About Social Networking

Authors can use Social Networking sites to connect directly with their readers and keep them apprised of their latest activities, including release dates, travel schedules and appearances, progress on their current project, whatever else they'd like to share. The communication can go both ways: often, these sites allow readers to post comments or leave messages, so you can hear from your readers directly (perhaps a great number of them)!

MySpace and Facebook

MySpace, Facebook, and similar sites allow you to create a profile, post items of interest to you (including links to your books) and lets you create a network of "friends" who follow your postings and updates.

Random examples of facebook and myspace pages of writers include:

Facebook 

Lois McMaster Bujold
http://www.facebook.com/loismcmasterbujold
Aaron Sorkin
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=33807262256&ref=nf
John Grisham
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Official-John-Grisham-Page/40299356186

Useful Facebook Articles:

How navigating Facebook as your product page can help your brand
5 Ways to improve your Facebook presence

Twitter

Twitter is a bit like micro-blogging, asking you to constantly answer the question, "What are you doing?"  Users can post very short text messages (up to 140 characters).  The posts ("tweets") are short, quick, and real-time, easily allowing your readers to follow your updates throughout the day (and you to follow others). It is all about participating in the conversation.

Some things authors tweet about include:

• a publicity event (e.g., "I'll be at Barnes and Noble tonight if you're in the Chicago area.  Drop by!")
• tidbits about your books (e.g., your writing experience, characters in the book perhaps reacting to something topical, your title, names of your character, anything!)
• books they are reading
• articles on topics of interest (One of the ways you add value to a discussion is by passing along articles.  People who are similarly interested may notice and start following you.)
• personal information (though a rule of thumb, at least for professionals, is to tweet 80% about work-related subjects, 20% personal)

Examples of authors who tweet are:

Neil Gaiman
http://twitter.com/neilhimself
Stephen Fry
http://twitter.com/stephenfry
Laurel K. Hamilton
http://twitter.com/LKHamilton
Pres. Barack Obama
http://twitter.com/BarackObama

Sourcebooks Presentation for Twitter Beginners:

Sourcebooks Recommended Twitter Tools:

Tweetdeck – http://www.tweetdeck.com/

Dashboard which allows you to stay organized and manage your conversations, group followers, and monitor conversations through permanent search queries.

Hoot Suite – http://www.hootsuite.com/

Schedule your tweets, compress links and track stats, and manage more than one account from the same location.

Bit.ly – http://bit.ly/

Compress links and track who many click through stats.

Tweet Stats – http://tweetstats.com/

Monitor your and your followers' tweet stats – when they tweet, who they reply to the most, trends in frequency.

TwitPic – http://www.twitpic.com/

Make your account more dynamic by adding photos to it! Log in with your Twitter user name and password and upload photos to the site. You can either upload the photo directly from the site to your Tweet feed or upload it and post a link to your picture in a Tweet later.

Useful Twitter Articles and Blog Posts:

Review: Twitter Clients for OS X and iPhone
Free Typography Twitter BackGrounds
26 Ways To Share Images and Pictures on Twitter
Tweetie: Twitter killer app for Mac (sorry, PC users)
How to build your Personal brand on Twitter (Good read)
4 Twitter Tools to Add to Your Toolbox
50 Illustrator Tutorials Every Designer Should See
10 Free SEO Link Building Tools to check Link Popularity and Ranks
Top 20 Free Applications to Increase Your Productivity
5 Content Strategies That Top Bloggers Use + 3 Things That Set Them Apart
Writing your Twitter bio
Choosing the perfect Twitter picture
Where should you put a link in your tweet?
Networking on Twitter
How to use HootSuite (basics)
How to use HootSuite (intermediate)
Guidelines for hosting a good Twitter chat
Use Twitter as a customer feedback engine
How to use Twitter for business without being annoying