Lloyd Lofthouse

Twitter – does it help book sales? I’m on the fence…

Elyse Salpeter

twitterLet’s talk twitter. I’ve been told that in order for twitter to be effective, you need to post often. You need to be specific about your posts, the links, the #hashtags, you need to create conversations, you need to gain followers, you need to respond to questions, you need to provide relevant content and direction. But at the end of the day, all authors want to know is… will twitter help me effectively sell books?

I’m undecided on this. I’ve been steadily building my twitter platform and now have over 16K followers. What that means is that at any given moment, if any of my tweeps (my affectionate term for followers) are actively on twitter at that time, they’ll see a tweet I’ve posted AT THAT TIME. It’s just a momentary snapshot. If everyone has thousands of twitter followers, how in the world is my little tweet effective for anything?

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Lloyd Lofthouse

4 responses to “Twitter – does it help book sales? I’m on the fence…”

  1. George Buzzetti Avatar
    George Buzzetti

    You never know where it comes from is my experience. Art of War, Boy Scout Motto: Be Prepared, and be ready to move at light speed and really Warp Speed when the opening appears as in war and battle it might only be there for a nanosecond. This is how we actually won WWII in Europe and the Pacific. The German and Japanese militaries were set up on top down. Our sergeants independently made decisions immediately on the ground when they saw an opening and created more openings while the other guys waited for top command. Just think of D-Day. No one would wake Hitler and no one moved. They could have wiped us out. too much time went by and the rest is history. Germany was crazy as they did not have a Navy really, no aircraft carriers or main line ships they used and radar eventually wiped out the subs. Japan took on more than they could bite and did not have the manufacturing capacity or technology without Germany. They crashed and now we have become the arrogant beast of the world thinking we can turn around the lessons of history which is biting us in the ass and legs and face at the same time now.

    Get the word out anyway you can. The normal media is a joke. Try Russia Today and Al Jazeera. Russia Today has 250,000,000 viewers everyday worldwide. Our discussions and subjects are world wide subjects and discussions needed by all not just here. We are just about 350,000,000 of almost 7,000,000,000 or 1/20 of the game. What make us sooo kool especially since we destroy not help build a better world. We are not the leaders, we are the destroyers. We are the creaters of terrorists by our activities designed to do exactly that. Who do they think they are kidding? Not the two of us, that is for sure. Obligation to get the word out. Retirement is not for those who know and can help stop this. I am 66 and just starting to get going. I am doing this until I drop.

    Reply
    1. Lloyd Lofthouse Avatar
      Lloyd Lofthouse

      Yes, I know about Hitler and how he lost the war and the Japanese didn’t have the industrial base to support their war. That’s why they invaded Manchuria and then the rest of China—for the resources to feed and grow their industry. Imagine what would have happened if Japan had not bombed Pearl Harbor but instead signed treaties that would keep America out of the war.

      Hitler’s biggest blunder was attacking the USSR. Japan’s biggest blunder was bombing Pearl Harbor and then not following through. The entire US west coast was open and undefended but Japan’s fleet bombed Pearl Harbor and then went home. They could have sailed on and invaded America and at the time there wasn’t much we could have done to stop them.

      Then there is this: How close were the Nazis to building a useable nuclear weapon? And they had the U-2 rocket that was used to hit the UK. “On 24 April 1939, along with his teaching assistant Wilhelm Groth, Harteck made contact with the Reichskriegsministerium (RKM, Reich Ministry of War) to alert them to the potential of military applications of nuclear chain reactions.”

      And of course we may also have to thank Hitler for this because we can be sure he was the one who made the decision: “The point in 1942, when the army relinquished its control of the German nuclear energy project, was the zenith of the project relative to the number of personnel devoted to the effort. There were only about seventy scientists working on the project, with about forty devoting more than half their time to nuclear fission research. After this, the number of scientists working on applied nuclear fission diminished dramatically. Many of the scientists not working with the main institutes stopped working on nuclear fission and devoted their efforts to more pressing war related work.”

      Reply
  2. George Buzzetti Avatar
    George Buzzetti

    All advertising is good even bad. I know twitter is supposed to do stuff and I believe it does. To me Twitter and Facebook are so stupid I do not use them as they are a total waste of my time. It is a sign of the stupidity of people now in my opinion and their short attention spans. All I see when I go to the facebook is stuff I could care less about like how my dog is doing or fun at the volleyball game. I do not have time for that inane stuff. This is how they are getting away with the lies and deception by getting them to watch Dancing with the Stars and twitter and Facebook. They are not your friends. You really only ever have 3-4 real friends the rest are not your friends, just other people.

    No wonder we are crashing into stupidity.

    Reply
    1. Lloyd Lofthouse Avatar
      Lloyd Lofthouse

      LOL

      I seldom visit my Facebook page. Instead, I set up an automatic feed from my Blog/s to Facebook, Twitter, and my Amazon Author Page. However, I am working Twitter and building that element of my platform there.

      If anyone with a product—for example, a book—wants to reach an audience he or she has to build a platform that starts with Websites to Blogs to Facebook to Twitter to Amazon, etc.

      However, the downside is that all the free promotion beyond that platform is so overcrowded that one has to pay for focused advertising designed to be delivered to an audience interested in it and that’s where sites like Book Bub and the Fussy Librarian come in.

      As for “crashing into stupidity”, was there ever a time in history where the majority of any country’s population wasn’t mostly illiterate, ignorant and superstitions. Instead, today, even with all the ignorance out there, this may be the first time in history so many common people who would have been serfs and/or slaves in that old world are actually better informed than most of the kings and leaders back then who were often just as ignorant and superstitious as the peasants and serfs who were working the fields for a hard, short, often unsafe and hungry life.

      Reply

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