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Are you prepared to act like a serious business man / woman when hitting the Social Media arenas?
Or do you act like a teenager on Facebook?
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Do you agree that selling books online or in stores is a business? You are getting money for writing and delivering your work, no matter how many books you have written, and no matter if you go with one of the big publishers or if you self-publish.
And don’t forget: Many publishers and literary agents have a Social Media presence too. They are using Twitter, Google+, Facebook, Goodreads or LinkedIn and mingle on these sites with authors famous and unknown. If you like to get a name in the world of books, get a favorable publishing contract or establish a successful career with your self-published work: create a professional online presence.
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Your readers (and maybe future publishers) like to see the person behind the book. Invest a couple of dollars or more for a brilliant studio photo which you can use for years on all of your Social Media sites, website, blog, Amazon author page or submit to your publisher to use in your books. Publishing businesses use their logo and stick with it everywhere, to have brand consistency.
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Avoid: Party images, pics taken with your phone or computer, landscapes, snapshots from your last vacation, images of your children, wedding photos, art work, dogs or cats, cartoon characters, half-nudes unless you write porno and any dark photos, that don’t reveal your face or photos taken from the side or from behind and show only your hair and no face. Never have a second person on your social media photo. You might be in love with your partner, but it is less than professional to show this off on Twitter.
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Take the time to write a compelling bio (or an avatar, or “about me”) that you can use for all your presences, for your Amazon website, your blog etc. Same as with your photograph: once established you can use it everywhere, even if you have to shorten it on some places, such as Twitter. Use lots of keywords and add abbreviated links to your web site or Amazon page. And choose your username wisely! Is it important for your readers which diseases you survived? No! Unless you are posting on a health-related site or forum. So please, leave this out if you are talking about yourself as an author or your books. Why would anyone tell that he / she is a single dad / mom? Are they looking for a new mate or are they talking about literature? Always remember: what’s on the internet, stays on the internet – forever!
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Avoid: Don’t leave the space empty. Imagine you visit someones place and it is empty – a reason to click away immediately. How should they know if it is worth following you?
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Visit and post on your Social Media sites at least several times a week – better several times a day.
Re-tweet, but not too much, add own content between your re-tweets. If someone wants to re-tweet your content and they have to scroll down for minutes until they find anything YOU contributed, they will think twice in the future about wasting their time.
Post USEFUL content, something interesting, new and exciting, funny – a post that is worth to read and to share or re-tweet. Think sharing. What do people want to share? Entertain, inform and solve readers / followers problems with answers. Give information away for free.
At Twitter use not more than two hash tags (#) to avoid clutter.
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Avoid: Not posting for weeks and your visitors will assume you are in vacation, sick, dead, emigrated or not interested at all anymore. Don’t annoy your readers with posts how many un-followers you caught or the stats of last week with the precise amount of new followers. Good for you – but who cares? No one! Your automated tweet or messages clog only Twitter streams. Same with posts what you will have on your dinner plate on Sunday or that your dog dug up your garden bed. Not even your most loyal readers are interested in it. Think about every post: “What is in for my reader?” or “What will it give my readers?”
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Talk about your book – but not too much. Keep a fine balance between the amount of “advertising” your work and postings that are interesting for those who purchased your book already. Create at least a variety of 15 – 20 posts for your book, to keep the stream interesting. Sprinkle these sparingly over the day and share or re-tweet more content from followers / friends or talk about interesting subjects and news in publishing, marketing, writing, culture etc. Social marketing (your books for sample) is about informing and solving peoples problems with answers and information. What you are doing on social media sites is “content marketing” not selling. See the difference?
Avoid: Don’t repeat constantly Buy my book, buy my book, buy my book…too excessive self-promotion might annoy your readers so much, that in the future, they will just avoid your posts. Open your post to everyone. If you are talking only to one person, others will move somewhere else. And don’t post events, that are, long over, such as free days for your books.
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When you think of Social Media, think of a big party.
You are entering the room, you say hello to everyone, you small- talk a bit, you participate in a discussion, you listen what others say, you make some compliments or praise someone, you have fun and you show yourself from your best side – this is what your Social Media presence should be too. It is a kind of shop window for you and your books. Don’t automate your posts too often. Readers want to talk with you, not just consume your automated posts.
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If you enjoyed this blog post, please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are almost 600 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.
