Twitter Takeover

This Sunday (28th Sep) I will be taking over my publisher's Twitter account for an hour to chat about writing and the new book and anything and everything. I've never done this before, so it'd be great (and really very nice) if any of you guys here on Twitter pop over to support me and have a chat!

I will be posting from this account: https://twitter.com/torquere

At 8pm GMT and 2pm CST. This Sunday.

I don't twit, but good luck with it.

Intriguing. I'll try to think of some tough questions....

Mouse said:

At 8pm GMT and 2pm CST. This Sunday.

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So that means it'll be 9pm BST, I suppose. (Like TJ, I'm not on Twitter.)

Best of luck with the Takeover.

I had enough trouble working out the times in the first place. All I know is I have to be there at 8 in the eve. That's 8 in the eve in my house. And apparently, somewhere in the US, that's 2pm.

Ooo, almost missed this. Cool! I'll be there.

Non-twittage here, mayhap you could salvage a text version for perusal elsewhere?

i do tweet, but sadly i will be working a late shift... but good luck to you Mouse!

I have a family do tonight but if I can, and there's an internet connection, I'll sneak away. Good luck with it!

You great twit!!! Good luck with this, hope it goes super-well!

Just coming from Mouse's twitter party, which was fun, with lots of us Chrons folk plying questions, and I had a couple of thoughts on it which might be useful for Mouse or others doing this sort of thing.

First is, it would have been useful to have a hashtag to tweet under, so we could follow/ask questions without Mouse having to retweet them. I hadn't thought of it, but once it started I realized it would have helped. If there had been more people asking q's, Mouse would have been swamped. Another way to do this would have been tweeting as @emizzy with someone from Torquere fielding the questions and feeding them in.

That brings me to the second point; it would have been nice to see someone from Torquere there. To support Mouse and help if things got slow/ too fast and also to show those taking part that she has the support of her press. Maybe if you do this again, Mouse, you should check if someone intends to be present.

Neither of these things stopped it from being a nice event (well done!); Mouse was super duper pro and handled it beautifully. Just thoughts for all of us, for future author events.

Yeah, I found it quite interesting, and I agree -- more people may have made it too busy. A hashtag would have been good, but it was useful for Mouse to have some material ready for quieter moments.

Oh, and Mouse's mention of Donegal got her retweeted by a local radio station and a sports fans twitter account. Using the right keywords will get you noticed.

Keywords, good point. Take note of what's getting you noticed and use that.

Thanks, guys! Was fun, and definitely a learning experience. I'll probably be able to do it again nearer the release date.

Juliana said:

First is, it would have been useful to have a hashtag to tweet under, so we could follow/ask questions without Mouse having to retweet them. I hadn't thought of it, but once it started I realized it would have helped. If there had been more people asking q's, Mouse would have been swamped. Another way to do this would have been tweeting as @emizzy with someone from Torquere fielding the questions and feeding them in.

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I did notice that one of the other authors who'd done it had used a hashtag, and I did ponder it, but I was struggling for space in my replies as it was. I didn't really know how else to work it other than retweeting the questions then .@ ing the responses so everybody could see them. I'm not sure why Torquere do it that way. I know when Liz had an author Q&A with Manifold, she tweeted from her own account. I know Dreamspinner do a Facebook takeover (there was one going on while I was doing my tweeting), but I can't remember how they work things with their Twitter account - whether it's a takeover, like Torquere, or whether they field questions, like Manifold.

That brings me to the second point; it would have been nice to see someone from Torquere there. To support Mouse and help if things got slow/ too fast and also to show those taking part that she has the support of her press. Maybe if you do this again, Mouse, you should check if someone intends to be present.

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My editor was around on email - I'd already mailed her in a panic about timezones! But yeah, I kinda like the way Manifold do it.

Neither of these things stopped it from being a nice event (well done!); Mouse was super duper pro and handled it beautifully. Just thoughts for all of us, for future author events.

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Thank you! You lot were great.

alchemist said:

Yeah, I found it quite interesting, and I agree -- more people may have made it too busy. A hashtag would have been good, but it was useful for Mouse to have some material ready for quieter moments.

Oh, and Mouse's mention of Donegal got her retweeted by a local radio station and a sports fans twitter account. Using the right keywords will get you noticed.

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Yep! Donegal, myth, and EM Forster seemed to get the most interest. Obviously, my novel's not actually out yet so it's hard to drum up interest in something that doesn't exist in the wider world. But now hopefully some people will have seen (and maybe will remember) the title.

I know I've got promo coming up with Dreamspinner soon, but that's for one of their anthos that I'm in, so I think we're doing a blog party. I'm not sure what that entails either! It's all good learning anyway!

Mouse said:

It's all good learning anyway!

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Absolutely! And we're all learning along with you.

Excellent.

Okay, just had a read. My thoughts (sorry Mouse, a bit of a hijack coming, but hopefully a useful one)

We have a big community here and we're all very supportive but we're not using that to great effect on social media. I think tonight it was Juliana, myself, Alchemist and Thaddeus who asked questions from the chrons, which would be the group I find pretty active on twitter (there are others active too, I know, but Juliana and Thaddeus are particularly supportive at retweeting across Chrons posts.) on Facebook we have a different group - Ratsy, Gary, Juliana (she gets everywhere that one ), Alchemist (ditto, chatty ones evidently), Kerry Buchanan (who also supports on Twitter).

I know these things take time and that not everyone wants to socially media, but it strikes me there must be a more proactive way to join these things up. We have over 80 chronners on Twitter, with about 20 active ones, possibly more - how many of those chronners knew about the event? Those who checked in here or found Mouse's tweets and the retweets. I try to be good and check my chrons list regularly but it's quite busy and I miss things.

A few thoughts - what about a hashtag which Chronners can use to promote? Then we could all - those of us on Twitter/promoting/building profiles- check that hashtag weekly/daily/whenever and retweet for each other. We all have different following lists - if we did that between us all we'd hit thousands of people. And if it was only a one off check maybe more of the 80 on there would be prepared to look at it. Brian could also use it for chronicles network support?

An thoughts? Only we should be sailing this ship together and we'll all benefit from an increased profile?

And any way of doing something similar on Facebook?

And not forgetting the well-connected bloggery types like @J-WO and @Nerds_feather... Both very active on twitter.

I think @springs is on to something here. How can we use the power of the Chrons to take over the universe, er, I mean... do good and destroy the Dark Side?

(Firstly - in case anybody was wondering where my co-author was during the event - she's just moved house and has no internet. )

Ok - springs, I agree with you. I'm a sparodic Twitter user and when I do get on there, it's not very often I do see (promo) posts from other Chronners but when I do, I do retweet them.

No point in me sharing stuff from others on Facebook, as (apart from Chronners) the people on there are actually people I know in real life (I don't befriend randoms) and would have no interest in anything about anyone else, so sharing defeats the object. However - I do have a group on Facebook called Fantasy Fiction, which has a fair few members now - where anybody is more than welcome to put promo stuff. (Here's a link).