Best Practices for Twitter

Twitter is a global network that enables communication through brief 140-character posts. Users post messages, comments, multimedia (photos and videos) and links to content around the web.

Because Twitter is a public network where anyone, not just friends or followers, can view posts, it is especially good for attaining broad visibility and enabling serendipitous discovery, engagement, and amplification. Tweets are visible on public profiles, sent directly to all followers, and can be shared (retweeted) and searched for by any Twitter user.

Twitter is particularly powerful for real-time conversation and trending news. It is a great source of data about who is following or engaging with you and how.

• Include a link to the author's website in his/her Twitter bio.
• Include a link to the Amazon product page in Twitter posts (from both the author and publisher profiles). This may be done more regularly around the book launch or other promotion.
• Actively engage with followers by replying to any @mentions and engaging in conversations with other users.
• Use a variety of on-topic hashtags to take part in regular and ongoing Twitter “chats” with the right audiences.
• Avoid being too "spammy" by interspersing promotional posts with other content and participating in relevant discussions around books, key topical areas, events, and news stories.
• Follow influential brands, paying particular attention to important influencers like booksellers, librarians, bloggers, media.
• Twitter enables ads in the form of promoted tweetsthat can be targeted by topic, followers of people, and users in specific geographic locations.

References & Resources

• The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media: Twitter[Moz]
• The Complete Guide to Twitter Marketing[Sprout Social]
• What to Tweet[Twitter for Business]
• The Marketer’s Guide to Twitter[Kissmetrics]
• Advertising on Twitter[Twitter for Business]
• The Field Guide to Twitter Advertising[Hubspot]

Note: Marketing Insights currently tracks recent Twitter mentions of the Amazon product detail page. At this time, we do not assess general title/brand mentions or broader Twitter engagement or sentiment.