Friday, March 24, 2017

3 Important Reasons Why Authors Need a Pinned Tweet


Do you have a Pinned Tweet on your Twitter account? Do you know what one is? For authors using Twitter as part of their marketing strategy, having a Pinned Tweet is crucial, and here are three important reasons why:

1. Pinned Tweets are Prime Real Estate
Pinning a Tweet keeps it at the top of your Twitter timeline until you remove or replace it. Think of this as your personal billboard on your Twitter account. While your header should contain a branded image, your Pinned Tweet gets to convey a 140 character message along with an image and is the first thing readers or other authors will see when they come to your Twitter page. The Pinned Tweet is prime real estate.

2. Pinned Tweets Make it Easy for Other Authors to Retweet You
Many authors like to support other authors on Twitter, and they go out of their way to retweet authors they like, who are in their genre, use a specific hashtag, or who retweet them. Because it is easiest, most will retweet the message that is at the top of your timeline. Pinning a Tweet ensures that your best book marketing message is the one that gets retweeted (instead of the last tweet or retweet you posted).

3. Pinned Tweets Drive More Traffic to Your Author Website or Book Page
Twitter reports that Pinned Tweets outperform even the link that you include in your Twitter Bio. This is important because even if you include a link to your Author Website or Book Page in your Bio, you shouldn't count on that alone to drive people there. The popularity of Pinned Tweets is likely due to the phenomenon of "social proof." Because people can see the number of accumulated Retweets and Likes for your Pinned Tweet, they will perceive your message as popular and are more likely to Retweet or Like it themselves.

Twitter provides instructions on how to Pin a Tweet in their Customizing Your Profile article. So, if you are not currently pinning a Tweet to your Profile, pick your favorite book tweet and get started today!

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Twitter Image Sizes: The Quick 2017 Cheat Sheet


Dealing with all the differing requirements for image sizes between all the social media channels can be confusing. Keeping up with how quickly the requirements change can be a daunting task. I am sharing this guide with all the correct sizes for 2017 so that you can be confident that, whenever you are posting to Twitter, you are using the right size image.

Twitter is a great free marketing platform for all small businesses, but especially for authors. There is a strong Independent Author community on Twitter who support one another, but there are so many authors out there! How do you get your Tweets noticed and retweeted?

Use an image with every book Tweet, drawing the viewer's eye from the sea of Tweets in their stream. Making sure that the image size is right will ensure that it will be displayed correctly and draw the most attention.


Image courtesy of MakeAWebsiteHub

Key Twitter Image Sizing Tip Take-Aways
Profile Photo: 400 x 400 px, with a maximum file size of 100KB
Header Photo: 1500 x 500 px, with a maximum file size of 10MB
In-Stream Photo: 440 x 220 px, with a maximun file size of 5MB for photos and 3MB for animated gifs.

Additional Tweet Tip
Make sure to have a URL to your amazon author page, book page, landing page, or anywhere you would like your potential reader to go. Otherwise, you have just given them a pretty picture!


This graphic was created by MakeAWebsiteHub, and is part of a larger infographic, which highlights other social media channels. If you want to view the entire infographic, it can be found here.


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