Marketing True Magics 9: Twitter Ad Copy

Marketing True Magics 9: Twitter Ad Copy

So, last week was all about my “please be my follower” strategy on twitter (and if you aren’t my follower, I’m @erik_buchanan, and don’t you want to be my friend?). This week is all about getting folks to buy my book from twitter, and that means it’s all about ad copy.

Ad copy is HARD.

It needs to be clean, concise, interesting and not irritating.  Remember the big three of marketing: think, feel, do? It all needs to be in there:

Good copy has:

1. Something to get your attention (Think: This sounds really interesting!)
2. Something to make you want the book (Feel: I want to know what happens!)
3. A way for you to buy the book (Do: I’m buying this book!)

And because this is Twitter, it has to be done in 140 characters. Ideally in 100 characters so other people can comment and re-tweet.

(Joke: Why isn’t George R.R. Martin on Twitter anymore?  He killed all 140 characters. HA!)

So how do we do it?

1. Getting your attention

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say, so putting in the book cover is good (I have good covers). Also, pictures are more likely to get re-tweets. So I should either use my book covers or find cool photos related to the books and use them to get your attention.

2. Making you want more

I find my elevator pitches very useful here. The purpose of an elevator pitch is to make the person listening to it want to hear more. Observe:

Small Magics: A young man discovers magic in a world where no one believes in it anymore, except one person who is willing to kill to possess it all.

Cold Magics: A young magician must find a way to end a war before the church finds an excuse to hang him for witchcraft.

(Don’t you just want to go buy them both now?  You really should. The link is in the book titles)

Just like your elevator pitch, your ad copy should make folks interested enough to click through to decide if they want to buy the book.

The next step is to take my elevator pitches and shrink them to less than 100 characters. They have to be less than 100 characters because I also need:

3. A Way for You to Buy the Book

I need to link to to my publisher’s website or to Amazon, and since my publisher’s website is under construction right now, it’s going to be Amazon.

Remember: most book purchases are impulse buys. If the person reading my ad has the impulse to buy, I don’t want to make them wait.

How Often Should I Tweet?

Some authors send out twenty tweets a day about their books, most of them the same. I tend to tune them out and suspect you do, too. So how many tweets should I send out to get maximum effect with minimum irritation?

I had the good fortune to talk with Tee Morris [link] recently. He knows a great deal more about social media than I do, so I asked him what, in his opinion, was the maximum number of times a day one should advertise so as not to annoy one’s followers?

His answer? Three times a day. Enough to get attention and reach people at different times of the day, not so much as will drive them away.

That said, people don’t like seeing the same ad day in and day out. It becomes boring, so in addition to creating the ad above, I should probably create at least 4 others.

For each book.

And I should put them in a rotating schedule so my followers aren’t being bombarded by the same ads at the same time of day every time.

So Where Are They?

I’m working on it!

Really, I am!

Stop looking at me like that…

I am developing 10 twitter ads which will run in staggered rotation through the day and week so as not to bore or drive away followers. You’ll be seeing them soon and, if I do it right, the copy will be spread far and wide across the twitterverse, and all of you will buy my book and my publisher will do little happy dances in the street.

…Here’s hoping.

Next Week: Things I still need to learn about Twitter.