Social media can be a powerful tool for authors. As we spend more of our lives in front of computer screens and having an online presence has become inevitable, exercising a measure of control on that presence has become very important. First impressions tend to last and by building a coherent online presence, authors can have a say on what those impressions are. Instead of relying on traditional PR and advertising methods, authors can personally have a strong impact on how they are viewed.
Many authors shy away from using social media to promote themselves and their books and in doing so are missing valuable opportunities for gaining readers. Instead of thinking of trying to use social media as a marketing tool, authors should focus on creating good content and on networking. With a large network of readers interested in their content, marketing will happen organically.
There are three main social media platforms that work best for authors: twitter, facebook and blogging.
To tweet or not to tweet
Though twitter may seem intimidating to the uninitiated with its symbols and hashthags, twitter is an excellent place to gain a wide audience. Take the time to figure out how to use it. Start by creating an account and customizing your page. Then start following accounts you think you might like. Twitter is best not for following friends, but for connecting with strangers with similar interests. Use the search feature to find users discussing topics that interest you and start participating in the conversation.
Don’t use twitter to spam your links or you won’t get far. Twitter is like a party. If all you do is talk about yourself, you’ll soon bore others. If you listen to what others are saying and contribute, you might end up with very rewarding conversations and some new friends.
Once you get the hang of twitter, make sure you keep it up without letting it take over your time. Schedule time regularly and decide how much time you want to invest in it. The more time you invest in it, the more your twitter account may grow, but you may be at risk of spending all your time chasing links down the rabbit hole.
Facebook is your living room
With over 800 million active users, including your grandmother, facebook is the main social media networking site. It’s where we find news of birth announcements, and pictures of your high school sweetheart’s office holiday party, to the best techno dancing chicken videos. But with so much time being spent on facebook, it presents a great opportunity for catching readers’ attention. Facebook has become so ubiquitous that it’s now the holdouts refusing accounts that are the rebels.
But facebook is your online living room and you need to be careful whom you let in. Fortunately, facebook has different kinds of pages. Most people have a facebook profile page. Authors should consider getting a fan page in addition to their profile page. Facebook caps the number of friends profile pages may have at 5,000, so to go beyond that you need a fan page. Furthermore, that would allow you to keep your profile page private and use your fan page for professional purposes.
Blog your heart out
A blog can be a great place to create content to share on facebook, twitter and other social networking sites. Large communities of bloggers like SheWrites also make it easy to connect with other authors with similar interests and goals. Participate in the community, read, comment, write, and you’ll become part of a large network of like-minded people, which will strengthen your position as an author.
There are many different sites that offer free blogging platforms. Blogger, Wordpress and tumblr are some of the most popular ones. Design a customized page and start blogging. To better catch the eye of search engines, pay special attention to crafting good titles and the content of the first few sentences in each post. Take your time to clean up each post before publishing it. Check out Julija Sukys’ recent post for more blogging tips.
As with twitter and facebook, make sure you’re not simply doing self-promotion. Provide valuable content and readers will come. Participate in the community and the community will include you.
And always, always, always credit others.
I'm on all of the major social networking sites. Twitter and Facebook have helped my writing career in more ways than one. I haven't warmed to Google+, even though I'm on it. I haven't taken to it like I have to Twitter and Facebook. However, I intend to increase my participation on Google+ in 2012. Majo, you mentioned hashtags, but you didn't explain what a hashtag is. Hashtags are an important part of social networking on Twitter. As I wrote in one of my Yahoo! Voices articles, "Twitter incorporates hashtags to provide real-time tracking of a specific topic. For example, on Fridays, Twitter has a day called "Follow Friday" which is a day for you to promote the pages of your Twitter friends. Two popular Twitter hashtags for Follow Friday are #FF and #followfriday." To search for hashtags, a site I recommend is Hashtags.
Susan, great job with Facebook and Google+! Google+ is great but you're right, it's still only for early adopters. However if it does become a very large and influential network to rival facebook and twitter, early adopters will have the advantage by having started to build up their circles and circles of followers early.
As far as twitter goes, you can definitely make meaningful connections - specially if you're willing to meet in person. And no. I'm not talking about dating. Once you have local followers with similar interests, find group activities and join in. That helps both meeting, making a stronger connection and continuing the discussion on twitter. For example, is there a book reading you want to go to? Check on twitter for people talking about that reading or that author, then ask who's going and say 'see you there'. Tweet when you get there, say hello, etc... You don't have to meet a lot of people this way, but if you have a strong connection with one, their followers and the people they interact with will take you more seriously.
Good point, Susan! It is networking, only online. So you should work it as a party where you're trying to get to know others and being very sociable. Maybe it will be easier online since there's a keyboard involved?
Susan - "you do have to work Twitter as you would a party" - oh no, I'm terrible at working parties. I just stay with the people I already know, occasionally joining in conversations when one of my more sociable friends talks to somebody else. I think I need to try and work Twitter as I should a party!
My two cents: You do have to work Twitter as you would a party, but after a couple years and 300-400 Following/Followers, I haven't found it very helpful in making meaningful connections. I'm beginning to find that Google+ is more useful for genuine conversations with new people. I can create (& save) a search on a topic like "indie publishing" and scan the results for conversations to join or share and new people to circle.
I have finally roped off Facebook in order to be myself with friends and family. I created a Facebook Page for my first book but never figured out what it was good for, since it's instantly apparent how few people Like me.
I think that the successful bloggers really work their blog like a second job and work like hell to get others involved in conversation with them. I wish I could say that was me. I use mine more casually, and at best for writing practice and generating new ideas for future writing. Google+ might also fill the purpose if you are good at digging up useful stuff to share... and it's less of a pain to maintain than a blog. Note, however, that Google+ is still new and mostly a home for early adopters, like me.
