Publishing a book is not a bed of roses. It is a difficult task that goes from the first idea to the first word, and from there, to the first draft. And it doesn’t end here! You will still have to review your sketch, make countless corrections, shape it, and design the cover. Once the book is finished and published, all the questions arise: Will anyone read my book? This is where things get interesting: How to promote your book on social media?
Promoting your book is essential for your text to sell beyond your friends and family. As an author you have an infinite number of tools, but there is no point in having them if you don’t know them or if you know them but don’t know how to use them.
The Internet offers endless marketing opportunities. The most common used to be to create your own website and, as an author, keep your readers interested and updated. However, in the last decade, social networks have become a tool for promoting, complementing, or even replacing this traditional website.
- Why should I promote my book on social media?
- Costs of promoting your work on networks
- Create a reader base
- Get reach
- Interaction is vital
- How to promote your book on social networks?
- reedit
- YouTube
- Disadvantages of promoting your book online
- Conclusion
Why should I promote my book on social media?
Since they became popular, social networks have been gaining ground and are now an essential element for any company. Well, the same thing happens with you as an author. The ability of hire a screenwriter to reach people, combined with the numerous interactions that occur on them, make this scenario the ideal one to achieve your goal. Below we list a series of advantages that you should take into consideration.
Costs of promoting your book on social networks
Promoting your book on social platforms can be significantly cheaper than traditional marketing methods such as ads, flyers, or posters. Although social media requires time and effort, it is much cheaper. The first steps are free. Later, and with a small budget, you can afford actions on social networks to obtain greater reach. Start by posting tweets, Facebook posts, and adding your book writing to your LinkedIn profile. As the days go by you will realize which posts work and which don’t. The first posts will have low quality, but little by little you will see which ones have more feedback and behave better. Instagram is another of the essential networks… if you know how to upload good photographs.
After free publications on social networks, you can, if you see fit, advertise your book with paid ads: Facebook ads, Twitter ads (Facebook ads are more recommended).
Once you know more about the world of the internet, you can take it a step further: YouTube. To open a channel on this audiovisual social network you will need two things: courage and patience. By uploading your own videos, you can touch the soul of more target audiences, but this is only for the brave. You are?
Create a reader base to promote your book
On social networks, you can build a community and, therefore, a reader base in a long-term and determined manner. The fans you find there are not only fans of your book, but also of you as an author. You can present not only your first book, but also readings or other projects. Having a lot of followers doesn’t guarantee that everyone will buy your book, but it is important for reach. Social networks make your digital readers your own ambassadors.
Platforms like Facebook and Twitter also offer statistics and analysis tools for advanced users. You can use it to monitor how many fans you gained and when, what books they like the most, or how big the reach of your posts is.
Social media reach
With little effort, social media allows you to get in touch with your followers. Is your book for teenagers or adults? For leisure readers or for a group of experts?
There are also different platforms depending on the type of book you want to sell. You can post a reading of your novel on Facebook, promote your photo album with sample photos on Pinterest, or broadcast short updates of your writing progress via Twitter. Linking your website to social networks will also help.
Important: When reading a sample of your book, we recommend revealing between 10% and 50%. This way, you can leave them halfway and capture their interest. This is not very difficult to achieve if you have your own website.
Once you have chosen your platforms and established a work routine, the dynamics of each social network will do the marketing for you. Reactions and news about your book will skyrocket thanks to word of mouth: your followers will share it with their friends and acquaintances.
To facilitate the distribution of your book, it is interesting to put widgets on your Twitter, Facebook, etc. They are small, interactive links that function as »buy buttons». The incorporation of widgets arouses interest and gives legitimacy. Writers of USA offers some of these widgets for free.
Interaction is vital
Social networks live by and for interaction. Liking, commenting and sharing not only increases the reach of your posts, but you also receive direct feedback from your readers. Did you like your book? What is the readers’ opinion about him? Readers can react, comment and criticize immediately, regardless of the time of day or distance. You, the author, are in direct contact with your readers and can speak to them at any time.
Unfortunately, you will also have to deal with negative comments. It’s not a good idea to simply delete or avoid such things – respond openly to criticism and value their feedback. You can always learn something from these reactions for your next post or your next book!
You can use all these tips to create a good image for yourself as an author. If this image is appreciated by the community, it could be of great help to increase your sales and, therefore, your profits. In other words: your participation and availability in networks can help you create your own personal brand which, once developed, can lead to even greater success.
How to promote your book on social networks?
In addition to the general advantages that social networks offer, it is always interesting to know how each one of them works in particular and their different characteristics. The examples listed below can be used to create a community of followers and readers. Spam messages or emails should be avoided at all costs, as you will run the risk of making your followers dizzy.
How can you promote your book on Facebook?
Facebook can do so much more than just connect you with your friends. In fact, it is currently one of the most important marketing channels you should use to market your book. You must first set up your Facebook profile. Then, you can set up a public page for your fans of you as an author to promote your book.
Important to keep in mind: don’t forget to add your personal information or links to your Facebook fan page, this way people can be redirected to your official page and sales platforms to purchase your book.
From this page, you can send messages (post) to keep your readers updated. Which project are you working in currently? Who or what inspires you? You can also ask questions if you want to get answers from your readers. It is important that you are aware of what they are interested in. There are some strategic considerations that can be useful when updating, ask yourself: Who are your readers and what are they interested in? What does it mean and what do you want to achieve with your posts? What overarching concept connects your fan page to you, your readers, and your news?
Another useful feature is Facebook Events. With its help, you can notify your readers about the publication date of your book, invite them to readings and workshops, or announce other important dates.
