Saturday, June 8, 2013

The Best Man by Ana Blaze Twitter Contest

Twitter Contest to Win an E-Copy of The Best Man by Ana Blaze
(I've read this and you DON'T want to miss this book!)



Book Blurb:
Beth Chase is too busy planning perfect weddings to worry about the lack of action in her own love life. But if she was looking for a man, she wouldn’t be looking at Colin Pratt. Her boss swears that Best Man Colin is a quiet scholar and science fiction writer who couldn’t possibly cause a fuss at his own brother’s wedding. He’s clearly never met the man in question. Snarky, sexy and more than a little inebriated, Colin is the final obstacle between Beth and the last perfect wedding she needs to make partner. Of course, when she helps him into a taxi at the end of the night she has no idea that he’s only just begun to poke holes in her professional exterior. Colin might have the skills to seduce a romance professional, but can he convince her that he’s the best man to share her happy ever after?

Link to trailer: http://youtu.be/PiNLdS1d1h8



The Best Man is available from Entranced Publishing. http://www.entrancedpublishing.com/

Contest Details
Entering is easy. Just tweet @ana_blaze and include the hashtag #TheBestMan between midnight EST on June 7, 2013 and 11:59 p.m. EST on June 8, 2013!

For example, you could tweet:

@ana_blaze I married #TheBestMan I know.
@ana_blaze #TheBestMan is on my must read list.
@ana_blaze #TheBestMan made me breakfast in bed.
@ana_blaze I love sexy nerds. #TheBestMan
@ana_blaze I wish Beth would plan my wedding. #TheBestMan
@ana_blaze Being #TheBestMan is tough, but someone's gotta do it.
or even just:
@ana_blaze  I want to read #TheBestMan!


You get the idea. Twitter rules ask that we don't have too many duplicate tweets, so it's best (and frankly way more cool) if you come up with your own tweet. Ana is really looking forward to seeing what folks come up with. And hoping for some tweets about how to be #TheBestMan. It's also best if you are following Ana on twitter. Apparently that's the only way to guarantee that your tweet shows up in the search.
You can follow here: https://twitter.com/ana_blaze

You're welcome to tweet (and enter) more than once, but please not more than once an hour. Let's not annoy the Twitter-folk too much.

This contest is open internationally.
Void where prohibited. :(

Ana’s Links



And since this is a Twitter contest, I thought it'd be great to have some insight from Ana about Twitter. Aren't we lucky? 


There are a lot of social media sites and, as an author; I try to maintain a presence on a lot of them. I have a blog, a Facebook page, a Goodreads page and a collection of Pinterest boards. I’m on Shelfari, Library Thing and Absolute Write’s Forum.  But my favorite is Twitter.

I resisted the Twitter at first but it turned out to be a great fit for me and I’ll tell you that a great deal of the traffic at my blog comes from Twitter.

Melinda invited me to share a few of my Twitter tips for writers and I’m thrilled to do so. Some of these are going to be basic tips for all twitter users, so if you’re not a writer you might find a tip or two here as well.

1. First off, don’t be shy. Follow people. Tweet hello.  Join in conversations. Twitter is great for shy people, it’s like a never-ending cocktail party without the need to dress stylishly and come up with interesting conversational topics on the spot.

2. Next, don’t auto-send each new follower a message about your book. Seriously, resist. They’ve decided to follow you—they’ll see information about your book in your profile or in a tweet. Direct messages should be personal.

3. On a similar note, don’t only tweet about your book. The week it’s released, most everyone is going to happily give you some leeway, but after that…you need to make certain you are offering something else to the conversation.  My debut has only been out about a month, so I still mention it about once a day…but I tweet a lot so that’s a small percentage of the whole and I try to do it at different times each day. I think a few months out, it’s probably a once a week kind of thing.

4. Which brings me to a big tip: Use a program that allows you to schedule your tweets! I use Tweetdeck-more about why in a minute—it allows you to set a time for your tweets. So if you want to tweet about your new blog post four times over the course of the day (not a bad idea if your followers are spread out over several time zones), you can set that up all at once. I’ve also used http://www.feed140.net. It worked well too.

5. Use Tweetdeck or another program that lets you keep you twitter feed organized.  Let’s face it, some tweets or tweeters are going to be on your priority list. You don’t want to miss tweets by your favs or your closest friends. Tweetdeck lets you make columns based on lists that you create. For example, I keep a list of all the folks involved with my publishers—all the authors, editors and marketing wonders. And I have a special column of just their tweets on Tweetdeck, so I don’t miss any important business news. You can also make a column based on a hashtag. So if you write YA and want to see all the posts that use the #YALitChat tag, you can make a column for that. It’s a great way to network.

6.  Make certain your profile makes it clear that you are a writer. I follow back almost all writers who follow me…but only if I know that they are writers. I also often check out their blogs if they have one listed. So list yours. J Your profile is also a great place to share a little info about your book.

7. Remember that tweeting feels casual, but a tweet can last forever. Yeah, I don’t want to scare folks away from tweeting, but I feel like I’d be remiss if I failed to mention that you should remember that tweeting is the equivalent of standing on a chair and announcing something in a diner. Be careful about the personal information you divulge and try not to tweet in the heat of an angry moment. As with most internet interaction, ignoring someone who is being inappropriate is probably better than entering into a debate with them. If someone tweets that your book sucks, you can unfollow them, you can even block them, but you should not tweet them all the reasons it doesn’t or stick your followers on them. This is just an example. I haven’t actually seen it happen.

8. Use hashtags. One way you can join or sometimes even start a big conversation is by using a hashtag.  They are basically search terms that anyone interested in following can use to see all the tweets on that subject.  Some to look for: #amwriting #amediting #amreading #kindle 

9. Retweet awesome tweets. Everyone wants their tweets to be retweeted. That’s how you reach a bigger audience. If you want your tweet about your new release to be retweeted you need to build relationships with other tweeters by talking with them and by retweeting some of their best tweets. Don’t retweet everything every one you follow tweets! You have to be both generous and selective. It’s a balance. Don’t worry, you’ll find it.

10. Please don’t #FF every single person you follow. I’ve seen this. Seriously. I tried counting the #FF recommendations from a single person I followed one week and she listed over a hundred people before I got bored and stopped counting. In case you don’t know, #FF is a hashtag used on Fridays to suggest that your followers consider following someone that you follow. It’s a lovely thing to do. It becomes meaningless if you overdo it. The best #FF tweets include just one or two names and a reason that you think others should follow them.

I’ll fess up here, new friends, I absolutely overdid #FF for a few weeks. It’s easy to do; you don’t want to play favorites or risk hurting anyone’s feelings and the next thing you know you’ve loaded up your tweet queue with forty #FF tweets.  I started a new system a few weeks ago. I now limit myself to five a week. I call them my #FiveToFollow. J You can totally steal that if you want. It means that I cannot give all my friends an #FF mention every week, but when it is their turn it’s something special. 
Thank you so much, Ana, for the great Twitter advice! Now, readers, get out there and TWEET TWEET TWEET!

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for having me over and helping to spread the word. :)

    ReplyDelete