Twitter Hash Tag Magic for Authors and Bloggers—You Decide

Lloyd Lofthouse

May 11, 2015

about books, book promotions, Lloyd Lofthouse, publishing books

#ArchiveDay on Twitter, #MondayBlogs on Twitter, #SundayBlogShare on Twitter, Twitter, using hash tags on twitter to increase blog traffic, using hash tags on Twitter to increase blog views, using hash tags on Twitter to sell books

On Saturday, Sunday and Monday every week, I join several hash tag groups on Twitter, and we support each other by Retweeting each other’s Tweets that might lead readers to view our blog posts, and if we are authors—not all of us are—our blogs support our books by attracting readers who might buy one or more of our books after reading a few free blog posts.

#ArchiveDay is on Saturday; then there is #SundayBlogShare, and last #MondayBlogs. Out of curiosity I wanted to see if my books sold more copies on those days than the rest of the month, so I went back and compared the sales numbers for January, February, March and April.

January through April covers 151 days, and Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays took up 47 of those days or 31.1% of the total. During that four month period, my books sold 325 copies or an average of 2.1 a day.

During the Twitter hash tag days with #ArchiveDay, #SundayBlogShare and #MondayBlogs, my books sold 132 copies or 40.6% of the total for almost 3 a day.

To break it down further:

There were 17 #ArchiveDays, and 35 books sold for an average of 2 a day.
There were 15 #SundayBlogShare days, and 44 books sold for an average of 3 a day.
There were 15 #MondayBlogs days, and 53 books sold for an average of 3.5 a day.

How about Blog traffic?
Were there more views on the three hash tag days?

Only April was available for daily totals. To be fair, Saturdays have always been slow for views even before I joined the three hash tag groups. It would be interesting to see what would happen if #ArchiveDay was on a Tuesday or Wednesday. In fact, Fridays, Saturdays and national holidays (for instance, Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas and the early weeks of the summer when kids are out of school and many families take off on vacation) is almost always lower in view counts compared to the rest of the week or year, and I think the reason #ArchiveDay on Saturday still hit the monthly average in book sales instead of ending up lower says a lot.

Lloyd Lofthouse.org had a total of 4,267 views that arrived from Twitter; 15,064 from search engines, and the Blog had a total of 355 Posts by May 7, 2015

April total/daily average = 1,306/44
#ArchiveDay—April total/daily average = 159/39.7 (90.2% of daily average)
#SundayBlogShare—April total/daily average = 193/48.2 (109.5%)
#MondayBlogs—April total/daily average = 307/76.7 (174.3%)

Crazy Normal – the classroom expose had a total of 2,549 views that arrived from Twitter; 17,727 from search engines, and the Blog had a total of 775 Posts by May 7, 2015.

April total/daily average = 2,174/72
#ArchiveDay—April total/daily average = 272/67 (93%)
#SundayBlogShare—April total/daily average = 343/85.7 (119%)
#MondayBlogs—April total/daily average = 315/78.7 (109.3%)

iLookChina.net had a total of 1,293 views that have arrived from Twitter; 313,563 from search engines, and the Blog had a total of 2,010 Posts by May 7, 2015.

April total/daily average = 9,341/311
#ArchiveDay—April total/daily average = 913/228.2 (73.3%)
#SundayBlogShare—April total/daily average = 1,131/282.7 (90.9%)
#MondayBlogs—April total/daily average = 1,469/367.2 (118%)

The Soulful Veteran had a total of 556 views that have arrived from Twitter; 8,402 from search engines, and the Blog had a total of 212 Posts by May 7, 2015.

April total/daily average = 771/26
#ArchiveDay—April total/daily average = 272/67 (257.6%)
#SundayBlogShare—April total/daily average = 343/85.7 (329.1%)
#MondayBlogs—April total/daily average = 315/78.7 (302.6%)

In conclusion, I think the results show that on the three hash tag days, on average, there was more traffic to my blogs and more book sales—especially for The Soulful Veteran blog where views increased dramatically by more than 250 percent, and this blog has a very poor search engine rank when compared to my other three sites through Alexa. I think it’s safe to say that increased traffic coming from Twitter on hash tag days also increased book sales—at least for Sundays and especially Mondays.

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

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Responses to “Twitter Hash Tag Magic for Authors and Bloggers—You Decide”

Tui Snider (@TuiSnider)

Jun 22, 2015

Thank you for sharing your strategies, Lloyd! I appreciate all the stats. I also enjoyed reading everyone’s comments and your responses.

My husband is a teacher, so I have witnessed the long hours and dedication it takes!

Thanks for reminding me about #ArchiveDay. I hadn’t even heard of #SundayBlogShare, but it sounds like a good one to add to my routine.

Reply
1. Lloyd Lofthouse
  
  Jun 22, 2015
  
  I know one author that joined a hash tag group on Facebook and they Tweet each other. I haven’t joined that group yet. There’s only so many hours in a day. What does your husband teach?
  
