500 Million Tweets A Day Sell How Many Books?

Twitter has its fans and detractors.  It also has established itself as being the leading measurer of taking the nation’s pulse. If you want an instant polling of America’s reaction to rumors, news, or events, you can find it on Twitter. It is so quick to tabulate a response to what is happening in the world that it creates an impression that then gets responded to and so on and so on, creating its own loop of activity. Twitter and the social media world takes on a life of its own.

So what is the end result?

500,000,000 tweets are sent every 24 hours – and those numbers are growing daily and spike during major events such as a political debate, a hurricane, an election.  One day in the near future there will be a billion tweets a day.  Then two and four billion.  The number is breathtaking.

But what do all of these tweets mean to book publishers and authors?  The more tweets they and the rest of the world generate, the more diluted their impact becomes.  Yet, to not tweet, means to depreciate your positioning in the marketplace and with the news media.  So how does one tweet meaningfully, productively, and profitably?

Like everything else about the book marketing process, you have to show up to have a chance.  This means you cannot have a marketing strategy that does not include Twitter, at least to some degree.  Yet, many authors avoid or dismiss Twitter.

A certain amount of tweets need to be generated during various hours of the day and night, each including hash tags to help with discoverability.  If you tweet often enough – but not to the point you feel burdened by tweeting – and if your tweets are worded just right, you have a chance of strangers reading your tweets and acting on them. They may click on your site and/or buy your book.  They may also retweet your tweets and open your tweet up to many, many others who may otherwise had not heard about you.

Twitter is a bit of lottery and skill, but it allows for novices to compete, at some level, with professional advertisers, marketers, and publicists. There may be a half-billion tweets circulating every day but it only takes one of your tweets to make a difference for your book’s success.

Good luck tweeting – and be sure to tweet this blog post!

Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer, the nation’s largest book promoter. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person.