Social Media for Comics: 5 Tips for Promoting Your Comics on Twitter

As a publicist AND a blogger, I’m lucky enough to see several slices of the promotional spectrum. Some may even say a publicist and a writer are polar opposites – I prefer to see it as a beneficial partnership: we hook you up with content and news ideas, you hook us up by writing about it if it interests you.

The important thing is to actually provide news that’s interesting, which, sadly, many publicists can’t claim. I feel fortunate that I get to promote cool books, interesting stories, and things that actually peak the interests of most reporters. But the key for me – and the mantra I stick to – is to remain transparent. Let’s be real people – everyone knows I do PR; and they know it because I tell them. Nobody likes to be “tricked,” manipulated or sold.

I don’t try to spin stories or use sellsellsell jargon – I like to say, “Hey, I’m promoting this. We both know that. Here are the details of what I’m pitching, and here’s why I think you’d like this. If not, cool,” and I can leave the discussion knowing that that person won’t feel negatively “sold” to, and perhaps be open to more of my ideas in the future.

And after years of learning and utilizing different methods of promotion, I wanted to share these little tidbits of knowledge with you comics creators whose strengths are in doing what you do best: illustration and writing. Public relations is not necessarily intuitive, especially in the digital age, and it helps to have a guideline to show you the way.

This is the first in a series of articles that will focus on social media for comics and webcomics, which I’ll continue to do throughout the next few months. For now, I want to focus on Twitter, with 5 tips to help you either get started or get better.

5 Tips for Promoting Your Comics on Twitter

1. Build an Audience
Easier said than done. Want to know how? Time. Repetition. Patience. The goal is to have more followers than the number of people you’re following. Although it’s generally frowned upon, you’ll need to Follow, Follow, Follow at first, everybody in the comics world – then, eventually, weed out the people that aren’t necessary to be following. There are four important tools I recommend to help you on this incredibly tedious task:

• Bit.ly – Not necessarily for gaining followers, but to make your life easier – this is a service that shortens your links so that you’ll use up less characters in your Tweet. Make sure to actually sign up for the free account – it will provide you with valuable tools to track who’s clicked on your link.
• Tweepi.com – Filter out people who haven’t updated in awhile or who haven’t followed you back within two weeks of following them (my recommended time period you give before saying YOU HAVE BEEN DELETED – unless a celebrity or prominent figure, who most likely won’t follow you back anyway).
• SproutSocial.com - Check out the trial period of this. Allows you to search for people by subject, check out stats, etc.
• TweetReach.com – Plug in a keyword, and this program tells you how many people Tweeted/Re-Tweeted the search term and how many actual people had the chance to view it.

2. Foster Relationships/Make Friends (especially with comics people, duh)

Do this with Re-Tweets, Follow Fridays, and responses.

• Use Twitter user aggregation tools like Listorious.com to find the top comic-related users. Find active comic book-world users and find out who follows them – and follow them.
• Once a day for a couple of weeks, call out the new people you’re following so that they notice you.
• Always do Follow Fridays – this is where you add the hashtag #FF to your Tweets and recommend people for others to follow. A great way to gain attention from the people you’re calling out, and to make them feel grateful for YOUR attention.
• Re-Tweet news from people you want to notice you, or just items you think your followers will enjoy. There are two ways to do this now – in the new Twitter platform, you can simply click “Re-Tweet” under the Tweet. The old way is to put “RT” and @-reply the person, copy and paste.

3. Remain Active

• Post at least 5 times a day. This is in addition to any “relationship fostering” you’ll be doing with Re-Tweets, @-replies, and Follow Fridays.
• Make your content interesting and newsworthy.
• Make sure to mention other people in your Tweets.
• Pay attention to hash tags and trending topics.
• Get in on the conversation.
  
• Take time to look at what other people are re-tweeting, and adapt to that format.
  

4. Stop Promoting, then Promote Transparently

Before your product is going to be looked at, people need to know who the heck you are and why they should respect you and your work. Be patient and work on fostering those relationships before plugging away. Then, be gracious about it: Worked for 5 hrs last nite on new superhero webcomic – would love ur feedback. thank u thank u! [insert link here]

5. Use Other Networking to Get People to Your Twitter

• Sign up for Facebook if you haven’t already (that’s a whole other post in itself!), comics forums, portfolio sites,  and make everyone aware of your Twitter handle.
• At the bottom of every email you send to anyone, you should have your signature with contact info, including a “Follow Me on Twitter” with the link to your page.
• Put it on your business card.
• Make a prominent Twitter badge or widget on your website or blog (Twitter offers great tools for free badges with simple HTML).

Check out my next “Social Media for Comics” article, 5 Tips for Promoting on Facebook!