  Reply
Keisha || The Girl Next Door is Black

May 12, 2015

Thanks for sharing these stats, Lloyd. I find the hashtag days take a lot of time and effort, so I’ve been trying to figure out which day provides the best benefit for me. #WWWblogs is probably the least beneficial hashtag day for me. #SundayBlogShare is the best and I believe that Suzie’s work on it has a lot to do with that.

Reply
1. Lloyd Lofthouse
  
  May 12, 2015
  
  You’re welcome.
  
  I wonder if starting #TuesdayBlogs, #WednesdayBlogs, ThursdayBlogs, and $FridayBlogs would work as well as #MondayBlogs has.
  
  Or maybe a #TuesdayBlogShare, etc.
  
  Reply
johnbyrnebarry

May 11, 2015

1,000 blog posts in one year. That’s like a full-time job!

Reply
1. Lloyd Lofthouse
  
  May 11, 2015
  
  John,
  
  It was a full time job … but I was a public school teacher for thirty years (retired in 2005) where I easily worked 60 to 100 hours a week teaching, planning lessons, calling parents, correcting student work late into the night until I was too tired to continue, grading, meetings (there were way too many meetings before and after school that were a total waste of time that focused on what teachers caould do to get students to learn without focusing on what students should do to learn), after school duty, etc., so writing 10 to 16 hours a day to reach that 1,000 posts was no different—time wise—then when I was teaching all those years.
  
  Teaching was a lot more challenging, demanding and stressful than writing 3 blog posts a day no matter how many hours it took. I started work when I was 15, served in the Marines and fought in Vietnam and even worked in middle management in a big corporation, and teaching, by far, is the toughest and most demanding job I’ve ever had.
  
  PS: I took an all day workshop through the California Writers Club (CWC) on how to increase search engine rank for a blog, and we were told that is what it takes—-it worked. The only book I’ve written about China (historical fiction based on a real person and his concubine) has sold more than 20,000 copies and that blog is fast approaching 600,000 views.
  
  For instance, I launched the blog in 2010 but the book came out in 2008. In the first two years without the blog, the book sold about 500 copies. After the blog started to land on the first page of serached about China, the book was selling several hundred copies a month and that pace kept up for about three years before sales started to slip.
  
  Reply
colleen

May 11, 2015

Very interesting, Lloyd. Thanks for sharing. Definitely shows the benefits of using these hashtags.

Reply
ejfrostuk

May 11, 2015

Very consistent with my observations, although I haven’t tracked it as tightly as you have. I also participate in #wwwblogs (which isn’t an option for you, I appreciate) and see a spike on Wednesday (although not as strong as on Mondays which is almost always my best sale day of the week). It’s nice to see validation of this particular marketing strategy. Thanks for sharing!

Reply
1. Lloyd Lofthouse
  
  May 11, 2015
  
  You’re welcome. I think Twitter offers a great benefit to bloggers with blogs that don’t have a good search engine rank. If anyone thinks that working Twitter everyday is time consuming wait until they find out the time it takes to build a Blog so it has a high enough search engine rank to land on the first page of a Google search for a specific topic.
  
  To get my China blog on the first page of a Google search, I had to write and post 1,000 blog posts in one year and that included making sure that every post had internal and external links in addition to images and/or embedded videos in every post.
  
  It is a fact that you have to keep feeding those search engine spiders to rank high.
  
  And the minute you relax even after posting more than 1,000 blog posts, the ranking starts to slip. I saw that happen when I went from posting daily to just twice a week.
  
  Reply
  1. ejfrostuk
    
    May 11, 2015
    
    Wow, that’s brutal! I appreciate that it probably sold a lot of books to have your blog so highly ranked, but how do you write all those blog posts (1,000! I don’t think I have 1,000 blog posts in me, much less 1,000 in a year!) and write more books? I hope you have more writing time than I do!
  2. Lloyd Lofthouse
    
    May 11, 2015
    
    ejfrostuk,
    
    After working for forty-five years (started at age 15), I retired in 2005, and that explains why I had the time to write all those blog posts about China and the Chinese. I was researching, writing and posting for 10 to 16 hours a day for about nine months until I hit 1,000 posts. And after I exhausted what I knew about China in the first 100 posts, I started to learn a lot more and I’m still learning. During that year, I didn’t get much time to work on writing another book. But when I slowed down to one post a day instead of three, I had more time and returned to writing the next book.
  3. ejfrostuk
    
    May 11, 2015
    
    I see. And you learned a lot, which is important. Did you enjoy writing the 1,000 blog posts in and of themselves?
  4. Lloyd Lofthouse
    
    May 11, 2015
    
    Yes, I enjoyed learning about the real China and not the fake one we often read about in the U.S. media. The more I learn, the more I distrust the corporate media that’s 90% owned by six-major global corporations. The second biggest in the world is Media Corp and it’s boss is Rupert Murdock. Fox News is part of Media Corp. Enough said.
  5. ejfrostuk
    
    May 11, 2015
    
    I hear you!