So who are the top ten Twitter users?

Here is an updated list….

Pump Up Your Book is conducting a survey to find out more about you- the Facebook Junkie.  Do you spend more time at Facebook than any other social network?  Is Facebook the first thing you see in the morning and the last thing you see at night?

We’ve come up with a cool survey to find out more about the Facebook user.  We would love it if you could fill this out for us!

http://www.pumpupyourbook.com/2011/04/17/new-facebook-survey/

Thanks!

We’ve gathered the most interesting tweets recently related to book publishing, marketing and everything in between that will help you learn more about what’s going on in the land of books. This will be an ongoing feature at Book Marketing Buzz posted every Sunday:

Facebook Rolling Out Brand New Photos Interface

http://t.co/2OxMauc

How to Create Facebook Fan Page Alerts | The Social Media Guide

http://t.co/5GhV6Uj

Pitching Pencils: Guest Post: Do You Use Social Media to Promote Your Books?

http://t.co/POE6KC0

The Top Social Media Tool for 2011 is…

http://bit.ly/huOFEE

A New Way of Marketing: Get Found | Social Media Examiner

http://bit.ly/h1Ppq9

Authors catch fire with self-published e-books USATODAY.com

http://usat.ly/hhYSYs

50 Things a Writer Shouldn’t Do

http://threeguysonebook.com/50-things-a-writer-shouldnt-do

How to self-publish a Book with little or no money

http://t.co/qaRVUmb

Authors: Do’s and Don’ts for online chats

http://t.co/gRSZer6

The Writer’s Guide to Twitter

http://inkygirl.com/a-writers-guide-to-twitter

12 Twitter Stream Aggregators To Make You Smarter – Online Marketing Blog

http://t.co/s4KyjRr

When you follow your favorite movie stars and rock stars on the social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, I bet you they have you believe it’s really them, don’t you?  I mean, who’s to really know it’s not them?  They’re right on topic and are saying things you’d expect from them, right?

I have Paula Deen on virtual book tour right now, but being as I’m just a pawn in the whole scheme of things, Paula Deen is not who I am in contact with, but instead, her publisher.  That’s no big surprise and I just felt fortunate to have her on tour no matter how we did it.

But I always wondered what would happen if I could just get some kind of response from her and the first thing I thought of was that old standby where you can talk to any of your favorite stars  – FACEBOOK.

So I knew Paula was on Facebook as I’m following her but now I’m really paying attention to what is being posted.  It appears to have the same southern type of talk but there is definitely something missing that I can’t quite put my finger on.  Maybe the lightbulb moment came after I left a comment swimming around the other hundreds of comments and she never got back to me or what, but I had my suspicions she might not be the one doing all the posting.  I mean, how would you have time to be Paula if you spent all day in Facebook (and you’d be amazed how many people do spend all their day in Facebook).

I watched Paula Deen in concert last July and about the time she was supposed to be on the plane going to her destination, a message was posted on her Facebook page which made me think that either she had a laptop on the plane and after her exhausting concert, she still had energy to play in Facebook or someone else was posting for her.

I’m not saying it’s not Paula, I’m just sayin’.  But think about it.  What if you just don’t have time to keep up with all the twitter chatter or all your  facebook fans if all of them are messaging you daily?  I’m talking hundreds of messages a day or more, not just one or two like some of us are getting – ahem.

So this leads me to a video I just watched about ghost-tweeting.  In my own little fantasy world, I like to think it’s the celebrity posting things and I have the ability to post right back and they see that, but who are we kidding but ourselves.  This video explains it all:

So people hire people to ghost-tweet for them which frees up their time to do what they are doing to keep their business out there on all the social networks which experts are claiming is the place to be (I attest to that).

I just think there’s something not real kosher about it and it leads me to another facet of the crazy world of the Internet – hiding behind a persona – or even a ghost-tweeter – and leading people to believe it’s you.

Kinda makes you want to start over again with that Santa Claus and Easter Bunny thing, doesn’t it?

It happens all the time.  I come upon a wonderful blog post and want to help the blogger out by spreading the link, only…the only way I can do that is to copy the link into Tiny Url, then head over to Twitter, Facebook, Bookblips, wherever.  What some bloggers don’t realize is that there is an untapped world of visitors out there in the viral world and they’re missing the opportunity for people to help them get visitors simply by making their visitors work too hard to get them.

