Make An Eye-Catching Post
If you are a Twitter user that posts your favorite fruitcake recipe or pictures of your one-eyed cat and you only have three uncles and your grandpa on your follower list, you don’t need this tip and you can skip straight to buying my book. Wink Wink 😉😉
But,w if you are promoting yourself, your book, CD, or Youtube channel you want to post Tweets that actually catch the eye of one of the 320 Million Active Twitter users. Chances are very slim that the 140 character limit post will be seen by the person that gives a rat’s hiney about you or your product. With those odds, it’s a miracle if they actually click on the link, so you need to do everything you can to see that you catch their attention. Stand on a chair, spell SOS on the deserted island beach, or start a fire. Eat a bug and stand on your head if you have to.
Does it really matter?
Depending on your goal, it does. If are still reading this and you don’t care how many people pay attention to your posts, then you have gone to sleep or left the building.
Instagram is the reigning King when it comes to interaction with posts, the desire of everyone with a profile. Face it, that’s what most humans want in life; someone to pay attention. Instagram, in the first six months of 2016 had 50-70 interactions per post per 1,000 followers.
That same statistic for Twitter was less than 2 interactions per post per 1,000 followers. Seems dismal and paltry, so you best do your best to get the attention while they are there. In my last Twitter Tip, I gave you what I thought was the NUMERO UNO thing you should be doing in your posts: including a sharp, relevant and correctly formatted image.
NOW, the next most important thing is the look, and feel of the text accompanying said image.
Find out how you are doing on Twitter. Use Twitter Grader and you will get data on EVERYTHING and a letter grade for all the most desirable aspects of your account.
I was pleased. It hasn’t been easy, but it’s not a grade I’m after. I’m building a base of people interested in my books. Hopefully, it will translate into book sales.
My best Tweet according to Mokumax.com:
I’ll use this post to illustrate what I believe are the best practices to use when constructing your posts.
Don’t insult the intelligence of your followers.
You don’t have to be an anally retentive grammar geek to get this one right, but spelling counts. Readability matters. People need to understand what you are saying. According to TIME’s analysis of 1 million public tweets, 33 percent of tweets test at a fourth-grade reading level.
How smart are your Tweets? Click here
As a Pastor, Preacher, and Teacher, I learned that to be understood well, my message needed to be understood by a fifth-grader. So, I keep that in mind while crafting my message.
Place your link after the first 15-25% of your text. Statistics say that this is the optimal placement of a link with the highest odds of getting CLICKED. Don’t break up a sentence or a clause in a STUPID location. Read your post aloud to yourself. I found I don’t like the word IT in this post.
If you want more activity, use relevant and popular hashtags.
In my realm of books and writing, #writing #amwriting #reading #crimefiction are all well-used tags, which means that people looking for those things are more likely to see your post and interact with it. #ASMSG is Authors Social Media Support Group which only takes members by referral from an existing member. #ASMSG is so popular it is used by non-members to gain interactions.
The more you use relevant hashtags, the more engagement you will get on your tweets. Engagement is KING
Don’t use cute or nonsensical Hashtags like #ivisitedmymotherlastweek or #whatihadfordinner or the ever popular #mydoghasfleas. You will often see tags like my silly examples, but those are used by people that don’t understand what HASHTAGS are or how they work. A Hashtag is only as good as the number of times it is used or searched for.
Some of my favorites: #fiction, #bestfiction, #murder, #crime, #faith, #redemption, #revenge, #outlaws, #blogpost, #reading, #writing, #editing, #tips, #twittertips, #novel, #outlaw, #books, #(famousPersonsName) Don’t include parenthesis or punctuation. Your active hashtag will end at the first disallowed character but you can use that to your advantage by adding a ? or ! at the end. Capitalizing words in multi-word hashtags will help readability i.e. #MikeMatheson.
If you are unsure of your hashtags popularity, put it in the search box on Twitter and see if you get results. The more the merrier.
READ this article to learn how they work.
Try to keep your post short and sweet. This is something I find nearly impossible but I have to try.
Always leave an unused 7 characters in your post. That way when people RETWEET your post (which is what you want more than air and sunlight) the post will not be truncated according to some labyrinthine algorithm in the belly of a computer somewhere.In other words, make 133 characters your outside limit. Remember, Less is More. Images and links are important and each use 23 characters, so with one link and one image you are left with 94 characters including spaces. Use them wisely.
In other words, make 133 characters your outside limit. Remember, Less is More. Images and links are important and each use 23 characters, so with one link and one image you are left with 94 characters including spaces. Use them wisely.
- Happy tweeting
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M. Matheson 
