Social Media Tips for Authors

Snapchat, Clubhouse, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram. There are more and more social media channels out there now than ever before. As an author trying to get noticed and market your book, the thought of juggling all these platforms can make your head spin. Don't worry. If you're looking for some tips on how to score success on social media as an author, then this video is absolutely for you. Hey there, I'm Julie the Book Broad of book launchers, your professional self publishing services team. Social media, when done right, can do awesome things for an author's career, not to mention assist their book sales. But it takes more than picking a profile picture, writing up a little bio, and posting some pictures of your cat next to your book. Although cats and books do go well together. I mean, just look at this. But there's a lot more to social media than just that. Here's some tips to help you get rolling. You don't need to be on every social media platform, and if you are, you're probably stretching yourself way too thin and your content too thin too. Just because you can be on every form of social media that's out there does not mean you should. Because like your book, if you try to make everyone your target audience, you'll end up with no audience at all. But go where your audience goes. Think about your own social media habits. Is there an app you click on more than the rest? Do you enjoy scrolling through your Instagram feed of photos rather than your Twitter feed of text? Do you find more like minded people on LinkedIn rather than Facebook? Your target audience is probably similar to you generally the group of people more likely to be interested in your material and buy your book. Hangout in the same kind of places online. You'll find a totally different kind of user on TikTok than you would on Clubhouse. Those browsing Pinterest have different goals than those on LinkedIn. Each platform has its unique features and brings its unique users. So find where your audience is and if you like that platform and you're okay to use it on a regular basis, create great content for them on that platform and just leaning into that Tip two is find what works for you. You're not going to enjoy social media as an author if you stick yourself on platforms that don't play to your strengths or or that you don't find fun. If you don't enjoy podcasts or public speaking, Clubhouse won't be your app of choice since it's voice based and often live. On the flip side, if you love playing up your creative spark with photography, you'll probably have a blast on Instagram. Your followers know when you aren't enjoying yourself, so you'll feel like that particular channel is more of a burden than an opportunity. And it will show, experiment and play around with different platforms until you find things that you enjoy. Your book needs a hook and so does your social media. Now that you've found your audience and your preferred platform, it's time to develop your presence into something unique and valuable. What are you offering your audience? There are millions, so many millions of social media accounts out there in the book and author community. Standing out among the rest and offering genuine value to your followers is a solid way to build an organic following of supporters. Consider your content and try to provide something that benefits your followers, not simply try to sell your book. Follow the 8020 rule. 80% of your content would be audience centric and 20% might be brand centric. Audience centric content gives value in the form of content that shows, appreciation, amuses or educates. That means tips, quotes, steps, excerpts from your book, high value content. Brand centric content, on the other hand, is that that asks for a sale, a subscription, a donation, a review, anything that is focused on your brand. When you've provided content that's valuable to your audience, they're more receptive to a request like Buy my book, schedule a consultation, write a review. Tip 4 oh wait, did you hear that part? Write a review, self publish and succeed. Hint hint. All right. Tip 4 Embrace hashtags if you've been on the Internet, you probably know what a hashtag is. But just in case hashtags are words or phrases set off with a number sign that are used to link a message with a particular topic, like noboringbooks. Give this video a like if noboringbooks is a personal favorite of yours as well. But hashtags are useful on Twitter and Instagram because of the author and book communities that have developed them, and it makes your post more searchable. Ever heard of Bookstagram? It's got over 63.2 million posts on Instagram. Sounds like the key to success, right? Upload a picture tag, an ever so popular hashtag, and boom. You'll be bringing in followers left and right and exploding your profile. Well, that's not quite how it works. There's a tricky little science to using hashtags to connect with other users and reach new potential ones who would be interested in your content. You definitely want to give users the opportunity and ability to find your profile, but including too many hashtags or hashtags that are too general or too obscure won't accomplish much of anything. There's a great report from Sprout Social which found that engagement drops when more than one hashtag is used on Twitter and Facebook. For Instagram, stick to 10 to 15 hashtags and combine hashtags of varying visibility levels up to your engagement potential. For example, here's a mix that we use often on book launchers Instagram we use five extremely popular hashtags that have about a half a million to a million posts, five moderately popular hashtags with about 100,000 to a couple hundred thousand posts and then we have three niche specific hashtags that have a couple thousand or tens of thousand tags and then one or two brand specific hashtags like you guessed it, noboringbooks Tip Number five Social Media Schedulers are your friend. You're stretched for time. I know. And developing your social media channels can take a lot of time. Making content, posting it, responding to messages retweets comments instead. If you spend your whole day doing that, well, when will you ever have time to write or market your book? Luckily, there's plenty of tools and schedulers out there to simplify a lot of the process. You can create a whole bunch of content in a batch, plug it into a program like hootsuite or Agora Pulse, which aggregates to all your chosen social media channels. Then you can schedule those posts for the days you'd like them to appear in your followers feeds. And then all you have to do is check back and reply to the engagement. And you can do that right there in the program instead of having to check each individual channel. Tip 6 Be in it for the long haul because building up a following does take time and consistency. Sure, you can try to create content that blows up, goes viral, and catapults your social media channel to a million followers overnight. But that's not that realistic and chances are you'll end up with a lot of followers that aren't actually there for you and your content. Just be patient. Success on social media takes a long time and if you try to rush it, your efforts will probably backfire. So just focus on creating a strong, engaged community with consistent, valuable content and really, truly care about the people that you're connecting with. Oh, and by the way, if you want people to comment on your posts, I recommend you heading on over to their pages and comment on theirs too. Not just retweets, but actual comments. Because everyone likes to have a friend that comments on their posts. Tip number seven. Remember what lies at the heart of all social media, no matter the platform, it's community and connection, not promotion. If the only reason you're on social media is to promote your book, you're better off not on social media. The most special part of social media is the opportunity for that community and true connection. I mean, look at this little YouTube channel of ours. We get together for live streams every two weeks. We share strategies in the comments section. We answer each other's questions. This isn't just me blabbering into the camera to all of you watching. We've built a place for authors to come together and succeed together. And that's the type of goal you should aim for with your social media channel. Find your tribe of awesome people like my YouTube besties. You know, my dear, dear Brian K. Morris, Michael Fakherty, Sandra Rodriguez, Ben Preston, J.Q. rose, Tobias Balda, Robert Rachel Robertson, of course the one, the only Kevin McGuire and Efren Delgado, and so many more. Create connections and community and you'll enjoy it so much more. YouTube is fun for me because of my besties. So share with your followers and get excited when they share with you. When you focus on connection rather than follower count, some really magical things can happen now. The magic. The magic does not have to end right here. If LinkedIn is your social media of choice, I've got a video for you right here with even more tips. If you're still trying to figure out your hook for your social media, then maybe this video here on defining your author brand is the way to go. Whichever you choose, I'll meet you there and we'll connect.