Liberty, you're absolutely right. Blogs can be used to centralize everything. Glad to see such an enthusiastic blogger!
Janis, thanks for the birthday wishes. Glad you find the advice helpful. Give it a good try and see how you engaging more with twitter. It will be worth your time.
S.A. & Sally, good luck working on it! All of this creates a digital footprint that soon accumulates. And Sally, don't worry about the content that's already out there. Focus on what you can contribute to that content and on how you can express your own voice. All this posting on blogs, twitter and facebook soon accumulates and before you know it you have a significant archive which will affect your rankings with search engines and have an impact on how easily you're found.
Claude, agreed. It's hard to apply. But really, it's just like writing. You just have to do it and keep at it. Writing a book doesn't happen in one sitting, or in one sitting every few months. Come up with a plan that makes sense for you. Maybe try to fill in one of those holes once a week. Schedule, do it, and in a few months all those holes will be plugged. Twitter? Maybe whenever you have coffee. Or while you're standing in line at the supermarket if you have a smart phone. It all helps build up your online presence.
Thanks, Majo, excellent tips! Even though I have to confess that while I know all this, I find it hard to apply! Just blogged about all my mistakes in book marketing, starting with my blog that far from being safely nestled in a niche looks like a piece of Swiss Cheese, full of holes! One hole for publishing news, one for cooking tips, one for contemporary art, one for books, one for political news like the Arab Spring or te Euro crisis...Wow, a real disadter!
But perhaps authors can learn from my mistakes...That's why I blogged about it!
As a tech early adopter my husband's constantly had his smart phone and laptop out doing this kind of stuff for ages to build his techie profile, while I've been burying my head in Word with tunnel-vision on just doing my writing.
It's only recently I've started to do each of these three things but it's exactly what he says I need to do and thank you so much for the advice! Seeing how much content is out there already (and so much from the States - I'm in the UK) I feel way behind, but I love the feeling when I make a new connection and find a brand new online writer friend. I'm really looking forward to [finally] getting involved.
Thank you Majo. Your tips clearly support what I’ve been told and have read. Alas...I’m still in the infancy stage. Working on it. I really enjoy reading the great comments from everyone. Helps to understand what has been tried, not worked, and worked. Thank you all.
Thank you for getting back, Majo. That's helpful advice. And Happy Birthday!
Janis
So many great tips! Treating Twitter like a cocktail party is the way to go! Facebook fan pages can be a wonderful spot for more focused conversation (although I find them a bit more challenging to get started at times). Blogging is my absolute favorite #1 marketing tactic - (I even wrote a book). A blog allows the writer to centralize online social media's, events, news, video, etc and makes it that much simpler for the reader to connect with one click!
Janis, getting into conversations can be slow going but you don't need full conversations. All you need is interactions. You get to know users by their tweets, and they get to know you by yours. An interaction just intrigues them into following you. Take a few minutes to scan your stream and pick one person to say something to in response to something they say. Often that's enough for them to check you out. If they like your tweets, they'll follow you. As far as short bits of autobiography, it depends on what your goal is and what kind of followers you want. It also depends on how you share it. Done well, it can be very effective.
Lisa, block them! The followers that inactive accounts get do tend to be mostly spam. Be more active and interact with others to get the kind of followers you want. Tweet more. Look for the kind of followers you want and follow them. If you are actively tweeting, many of them will follow you back.
Reiko, thanks for the birthday wishes! Indeed, not spending much time online today but I couldn't resist responding to these comments. Re:credit others. Giving linkbacks and mentioning others when relevant will get you noticed. And if they like what you say, you might get a retweet. What you tweet only gets seen by your followers, but if something you said to someone with thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers gets retweeted by that person, many more users get to read what you said. But of course, that's only relevant if you have similar interests or platforms. Would love to teach a twitter 101 class!
Happy Birthday, Majo! You probably aren't checking your blogs today. But when you get back... I was thinking about what you ended with: always credit others. And recalling that you once told me to always link to others, especially those who have an audience or platform that might be receptive to you. Would love to hear more about that sometime. Maybe you should teach a class!
Great advice! I'm still trying to get the hang of Twitter. So far my followers are promoting Hook up sites. In other words they are escorts, so I've had to delete these ones. It's a very cool network however the pitfalls. Thanks!
Forgive me if you get this response twice, Majo! Not sure my first went through. Your point about getting into conversations on Twitter is useful (but doing so is slow-going, I've discovered!) Do you think it's *ever* useful to post short bits of autobiography, as many do? I've heard competing things about this--or rather, that it's good to do "clever updates" and also enter into conversations. I'll admit, though, that people sending out random attempts to be clever is grating (though I've done it myself, I'm afraid!) What do you think?
I have a blog, and it's been suggested to me that using Twitter is one way to stay in contact with my readers, especially if I don't post that often (which I don't, because I write short, polished pieces that take some time to develop.) However, I'm not assured that I have many readers at all at this point, so clever, slice-of-life updates may be a moot point!
I'd be grateful for your thoughts,
Janis
Exactly! Without that connection it's like showing up at a party and handing out a flyer. If you don't know the people there and they don't know you, it would have to be quite a flyer for anyone to notice it.
"Twitter is like a party". Great observation. I tend to use twitter to make announcements and spread the word about something. Otherwise, I am afraid it will take up all my time. But you are so right: it isn't an advertising site. We may start with the understanding that we have to do self promotion, but then it becomes something much more: the connection that we come to writing for in the first place!