Obviously you’ll need to build an audience before doing any of these things. To grow your audience, you will need to commit to your work and develop your fan page. This means creating quality content and spreading your words far and wide. Additionally, both Facebook’s own widgets and those you will receive from Writers of USA can be useful in this part.
Facebook Creator Studio
Facebook Creator Studio is a relatively new tool that allows you to create, schedule and analyze your posts on both Facebook and Instagram. This is really useful if you would like to save time and publish at the same time on both platforms. You can access the Creator Studio help page if you would like to know more about how to use this tool.
Facebook Groups
As an incentive for managing your Facebook author page, book and author groups offer many possibilities. On the one hand, you can present your own book project, catch up on Likes for your book, create a link to the online store, publish an excerpt or announce book conferences. On the other hand, these groups offer a lively exchange of information between authors: from book production to legal issues. This is where the entire world of authors meets and informs each other.
Important: there are groups in which only the exchange of information and questions is allowed. But there are others where it will be possible for you to promote your book!
How can you promote your book on Twitter?
In addition to Facebook, Twitter is one of the most used social networks. As you probably know, it works slightly differently so you will have to adapt a different approach. The 280-character limit makes your posts shorter and more direct. You’re a writer, so we don’t think playing with words like this is a problem.
5 good reasons to use Twitter
You may be thinking that 280 characters are going to be your worst nightmare and that they will only limit your marketing strategies. Nothing is further from reality. Twitter will help you:
- To market your book: send a tweet about your works, taking into account the quality of the tweet – it is always better to tweet less and focus on quality and usefulness.
- Build a network of readers: you can get in touch with old and new readers, meet writers/editors and exchange ideas with them.
- Find inspiration and learn from others: There is always something happening on Twitter, look for hashtags! Hashtags like #creative writing, #authors or #inspiration will help you find advice for all situations in your life as an author.
- To gain experience and take advantage of it: teachers, writing schools, editors, marketing experts, editors, agents and many more have fun on Twitter. Dates, links, institutions and the like are shared there.
- Make your book visible in search engines: Google often rates Twitter news higher than content on regular web pages!
Some important aspects
In the context of Twitter, it is important to know concepts such as your profile, tweet, retweet, favorite, followers, hashtags… Let’s see what each of them means.
Your Twitter account/your profile
Who am I and what do I do? What are my topics? Why am I on Twitter? Why should they follow me? These are some of the questions you should ask yourself when you are going to create an account.
You have the option to insert a link in your profile. Be sure to insert links where people can learn more about you and your work. Here you must, for example, put your website or the link to buy your book directly.
Important: Don’t forget the header background – make sure your profile is a creative set that suits your work. This will make it look more professional and retain your followers better.
Tweet and retweet
You have 280 characters available for each tweet. Tweets are public and may contain hashtags (with #), links (as URLs), references to user profiles (with @), images (i.e. URLs or directly embedded), and locations. Your tweets are seen primarily by your followers, but hashtags, links, and retweets can reach a very wide audience.
In terms of content, almost anything can be tweeted: opinions, experiences, thoughts, activities, book titles, status updates, quotes, now, keep in mind that these tweets are public. Alternatively, “protected tweets” are another option. This feature limits access to all your tweets to followers who already followed you and new ones you manually accept, drastically reducing their reach. Retweeting will help you share content from other accounts, also interesting to interact with other users.
Ideas for your tweets:
- Creation of your idea and your book
- What are you working on now?
- Links to free samples
- Questions and discussions
- Information about reviews of your book
- Links to your blog articles, interviews with you, other online content
- Readings
- Something personal to build proximity (hobbies, children, models, inspirations, …)
- Ideas for your re-tweets
- Tweets that you thought were good / that helped or inspired you
- Comments on tweets
- Writing contests
- Recommendations for other readings
- Hashtags (#)
Twitter Hashtags and Directories
A hashtag like #my bestseller serves to emphasize a term or topic in your tweet. Putting a # in front of a word automatically connects it to any other tweets containing the same hashtag, making it easier to follow certain topics. A hashtag can be made up of letters and numbers, but cannot contain any punctuation marks or spaces. There are existing hashtags you can use (like #Active Author or #Creative Writing). But you can also create new hashtags like #My Book.
Follow other Twitter accounts
Following other users on Twitter is a fairly simple task, like on any other social network. You simply have to go to the profile of another person or organization that you like and click on the »Ghostwriters For Hire» button. Your activity will now appear on your account home page. However, there are some aspects to keep in mind:
- You should wait until you’ve posted a few tweets. The idea is to make these accounts follow you too, and they will not do so if they do not have any interesting content that invites them to do so.
- Don’t follow too many random users. This behavior will only make it seem like you don’t value their content or label you as a spammer. You should simply follow people whose content you find interesting.
Favorites
Like any other social network, Twitter allows you to favorite the tweets that interest you the most. Simply click on the heart that appears in each tweet.
Your Twitter followers
Now that we know how everything about following other users works, let’s talk about the most important thing: your followers! Once other accounts decide to follow you, everything you post will appear on their home page. The fundamental purpose of Twitter is to “follow and be followed”, an idea that should also be your goal.
It is worth mentioning again that the ideal would be for your followers to be interested in your work; since at the end of the day, your ultimate goal is for them to buy your book – spammers and auto-followers will not be useful in this case.
Keep in mind that finding followers is an arduous and tedious task. You must evaluate whether your promotional efforts are working. Am I achieving my goals? Am I being contacted? Am I increasing my sales? Do not give up! This is a marathon, not a sprint.
Your own lists
Finally, Twitter lists are worth mentioning. Lists are organized groups of accounts, where you can define groups of users whose posts are included in packages. To do this, select a short list name (for example: “Publishers”), add a short description, and specify whether the list should be private or public. Here you can find a step-by-step guide on how to create lists on Twitter.
