Twitter Assignment

Christina Dodd
@christinadodd

Christina Dodd spent the bulk of last week tweeting about her new book, “In Bed with the Duke,” which was released on March 2. Her tweets about her book were varied and interesting. She did not just constantly tweet the release date of her book. Instead, her tweets included links to articles written about her book as well as other authors’ opinions about her book.  On the day of the release, Dodd posted a top ten list of why readers should buy “In Bed with the Duke.” The list was spread out throughout the day so that a new post would appear every 30 to 60 minutes.  Each of the ten reasons was accompanied by a link to the book’s page on Amazon. The list was funny and through reasons like “no calories,” it related to Dodd’s target audience, which is women.

After the release date, Dodd retweeted followers that mentioned purchasing or reading her book and thanked them. This was a great way for her to interact with her followers and keep them interested in her as an author. She also used her tweets to reassure readers of contemporary or paranormal romance fiction that they would like her historical romance as well. This level of involvement shows followers how important they are to Dodd.

Though Dodd did not really ask questions to engage her audience, her humorous tweets were entertaining and very informative. Dodd tweeted regularly, but did not use her tweets exclusively for self-promotion. She also used her tweets to mention other authors’ books, contests, and achievements.

In my opinion, Dodd’s use of Twitter was pretty effective.

Michael Ausiello
@EWAusielloFiles

Michael Ausiello, a reporter for Entertainment Weekly, tweeted between three to eight tweets every day. Though his tweets did not have a particular message, the majority of his tweets were about television shows. His technique to engage the audience was based on incomplete tweets. In other words, he would leave out the most important piece of information of a statement and in its place would insert “SPOILER ALERT.” He included links to Entertainment Weekly’s Web site with these spoiler tweets so that tweeters could follow the link to his magazine’s Web site. Some of his tweets about television shows weren’t spoilers, but just scoops or news.

Ausiello did not ask questions to engage the audience, and in fact, just seemed to be delivering entertainment news. However, his tweets were interesting and provided information that many of his followers were interested in, and possibly entertained by. Since he is a writer for Entertainment Weekly and his tweets effectively led his followers to Entertainment Weekly’s Web site, I believe his use of Twitter was efficient.

Kathryn Tumen
@KathrynTumen

Kathryn Tumen, a book publicist for Penguin Group USA, did not seem to have a main message. Instead she used Twitter as a college student might—tweeting twice about coffee. Though she did tweet about “hip new covers” for Penguin classics and posted a link to a list of March book releases from Berkley and New American Library, her tweets for the most part were not effective.

Tumen’s tweet voice was consistent, but she did not tweet often. In fact, she tweeted only five times last week. Her tweets were not very humorous or engaging, though some can make the argument that they were informative. Tumen’s tweets had absolutely nothing to do with self-promotion, though she did promote her publishing house. Furthermore, Tumen did not participate in any retweeting last week. This lackluster involvement in the twitter community leaves much to be desired, especially considering that she’s a book publicist.