#WWoW! Use Feed140

WoW! Here's a simple recommendation to simplify your life... what more could you ask for?

In this weekly feature, I’ll give just one suggestion of a marketing tool to try. Marketing in this time period and for our market (ebooks/ book sales) means an on-line presence. Social Media has great opportunity but navigating it can sometimes be overwhelming. For those of us who enjoy it, it's exciting and fun. For those of us who do not enjoy it, or don't even understand the intricacies of it, it can be a thorn in their paw. Since Social Media is my second love -after books, of course- my WoW posts focus on marketing. 

Regardless what I choose to talk about, I promise it will be simple because, after all, we are all very busy people…

A few months ago, I found this app to store a playlist of tweets that it sends out intermittently throughout my day. Feed140 allows writers to maximize your Social Presence with minimal time investment. I’m telling you about it because it’s another way I save time on promoting. And less time promoting is more time writing!

Feed140 is a “social network marketing efficiency tool that delivers a constant stream of updates to your followers automatically” with minimal effort on your part.

• ·         You create the tweets.
• ·         You set the delivery schedule.
• ·         You control how frequently Feed140 publishes tweets from your playlist.
• ·         You can have Feed140 deliver a certain number of tweets each day from your playlist.
• ·         You can also add your RSS feed(s) to a general queue so it automatically filters those in daily as well.
• ·         You can have Feed140 ‘mix in’ updates from your playlist as a percentage of the total updates from your main queue.

However you choose to use it, your promotional messages are delivered automatically while being certain you don’t overwhelm your followers. It’s great! Feed140 lets you create a series of high-quality tweets that are then delivered over time without another thought.

STEP ONE: Playlist. Spend some time composing High-Quality, Attention-Grabbing Tweets that are Relevant. Creating solid content for your social network updates should take some thoughtful consideration. You will spend 20ish minutes each week to update your playlist of tweets. Here’s some ideas: Provide links. Display your work. Highlight your strengths. Use messages you want to reiterate consistently to your followers. Advertise your books. Promote your blog features. Distribute buy links. Promote your publisher. Link YouTube book trailers or other videos.

The tweets in your playlist can be published in sequence or mixed on shuffle play so your tweets are sprinkled about in random order.

STEP TWO: Queue. Aside from the one playlist you are allowed with a FREE ACCOUNT, you have a queue. The queue is the direct feed into your twitter account – you fill the queue with both your PLAYLIST and RSS FEEDS.

This means you can add your RSS feeds from your blog, website or any of your Social Bookmarking Accounts (i.e. Digg, Google Reader, StumbleUpon, Tumblr). You can connect any or all of these to Feed140. Then each time you click the Digg button, star an article in Google Reader, or give a site the thumbs-up in StumbleUpon, it will automatically be added to your Feed140 queue and be delivered based on the criteria you chose for delivery. Your queue will fill up fast with interesting and entertaining content for your followers.

THIS IS PRETTY COOL. Pre-load date-specific messages with the ‘Scheduled Updates’ queue. You can use the Feed140 ‘Scheduled Updates’ queue to send special promotions and book releases that are date-specific. You simply enter tweets into your queue and select the date (and even the time) you want the tweets to be delivered. Feed140 takes care of the rest. Tada! Your own personal twitter assistant.

THIS IS IMPORTANT. This does not take the place of other interactive tweets! Twitter is about CONNECTING, not just SELLING. I consider my Feed140 playlist my baseline – an auto-marketing program that spreads the message of my product (my books) and provides links to my store (my blog and website). Feed140 allows you to deliver a consistent base of content on your Twitter account BUT it is only one-step as it maintains your visibility to your followers even on those days you don’t have time to log in. Your playlists will never replace authentic live interaction, but their value is to provide a solid base of consistent content.

THIS IS NOT SO IMPORTANT... but I thought I should mention it… You can pay for prefabricated playlists but it really isn’t necessary. Creating enough content to keep your audience engaged might be challenging but we’re creative people – you can do it yourself. However, if you should choose to, these playlists are set in categories that give you the edge as a thought leader in a certain niche.

Use your Twitter (plus facebook coming soon) more efficiently. It’s really very simple.

Keep writing!
Paloma

WoW is a Smart & Savvy Group of Authors who host this weekly feature each Wednesday.
While we don't claim to be experts, the goal is to impart what we've learned about 
writing, editing, getting published, book promotion, and more along the way.

Follow along and read all this week's contributors' posts.

• Carol Burnside/Annie Rayburn 
• Tammy Dennings Maggy
• Melinda Dozier
• LaceyWolfe
• Paloma Beck

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