Whether you love it or hate it, social media is an essential part of an author’s marketing arsenal. Without any social media interaction, it’s unlikely that you’d find more readers or build a community of readers and we need to do both.
Once a new reader finds you, it’s entirely likely that, after reading your fantastic book and loving every second of it, they’re going to search you out on the internet and wherever they bought that book. What this means is that you’ve got to have a killer website and a social media presence.
Whichever social media platform you choose—and I, along with most others, recommend that you choose one or two and just stick with those—you need to actually be there. That means that if you’re on Twitter, you need to tweet, retweet and “like” others’ tweets. If you’re on Instagram, you need to post pictures, “like”, and comment on the pictures others post. If you’re on Facebook, you should have an author page and post there regularly.
It’s this posting regularly which I’ve always found the most difficult part to maintain. I’ve got accounts in my name everywhere, just to make sure that if someone goes to any social media outlet they’ll find me. Am I active everywhere, heck no!
My social media of choice is Facebook and Instagram. I’ve got boards on Pinterest where every now and then I’ll post something book related, but mostly I keep recipes I want to try there. My blog gets posted everywhere automatically, so at least I’m maintaining a presence and a weekly posting wherever people might want to find me. And my daughter keeps telling me that I should be more active on Tumblr, but it would take time and a lot of effort to create a whole new audience there, and to be honest, I don’t think most of my readers are there—the average user on Tumblr is a lot younger than the readers who would be interested in my books.
Instagram I love because I live someplace beautiful and I love taking pictures of my surroundings. I post there quite regularly, whenever I see something that just needs to be shared. I started my own hashtag (which others have picked up and started using as well, which I think is kind of funny, but it’s not a very original hashtag, so it’s all good) – #whereimwriting. Instagram isn’t where I’m searching for new readers, although I’m sure that if I really devoted time and energy to it, I could probably find some there. Again, it’s a matter of prioritizing my limited social media time.
No, where I have started spending most of my time is on my Facebook page. Thanks to the lovely Audrey Hughey and her wonderful Ultimate Authorship Planner, I’ve actually created a social media schedule and now spend every Sunday creating images and then scheduling my posts for the week. I spend about an hour or so and end up with a post to my author page for every day of the week (except Saturday).
So what am I posting with such frequency?
I’ve got it down to a different type of post for each day of the week, with some openness to incorporate holidays and “special days” (those are those cutesy holidays like Vegetarian Day and Cat Day, as well as important stuff like World Peace Day and Mental Health Day). So, here’s a rough schedule:
- Sundays: My goal for the coming week.
- Mondays: Some cute animal picture or nice quote—I’ve been leaning more towards quotes than pictures.
- Tuesdays: A picture from my Instagram feed.
- Wednesdays: Every other week I post what I’m currently reading (it takes me two weeks or so to read a book because I only read during lunch, and I tend to savor books, ie, I’m a slow reader).
- Alternate Wednesdays I’ve managed to fill with “special days” or displaced posts from other days because of “special days”.
- Thursdays: A quote from one of my books in a pretty image
- Fridays: The buy link for that book.
I’ve been doing these daily postings now since October 1st and so far the number of people being shown my posts has increased, more people are responding to my posts and more people are “liking” my page. Win-win-win!
Oh, and I put out a notice to my newsletter readers that every so often I would be posting a giveaway on my Facebook page, just to entice them to pop over. Hmm… I think that’s what I’ll post this Saturday. Anyone interested in a $10 gift card to Amazon? Stop over to my Facebook page and comment on my post and your name will be entered to win!
So, how do you feel about social media? Which is your preferred site and how often do you post?
And just in case you’d like to follow me, here is where you can find me:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meredithbondauthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/merrybond
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/merrybond/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/847484.Meredith_Bond
Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/merrybond
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meredith_bond/