I was referring to Thunderclap as recently as last month, then I found out on Monday that they have been rejecting some author campaigns. Susan Tarr, author of Miranda Bay, tried to run a campaign on March 28th. Upon filling the forms and completing the process, she received the standard message:
Hey Susan Tarr,
Thanks for submitting MIRANDA BAY. We will review it within 3 days (Mon-Fri, 10-6 EST) and contact you when it’s approved.
If you’d like it approved within 24 hours, you can upgrade to any of our plans.
You can see a preview campaign page until it’s ready.
Have a question in the meantime? Check out our knowledge base.
Thank you!
However, the very next day she received the following rejection message (emphasis is my own):
Unfortunately, due to a change of rules with Twitter, we are no longer able to approve campaigns that are commercial in nature (anything related to a product or service).
This affects a large portion of campaigns on Thunderclap and because of this, we are developing a new product that would not have this limitation. If you would like to be on the waiting list, please fill out the short survey and we will when it is available.
What’s Going On?
The Twitter changes the response Susan got seems to refer to Twitter’s new rules about spamming. Twitter no longer allows you to send 100 tweets at the same time, as Thunderclap does. The problem lies with the fact that a Thunderclap campaign only got out once you had the 100 supporters–and then it sent all tweets, posts etc at the same time. It appears that Thunderclap is now working on a workaround that will fix the problem, but in the meantime, an alternative service has already pulled ahead: DayCause.
DayCause
DayCause has one advantage over Thunderclap–and it’s a big one: instead of waiting for the 100 supporters to line up, support goes out as it comes in. So, if you have 83 supporters instead of 100 and one hour to go, that’s no problem: you will still get 83 tweets and Facebook posts.
My guess is that Thunderclap will be back in business soon enough. I’m pretty sure they’re feeling the heat from DayCause, so they may change their policy to post and tweet as supporters come in. Or, they may tweet and post incrementally to work around Twitter’s restriction. Until they do, however, it’s good to know there’s an alternative that works just as well. Give it a try and, who knows? You may just conclude you like it better anyway.
Many thanks to Susan Tarr for the tip. Happy promoting!
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I’ve participated in Thunderclap for several authors and I find this disappointing. I hope Thunderclap gets this solved. I will participate in DayCause or any platform an author uses in the future.
You’re too kind 🙂
I hate to be such a dummy, but I have heard about Thunderclaps on Facebook. I am mostly on Facebook and have never figured out Twitter and how it helps sell books. And, as you and I are both on RRBC I know I have never received one book sale from all those tweets and retweets. What is Thunderclap? When do you use it? How does it work? I read the above comment, and still don’t know how it sells books. Is it based on the premise that if 100 tweets goes out, those people will buy your book? I would love to know more.
Hi Luna. Thunderclap was used, up till now at least, by authors to spread their promotional message en masse and especially for new releases. Having the news shared at the same time by 100 people (or more) offers significant exposure that, given enough tweets, could help you take advantage of the Amazon algorithms to better your book rank. You can learn everything else you need to know about it by simply googling it. What I am mainly replying to you about, since you asked, is to advise you that Twitter does not sell books. But it offers far and wide exposure. It has a great and unique power to do that. I realized that very early on and have been growing my Twitter account diligently so I can reap this benefit. In my experience no other social medium brings traffic to a website or blog faster and in more volume than Twitter does. So, summing up, Twitter is the best choice for exposure and to gain popularity for your site/blog. To get sales, focus on Facebook and Pinterest – this is as far as social media are concerned. Hope this helps 🙂
Thank you for the great summary, Fros!
Lol, thanks. You know me, jumping in to help, as always :))
The goal is to generate enough buzz to make people notice you. As Effrosyni said in her comment, that was made possible by all those tweets going out simultaneously. It’s much harder to do so with a steady drip of tweets, although Alfageek has managed to build a successful strategy using Twitter ads: https://nicholasrossis.me/2017/02/26/how-to-set-up-twitter-ads-for-your-books-a-complete-guide-by-alfageek/
Very interesting, thank you. Twitter’s latest change in rules prohibits the same tweet to be posted twice (let alone 100 times!) on the same day, so it makes sense they stopped the Thunderclaps. Sadly, the momentum that Thunderclap used to create was because of the fact that the tweets all came out simultaneously. Although 100 tweets coming out in different times is still good exposure, it doesn’t make the effect of ‘trending’ a possibility – which is what Thunderclap ingeniously had in mind when they created the service. Very, very sad indeed. Another great tool for authors has just died a sudden death. Thanks, Twitter. And just as we thought it couldn’t get more annoying!
Thunderclap seems to be working toward solving the problem. Who knows, maybe Twitter will make an exception. I’ll let you know as soon as I find out 🙂
Thanks, look forward to it. I don’t use it any more, to be frank… as it’s time-consuming to have to gather 100 supporters but if their new service doesn’t apply a minimum number to get the message out, I’d love to know 🙂