Twitter is a great resource and social networking platform for authors to connect with readers, bookstores, and other writers. To create your account, you’ll need one unique email and a password. From there, you can upload a profile photo and a background image. If you need design help with these elements, our Design Team can assist.

Who to follow:

Once your account is set up, your first step is to follow other accounts. Connect with thought leaders in your field, relevant accounts to your topic, local media, bookstores, and others. Try to abstain from using your author account too widely; you want to come across as a professional with tweets that are relevant to your topic.

Building lists:

You can create a “list” within your Twitter account. Other people can subscribe to these lists. You might want to add a list for your favorite authors, bookstores, and thought leaders in your topic. You can easily click on these lists to see only the tweets from the accounts you have added to your list. This is an easy way to see your favorite accounts at a glance. You can see our list of AuthorSource authors, for example.

Two secret weapons:

1. http://hashtagify.me/: A free site that allows you to search any hashtag, giving you similar hashtags that people use that search for your same word. For example, by searching the word “writing” you can see popular hashtags include #amwriting #poetry #writingtips, and so on. Include relevant hashtags at the end of each tweet.

2. Click-to-Tweet: This free site allows you to create a clickable link that allows others to automatically share your text through a tweet of their own. Add your click-to-tweet link at the bottom of your articles, blog posts, and within email marketing.

Twitter will only allow you to follow a certain amount of people, given the amount of followers you have. This ratio is undetermined and changes. Keep following, engaging, and retweeting others to organically build your following. And be sure to follow and engage with others in your genre.