Twitter is a wordsmith’s best friend, so it’s no surprise that authors flock to the micro-social networking service to help launch their books. While most book launch campaigns on Twitter go under the radar, every once in awhile a hashtag will hit it big, or at least be so interesting that you can’t help give it some props. There are no hard or fast rules when it comes to successfully building awareness about a book through Twitter, but by looking at two recent examples, we can glean some insights on how to run a successful Twitter campaign.
ROUTE #1 – Connect with the people
Back in September, British author (and Twitter addict with over 1 million followers) Lord Alan Sugar took to Twitter to launch his new ebook The Way I See It, a non-fiction anthology of his rants and ravings about everything. Using the hashtag #thewayiseeit, he called upon his followers to use the hashtag to tweet their rants at him so he could use them to sign copies of his book. For a more in-depth look at the campaign that was considered “the first Twitter book signing” watch the brief video below.
So why did this work? For starters, the author already had a built in audience – which always helps – but what he asked Tweeps to do was already a natural extension of something that happens on Twitter – ranting. That’s it. All he wanted was for people to use the hashtag and to Tweet their rants in 140 characters or less.
The results? Within 24 hours there was a grand total of 350,000 tweets using that hashtag and over 2,500 mentioned Lord Sugar directly. For more, read this article.
Route #2 – Be Creative
When in doubt, do something funny. Twitter is a place where witty people come together to show how funny they can be. Why? People love it. So it was no surprise that the Random House Twitter campaign for the release of their zombie apocalypse book Zone One by Colson Whitehead was a success.
Utilizing the hashtag #RHZombies, Random House and ALL of their imprints took to Twitter to broadcast the publisher-wide zombie attack.
In total, the hashtag #RHZombies was used 211 times and even noted for it’s cleverness in some major book blogs like GalleyCat and BookRiot.
So, my advice for your soon-to-be-published book? Get your publisher involved! The Twitter campaign for Zone One was led by publishers, who on average usually have more followers and Klout. Getting them to launch a hashtag campaign on your behalf is always a great starting point.
If you aren’t as lucky to have the backing of a big name publisher or are self-publishing, go the Alan Sugar route and make your hashtag relevant to the world. Be creative but simple. Make sure your hashtag is short enough so people can incorporate it into their own tweets (space is prime real estate!) but creative so that it will incite others to participate in the conversation.