People have different opinions about social media: some hate it, some love it. But there’s no denying, it can be a pivotal element of your author platform.
Adapted from our BookBaby Live series, Steven Spatz, BookBaby president and self-published author, talks about some of the ways you can use social media to help build your artist platform and drive interest in you and your books.
Seth Godin is one of my marketing heroes, and his take is that marketing is no longer about the stuff you make, it’s about the stories you tell, and that is especially true about social media. Lauren Leto gives us this perspective: “Twitter provides us with a wonderful platform to discuss/confront societal problems. We trend Justin Bieber instead.”
Jeff Bezos also puts things in perspective with this thought: “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they may each tell 6,000 friends.”
It’s about you, not your book
Social media is really about reach. It’s not the product, it’s not the book, it’s the people you are trying to appeal to. Yes, you’ve seen tweets and you’ve seen Facebook posts saying, “Buy my book!” but that’s not your goal. When John Grisham tweets that his book is about to be released, he’s going to get a ton of traffic to his Amazon page, and he can do that, because he’s been marketed — his publisher has spent lots of money marketing him.
And more importantly, he’s been established. His faithful readers know exactly who he is as an author and what his writing is all about and they’ll go right right to his page and buy. But he’s one of those rare people who can do that.
For self-published authors, social media is about introducing yourself. Luckily, you’ve got a very big universe to explore. Instagram is on its way to a billion users, Facebook has 2.9 billion worldwide, LinkedIn has over 800 million, and who knows what social media platforms are going to come in the future?
Drive interest through mood and context
You, as an independent author, are not necessarily linking a sale to your communication on social media. The job of social media is to get readers — in a virtual way — to pick up your book and examine it. How do you do that? Make them interested in you, in what you’re about, and what your message is. Maybe that can be on the topic and genre of your book, but it’s not about the actual book itself. It’s about everything that’s around it that’ll make people say, “let me stop and pick this one off the virtual shelf.”
Maybe 15 percent of your messages will be about your book and sales, and the rest should be about mood and context and communication. As writers, I like to think we have a lot of intelligence in our communication, so this is your chance to use your wit and creativity, your energy, passion, and smarts to really stand out from the crowd.
So let’s look at some best practices I’ve gleaned from authors who have done a really good job with social media, as well as some of the pitfalls to avoid.
Know your audience
Knowing your audience should start before you begin writing a book. Who is going to like your book? If I wrote a book about raising ducks in the suburbs (been there, done that), who am I going to appeal to? Well, probably duck lovers or waterfowl enthusiasts, maybe pet owners more generally, and then folks with the space to endeavor to raise ducks on their property. Really think about who is going to be interested in the genre and the specific topic and start following the people who will interact with you about your topic.
Show your interest and start to engage and join conversations with appropriate comments and remarks and as you engage, people will start to follow you. It’s a very organic process.
It takes time. it may require you to keep notes on who is chatting about you and who you’re chatting with — this is a chance for you to do a little research until you get to 50 or so people who who you’re talking to a lot, whose posts and blogs you’re following, and build from there.
Keep it simple
Pick one platform that suits you to start. Be personable. Post ideas, try to differentiate yourself, make your commentary memorable, make it visual. Visual posts, something with an image or a photo, are something like 40 times more effective than just straight text. It’s important for you to think about what’s going to get people interested in you, because you are the product at this point.
Consider why people use social media
There are three main reasons why people use social media: they want to be entertained, they want to be educated, and they want to be heard. What they don’t want is to be sold to.
Advertisers have learned what’s going to make people stop and take a look. It used to be they’d feature cans of Coke with beads of water dripping off the side of them and make them so incredible looking. Now, those same advertisers are trying to entertain people.
The trick for you is to entertain people with content that is somehow related to the book and related to you. It’s always going to tie back to you.
I saw one author ask, “What’s the weirdest place you’ve ever read a book?” I thought that was pretty clever. By the way, feel free to share your craziest spot where you ever read a book in the comment section.
You can share fun facts, something new you’ve discovered, offer to teach other people, and allow people to be to be heard — offer your platform as a place for them to add their voice.
Make social media a daily exercise
Once you decide you’re going to go for a social media campaign, you need to do it daily. It doesn’t have to take all day; spend a half hour in the morning and a half an hour in the evening. Once you become good at it, you can pre-schedule posts. A lot of people create a strategic calendar for their social media and then supplement it with reactions of what other people are saying.
On Monday you might do excerpts from your book or from other author’s books. Tuesday, you can post quotes from authors, etc. throughout the week. This approach can help people get used to your content.
Develop your social “voice”
Finding your writer’s voice is one thing, and finding your social voice is important as well. Whatever you speak about, whether it’s recipes or astrophysics, if you’re consistent and you’re creative, at some point, you’re going to find people following you more often than perhaps you’re following other people. Ultimately, you’re going to gather your community.
Don’t be afraid to share
By the way sharing other people’s content is not lazy — it’s mandatory. Don’t be afraid to retweet really good information that is consistent with you book and your voice and what you’re all about
As an old-school marketer, word-of-mouth marketing used to be the thing that we would really aspire to. Now that water cooler conversations are something of a relic, I believe social media can take the place of digital word-of-mouth marketing, but you’ve got to do it right.
Thank you I learned a lot. I will look for other ones.
I have published 2 books and almost finished with a third one. Just introduced to this site by a friend.