A guest post by Jean Shorney

When my son suggested that as a writer I should get myself ‘out there’ via the medium of Twitter, all I visualised was people either photographing partially eaten meals, or entertaining us with averaging innumerable cups of coffee per day.

Twitter can be a vehicle for promotion, but it is also about making friends, exchanging facts about your day. Tweeting about your favourite movie or book.

Twitter is also about building a platform, interacting with others.  As a writer, we naturally wish to sell our books. But that shouldn’t mean that in building your platform, you should be in others faces for fifty percent of the time and conscripting people to ‘buy my book, only£1:50!’ ad infinitum.

I discover more readers via friendship, retweeting and supporting others.

When I do promote, I tend to put  out that small novel line. After all, 140 characters has to make an impact, however small. The novel line can show how you write and what you write.

Injecting a little promotion at certain times of the day can be surprising at how many retweets you receive. Late at night can prove fruitful. Even the middle of the night.

I also devour other writer’s informative blogs voraciously and I’m learning all the time. I have met some wonderful people since being on Twitter. Many of them writers, and readers of course.