Would you be interested in Twitter Marketing from us?

A few months ago when I first started contemplating taking this book review service into the stratosphere by offering more marketing choices, one of the first things I thought of was Twitter Marketing. After all, thanks to Twitter and Triberr, our traffic is what it is today. The problem has been figuring out what to offer and how much that would cost.

As you can tell from the graphic at the top of the right sidebar, we have some 4,200 followers on Twitter (at the time of writing this). Many of these are writers and readers, so advertising your book via us/via Twitter sounded pretty good to me. The next step was to figure out how to do it.

I started using Hootsuite to schedule tweets for special events or about certain posts. Later I found Gremln—actually it was probably just about a month ago—which allows me to easily schedule recurring tweets. With those two tools, a little time on my part, and some assistance from the advertiser, I think I'm ready to offer Twitter Marketing.

I have no idea what a single tweet is worth, much less a series of tweets, so I'm definitely shooting from the hip. Unlike other forms of advertising that are being released on our site at the same time, I'm not going to worry about filling every gap. My Twitter feed is already pretty full, so whatever Twitter Marketing is attempted will be on a trial basis.

I've brainstormed Twitter Marketing packages both for recurring tweets and for a barrage of tweets in a short period of time. I even thought of prices, but I'm not going to share those here. I want to gauge the interest level first, so I'd be happy to negotiate prices one-on-one. The same holds true for this service: whatever is brought in will be a donation. It won't go directly to me. You'll know when I start making money from the site.

I'm not going to stop offering the occasional free shout out when I'm online or when it's asked of me, though as my time becomes more limited, getting a guaranteed shout out on Twitter may require a donation package, especially in the future when I'm taking a salary from the site. Time is money, as they say.

This post isn't about those free tweets. It's more about offering targeted marketing on Twitter that may be time specific. An example: we promote a blog tour over a several day span with multiple, unique tweets per day. Another example: I set up a series of recurring tweets to promote a book on Amazon over the course of several months.

Here are some general guidelines:

• Other tweets may occur in close proximity to "paid" tweets.
• Recurring tweets will take place on a weekly basis.
• The same tweet will not be repeated on the same day.
• No more than one tweet per hour for the same link/product.
• The final negotiated price will reflect both the time I spend to schedule (and/or write tweets) as well as how much of my Twitter feed is being reserved.

There is one other guideline that takes a little bit of explanation: half of the tweets in a package must point to either a post on our site or on Amazon. The other half may point to any link you specify. Here's why: especially before I start taking a salary from the site, I will be donating a lot of my time to set these up, so I need to receive some value in the tweets as well.

Linking to a post on our site will help our traffic, and of course, the post will be about whatever you are having me tweet. A link to Amazon gives us a chance of making a commission off of products bought, even if it isn't your book. In the future, I may waive this guideline should the donation be high enough.

If you would like to inquire about Twitter Marketing, please email me at msl_007 {AT} live {DOT} com.