Follow on Twitter: @111publishing
And don’t forget to spread the word on other social networking sites of your choice for other writers who might also enjoy this blog and find it useful. Thanks, Doris
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Savvy Writers & e-Books online 
6 Social Media Sites, Essential for Writers
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Going through my list of tweets for the day, I paused at this one:
1. Why engage in yet another social media when I am already on Twitter, Pinterest & Facebook ?
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It reminded me of other statements from new writers, I hear on a daily basis:
2. None of my friends is on Google+ …
3. I have a website, why should I additionally have a blog?
4. Writing my book, I don’t have time for all these Social Media…
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Answer for question 1 and 2 – Google+
This says it all: Google+ = Google, the famous Search Engine… You don’t join Google+ to meet your friends and family as you do on Facebook! You join to improve your Search Engine Ranking: As the main search engine, Google indexes and ranks its own site much higher than any other content. Google+ posts – with a main keyword in the first sentence / title – will rank well in Google search and often show up on the first page, for a long time. And now Google+ outranks Twitter as no. 2 social network, having more active users than Twitter!
On Google+ authors can create a separate page for each of their books. You have immense space to show images, such as your books cover, even if it has 36 MB and you can show your book as often as you want. More reasons to be on Google+ can be found in a former article: “7 Reasons Why Google+ is Perfect for Writers”
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Answer to question 3 – Why should I have a blog?
Your website is something very static. You usually don’t do many changes or new content writing. A blog – either on your website – which would increase SEO – or on WordPress or BlogSpot is adding constantly new content. This means search engines index your blog site higher.
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Writing is fun – why else would you have written this novel! As a writer, it is only a matter of minutes to write a blog post. And you don’t need much fantasy to come up with topics. You can write about, well, writing, your writers life, the publishing process, what you have learned about marketing your book… the subjects you can write about are endless.
An important reason for a blog is that you can use snippets from the content to fill your social media sites. For sample: use one sentence and a link to your blog and post it as a tweet. Readers see your post and click on your blog or website – and voila! they learn about your book. Here are two samples from the blog page you are just reading:
Author of “The Wolf’s Moon” Patrick Jones, in an Interview, talking about the characters in his book http://wp.me/p1uIFg-1il
9 Compelling Reasons to Get Marketing Help, Boosting Your Books Success
bit.ly/X3rwul
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Readers and fans have a reason to come back to your blog, as often as you write a new post, and will re-tweet your blogs and spread the message about your book. Plug-ins and share buttons automatically send your blog posts to all your social media sites.
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Answer to statement 4:
What you are just reading here, was automatically send to Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Stumbleupon, Tumblr, Reddit, Triberr, Yahoo and Goodreads – at the same moment I hit the “publish” button! I don’t need to go to all these sites to fill them with content. What more could you wish for? Writing one blog post, it can be as short as 300 – 500 words an it will be found all over the internet! You certainly can add more Social Media sites to your blogs sharing button, to spread the word even more.
Your post is yet sent more often among Social Media sites:
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SUMMARY: To have maximum exposure for your book and you, as an author, and to save lots of time, join:
How to get more followers on your social media sites is explained in one of last months’ blogs, and also at How to Get More Followers on Google+
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Be very selective when choosing followers:
You want READERS and REVIEWERS as followers. NOT your friends. Type into the search functions on top of these pages: readers, book lovers, book worms, reading, love to read etc. to find the right people as your following.
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One last tip: Set up a second page on Google+, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest – only for your book. Separate it from your existing private presence.
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Part of our Book Marketing package we offer, is dedicated to help you to create or improve your reader community platform, such as:
Find out how else we can help you to have more success for your books and more fun in marketing.
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If you enjoyed this blog post, please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are almost 700 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Chime.in, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.
Thanks a lot for following:
@111publishing
http://on.fb.me/TvqDaK
http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+
Don’t forget to spread the word on other social networking sites of your choice for other writers who might also enjoy this blog and find it useful. Thanks
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Posted by ebooksinternational on February 15, 2013 in Blogging, comment on posts, googling social, Marketing, post to public, Self-Publishing, Social Media Book Marketing, Social Networks
Tags: Facebook, GoodReads, Google+, http://pinterest.com/111publishing/, Pinterest, savvybookwriters.wordpress.com, Search Engine Optimization, social media, Twitter, www.111Publishing.com/seminar