Tweeter is the super blog?

In reading the hash tags from the first 140 characters conference, held this week in NYC, Ms. Obie Joe is struck by the possible over-enthusiasm for the Twitter as a building and disrupter in promotion campaigns.

Twitter works not because a new brain wiring distills our attention span into further squashed increments. Rather, Twitter works because, at its best, it provides a consistent stream of information, or with authors, observations that feed into a story. People leave 4,000 and counting congrats on dooce.com when the newest participant is born because her blog has reliably produced content for years.

Online is the fancy tool, but really, people, we keep returning to the same thing used for eons to transfer and translate information: the narrative.

"The fin de siècle/industrial revolution gave us stream of consciousness, the nuclear age gave us post-modernism, and now the information age has produced what? Writers need to experiment with narratives across media in the same way that alternate reality games have experimented with the video game." (@chapmanchapman Ryan Chapman, Macmillan Internet marketing manager)

Use Twitter -- absolutely -- but don't forget the story.

Strategize for the scatter

Everybody's online, huh? You might be hearing that from your publicist, publisher and friends.

Certainly, the range of options seem so vast as to start hitting anything that moves.

Moving the cane to the tip of his boot, Mr. Obie Joe would remind you to not chase, but to strategize. Perhaps your book, or your personality, would not match a Twitter campaign. There are authors who work with "only" a web site. Think through your choices, and then commit fierce. Few things are as disappointing as a blog with no entries. Or a web site with just a landing page. Or a Facebook page with no friends.

A few steps at the dance:
• Familiarize yourself with all tools.
• Determine the typical time commitments for each tool. Twitter is daily, blog tour is intermittent, and so on.
• Use tools to track your progress: how many hits, your search engine position, direct feedback/comments on your sit, etc.
• Coordinate original content. Use you Author Q&A for a blog tour; send a blog essay for a press release; and so on.

Online publicity changes the game from traditional marketing is that you, handsome you, chase the consumer in a way that engages them over the long-term. Not for the one-time product buy. Many of Mr. Obie Joe's people work with us not just to sell their book, but to to build their career so their next book sells, too.

TIP: A twitter about Twitter?

Connecting with your audience, in specific and consistent ways, is the best way to sell books. Episodic promotion and marketing -- think ads, big events, one-time media hits -- rarely work to build an audience awareness for author, book or subject.

That's one reason Ms. Obie Joe has been recommending Twitter, a mini-blogging service; authors send out 140-word updates throughout the day, with whatever frequency is preferred, to subscribers. Your subscribes - many of whom will sign up via your blog or personal invite -- can follow the live life feeds via multiple channels: the Web, IM, SMS, etc.

"Great," says an author. "More content I gotta put out."

Well, yes. But the informality and real-time aspect of the very short posts might be easier to write.

Mr. Obie Joe can see some of the limitations of Twitter. Fiction writers, particularly those with a more staid profile, might find the Twitter an annoyance. But for nonfiction writers, particularly those in the midst of research, Twitter is a gold mine for readers who would love to hear more about an author's dive into Victorian train stations, or the jewels of 50s-era bombshells.

Twitter should only add to your audience; Twitter fans tend to be blog fans, too.