Is Twitter useful for authors?

[SimonDoom]

I've noticed that some authors here have Twitter pages, and they use Twitter to promote stories on their own pages and also by being retweeted on the Literotica Twitter page.

Do authors find this to be helpful? Do they have any sense whether the use of Twitter has appreciably increased the popularity of their stories? Does it attract readers they want or trolls or both?

Curious.

 

[HeyAll]

Based in analytics they provide, some of the stories ive tweeted have been seen 2000 times, and have actually been clicked around 65 times on average.

 

[Soma99]

Based in analytics they provide, some of the stories ive tweeted have been seen 2000 times, and have actually been clicked around 65 times on average.

So you’re saying you feel you’ve gotten about 65 extra views because of this?

 

[SimonDoom]

Based in analytics they provide, some of the stories ive tweeted have been seen 2000 times, and have actually been clicked around 65 times on average.

What's the difference between being seen and being clicked? How would a Twitter-goer see your story without clicking it?

Given the high number of readers your stories get, these don't seem like big numbers. Do you feel it's worth it?

 

[PervOtaku]

Honestly I have no idea if having a twitter account does a damn thing for me, but I figured, what the hell.

 

[HeyAll]

Twitter analytics shows and explains this and the stats you have.

Basically youhave a timeline feed of people you follow. If they make a tweet, it shows up on a feed. If someone glances at it, thanks to lits retweet, that's a view, which usually ends up at around 2,000. But usually only 60 or 70 end up clicking, based on my stats.

And a view is when someone scrolls their feed and sees it.

Is that a lot? I dont know, but it helps, and twitter is really fun. And it reaches a new audience.

 

[Handley_Page]

Well, the Twits seem to have a good example in the form of the Orange man of Pennsylvania Ave.

 

[SimonDoom]

Well, the Twits seem to have a good example in the form of the Orange man of Pennsylvania Ave.

This was not the model of Twitter use I had in mind when I asked my question!

 

[Handley_Page]

Let's just not go there at the AH.

Apologies: You're quite right.

 

[Requiax]

I use Twitter(@therequiax) but I haven’t seen a marked effect on my readership here as a result. Very few Lit readers are relying on Twitter to alert them to stuff they might want to read when they can just come here directly and see the newly-posted stories in their favourite category, or alerts on their own account for authors they follow.

Of course if you tag Literotica in your tweet they will retweet you (while I haven’t tested it, I suspect they would do so even if every other word in the tweet was ‘potato’).

But I have found Twitter to be a good way to link up and interact with other writers and also very helpful to sales of my novel on Amazon (each time I promote it through Twitter I see a spike in sales).

 

[RejectReality]

The value of social media, a website, mailing list, or any off-Lit alerts isn't in the quantity of people it reaches. It's reaching the right people that much quicker.

Alerting your regular readers as soon as a story comes out helps bring them in early. That gives you the potential to debut early on the new story lists with an H, and helps offset any early troll votes.

 

[Requiax]

That’s assuming your regular readers know you are on Twitter, are also on Twitter, and follow you there.

Literotica’s site design doesn’t make it easy for you to communicate to readers that you might be found on a site outside theirs, after all. I had a story rejected because I included my Twitter contact details in the text. While you can put them in your bio that required the reader to invest more effort in finding out about you than they perhaps care to...

I do agree though that number of followers is less important than being able to network with other writers and whatever few loyal readers have managed to track you down.