You’ll see the high profile blogs make it easy for readers to spread their news but a lot of bloggers don’t realize how simple it is even if they are using a free blogging platform like Wordpress or Blogger.

While there are umpteen places to find gadgets to put on your blog for people to spread your news, the two I absolutely love is Tweetmeme and Add to Any.  Both have been terrific at letting me post to the social networks with less effort on my own blogs and have made it easier for others to help me spread my blog posts, too.

Tweetmeme

Starting with Tweetmeme, this handy gadget allows people to send your link to Twitter with one hit of the button.  All you have to do is sign up for an account, then scroll down to the bottom of the page to find “Retweet Button.” To save you some time, click here.

If you have a free blogging platform, hit “Web Button” and it will give you the code.  Because this is javascript, the free Wordpress blogging platform won’t allow you to use it, but if you’re self-hosted, you’re in luck.  Just add the code:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"></script>

at the top or bottom of each of your blog posts.  However, there is a plugin which will make it simpler and you can find out all about that here.  With the plugin, it comes up automatically without you having to add the code each time.

AddtoAny.com

If you don’t even want to bother with Tweetmeme (I use both), you can use this handy dandy bookmarketing gadget.  I’ve gone into my template at my old Blogger blogs and added the code for this button and it showed up nicely but you have to be familiar with messing around with your template or you might lose everything (back it up just in case).

It’s actually only a matter of adding the code to the appropriate place so you really need not worry.  If you’re on the new template Blogger came out with a couple of years ago, I think it’s a matter of drag and drop (correct me if I’m wrong) but if you’re stuck in your ways like me and have the old template at Blogger, then you need to go into your template and add a snippet of code near the bottom of your template.

If you’re too afraid to go into your template, you can click here and get the code to add to your individual blog posts in edit mode.

Unfortunately, if you’re on the free Wordpress blogging platform, you can’t use this one because of the javascript (correct me if you have found out a way to do that).  However if you are self-hosted, you can get the plugin here.

What I like about this button is that it doesn’t just go straight to Twitter.  There are loads of places you can send your link to – Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, Squidoo, Propeller,  Yahoo Buzz, Allvoices, and this barely touches the surface.  All with just one click of the button.

If you want a little color to your blog, you can use Let’s Get Social, but I found it doesn’t have as many book marking sites (that I use anyway) as AddtoAny.

ShareThis is also good.

And..one more thing.  I have to give credit where credit is due especially since she’s a wonderful person and very helpful, but Book Marketing Buzz’s new look is thanks to Tracee Gleichner.  You can email Tracee at novelnoise (at) live.com if you are like me – no time nor brain cells to figure out how to go from free to self-hosted.  She whipped this up in a matter of  hours and she works very inexpensively!

If any of you decide to add these wonderful gadgets to help you promote your blog, leave a comment below so we can go over and promote you, too.  And if you want to find out how great these buttons work, click my Tweetmeme button at the top and/or my AddtoAny button at the bottom of this post!

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By now, everyone knows about the latest change at Facebook. Now, there is a box that pops up that allows you to control who is reading your posts there. No big deal I thought at first, only there’s something you might not be aware of.

I noticed recently that my tweets from Twitter were ending up in Google, but now…because I clicked “everyone” at Facebook, my personal entries that I thought only those who friended me at Facebook could see, are ending up in the search engines, also.

So watch what you post on either social media platform or remember to click the right box at Facebook if you post something you don’t want the world to see.

Interesting article in TechCrunch this morning. Seems they had run a story about a 104-year-old woman who had signed up for Twitter (supposedly the oldest woman to sign up for this wonderful microblogging platform), but the thing is, it ended up being a PR stunt that either worked or not (depending on your take on things). TechCrunch apologized; wasn’t their fault. They were just reporting a news item and wanted to clear up the facts (thanks TechCrunch!).

But what I find interesting in all this is that Ivy is still twittering. Just four hours ago, she wrote, “hello all spending the morning reading wont be able to use lap top much today other residents are using it be in touch later.”

So is Ivy doing this or someone from The Geek Squad who supposedly put her up to it in the first place? Who knows, but I followed her. It would be interesting to see how far this takes us, you think?

But is there a fine line between getting that story and maintaining integrity while doing so? Do you think IvyBean 104 was being taken advantage of and has no idea what’s going on or maybe really she can Tweet?