Twitter is a great place for authors to meet agents, editors, fellow writers, readers, and many other people. However, some authors get confused about whether they should use Twitter for social networking or to promote their works. The truth is that they can do both. Some authors are shy to promote their books on Twitter for fear of being stigmatized. People who use Twitter to promote things are quickly identified and they lose followers just as fast. The following are tips that authors can use to make Twitter a place to meet their readers and talk about their books.

1. Take the leap and sign up

Some authors don’t even bother to open a Twitter account. Failing to sign up is a bad idea. Authors should open accounts in their names which they can use to talk about their books and about other interesting things.

2. Add email contacts to your account

Shy authors take a long time to get followers because they are not comfortable with reaching out to strangers. However, there is an easy way to start with people they know. They can start by adding their email contacts to create a familiar environment. After adding familiar people, they can start to add fellow authors and other people of interest, including readers.

3. Craft a profile

A profile should not be taken lightly. It tells people about an author and can convince them whether or not to follow the author. A profile should tell people the genre in which an author writes and it should also talk about his personality and convince people that following him is a good idea.

4. Write tweets in advance

An author’s time is best spent writing. Therefore, compose your Tweets when you are not busy writing. Authors can use automated management of an account to schedule tweets to be posted on certain days and times. There are many automatic Twitter management tools and websites.

5. Dedicate more time to interacting

Authors should take time to interact with their followers. They should also interact with people who retweet their posts as well as those that favorite their posts.

6. Participate when people are talking about your book

Any author interested in promoting a book on Twitter should create a #hashtag for the book. With these tags the author can easily find the people discussing the book and join in on the conversation. By using hashtags, an author can also learn how many people are discussing the book.

7. The 5-5-5 rule

If you are not careful, you can spend a lot more time on social networks than you had planned for. It is therefore important to manage the time you spend on Twitter. One great way is to use the 5-5-5 rule. Use five minutes to respond to tweets, replies, and follows. Another five minutes should be dedicated to following new people and the last five minutes should be spent making tweets of your own, retweeting, sharing, and inviting.