or anything like that. Use your author name, because when someone wants to mention you, they would write your name and expect that would work. So you don't want something weird. Your author name IS your brand. It should be on everything.
Then start following other writers, and follow the people they follow. On Twitter, you'll see things set up where someone has to fill in a code to follow. Don't do that. You are a public figure as an author. You need to be found by fans. So make your account public and use an avatar for your brand or your book. Fill in the bio about yourself with something that says writer or author.
Don't follow people who offer for you to buy followers (in fact, block them). They come out of the wordwork, and blocking them alerts Twitter to remove these people. They are annoying spammers, and they are violating the TOS for Twitter, so don't go near them. But be aware, you will see them every week the rest of the time you're on the site. They try, and they get newbies who don't know any better, so if they make a sale before they're axed, they just get a new name and try again. >_< It's part of online life so just deal with them and move on. I wish it wasn't so, but I will not give up a great source for sharing my books and talking to fans because of spammers. Besides, these people are just so obvious. Look for people with a string of numbers behind their names (i.e., jason97349857). You will spot them even without trying. You'll see. They can't seem to help themselves.
But oh my goodness, yes yes yes get Twitter! It's so much fun. It's so easy. It's so great for boosting sales. When people guest on my Romance Lives Forever book blog, I put their Twitter handle in the post title. It gets shared dozens and dozens of times. That boosts sales. Those authors get followers.

What are you waiting for?

Go get Twitter and other social media and move forward. Let's do this.
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Kayelle Allen writes Sci Fi with misbehaving robots, mythic heroes, role playing immortal gamers, and warriors who purr. She is the author of seven books, three novellas, and multiple short stories. She's also a US Navy veteran and has been married so long she's tenured. She is the founder of Marketing for Romance Writers.
https://kayelleallen.com