Social media has proven to be beneficial in providing an avenue in building your platform for selling your book. Not just beneficial in terms of career but also a big help of connecting and reconnecting people. We spend so much time clicking in our digital devices that most of us yearns for that human touch.
Each social media has different vital roles. By being active, we will be able to know that there are other authors that we can communicate with and we can reach out to other people. My advice is to stay in one site or two. What may work for, may not work for the other.
Someone new to Twitter might get overwhelmed and can’t understand what to do. This is another online social network that offers microblogging services. This works differently from Facebook but this is also a powerful tool to promote your book and can also connect with different people. However, in Twitter you need to keep your post short because it only allows 140 characters. With its given number of characters, you must ensure to have a unique and catchy Bio. Use key words that all people will easily find you. You can use the name of your books and you must provide all of its information.
Following people that interests you will most likely follow you back. Since you are in the field of writing, you ought to keep informed with what’s happening in the publishing industry. You can look for informative resources online like The New York Time since it offers valuable information for you to share online.
Since in our younger years our parents taught us to not to talk to strangers, but in virtual world works differently. By following the followers of other authors, publishers, editors, book lovers and everyone connected to publishing industry you can turn strangers into fans and followers.
If you fine an article that catches your attention, you can definitely tweet about it. You can also share the links of the blogs that you read. If your followers retweeted and added your post to their favorite list of tweets then they are paying attention to what you are sharing.
Hashtags are Important:
People used hashtag to as a way to connect to a specific topic or event. It makes it easier to discover a post to a specific topic. You must use a hashtag before you post an article so that you will not limit those followers who are finding you. The #amwriting is the commonly used hashtag in writing industry.
Popular Hashtags:
#SciFI
#Romance
#WordCount
#WriteGoal
#Amwriting
#MSWL
#WIP
#AskAgent
#AskAuthor
#BookGiveaway
Short Link is a Must:
Only 140 characters are on Twitter, and you often find that the website you read is too long. Don’t lose hope, a link shortened like bit.ly can always be used to shrink the link. The idea is to leave enough space for people to retweet (RT) your tweets.
Tweets Scheduling:
There are various programs that you can use to schedule your tweets. You can add the different blogs, newspapers and magazines that you have visited for your tweets. You can schedule a week in advance in promoting your book and this proved to be effective.
Content 80% and Promotion 20%:
My thumb rule is to give more than I can do. If you give substantial information to people, that will enable them to develop their careers. They will pay attention to you. They will find your Bio interesting and most probably buy your books. I promote my books 1 to 2 times a day, and my method of doing so is through my reader’s feedback. This offers an indirect way to market your book.
Tweet chat is another way to promote your book using themes and hashtags. It is a set of live tweets from several people who posted a specific hashtag about the same topic. You should ask your team or friends when you coordinate a book lunch at a certain time and date for them to tweet about your latest publication. This gives your followers an easy way to participate and interact.
Keeping up to date with important information is necessary, and one way to do this is to do hashtag information to track many topics. Paper.li. is a free service that delivers that significant updates daily. This is your customized newspaper that extracts all the important feeds from those you follow and delivers it via email.
Surely, most of us have our account on Facebook and often use this as a tool to connect with our loved ones or either to rebuild a connection with a long lost friend. I heard a story that this site became a bridge that helps parents to find their long-lost children. When it comes to Facebook, everybody has a lot to tell.
You can post anything here in Facebook. Either it’s your latest photo eating in a fancy restaurant or you may be having some announcements you can post a shout out on your Facebook wall. You can guarantee that everything you have posted will receive a response from your followers. Facebook can also be a powerful business tool to promote your book and connect with your readers. There are pages that allow you to post your books free. Even if you get 10% of followers that’s already a huge achievement. Use this as a perfect way to engage in a conversation and to generate new readers.
Authors must have a personal page and a fan page or way that can works for you. You can also connect with other authors and be able to participate with various group pages that you can discuss and share information and build a strong support to one another. This is a perfect place to be creative in allowing people to know about your work.
What I also like about Facebook is being able to help one another. There are hundreds of stories where people have bonded together to raise funds for a good cause. Facebook has such a huge platform, and connecting with people to support a good cause unites us.
Having a banner in your Facebook cover is a great opportunity to display your work. Don’t be stingy in liking and commenting on other people’s photos and links. People love to interact.
GoodReads
This online site has an online forum that you can be part of. Forums allow you to share information about the latest book you have read and create relationships with readers and writers. You can post your books at this site because you can hear not just latest books but also the read reviews from the readers.
Youtube
Youtube is not considered as a social media but this also provides exposure to authors like posting a book trailer of their books, similarly to movie trailers that features previews of your story. Although a book trailer is costly but thanks to the help of www.animoto.com now authors can do it by their selves.
Instagram somewhat works like Twitter but features photos and videos that uses hashtags to promote photos and communicate with readers and supporters.
If you have still queries on how social media works, the following books are a great help for you:
Twitter for Dummies
Social Media just for Writers