Tag Archives: social media

On Being a Writer

Social Media for Authors: Adding Value

Leave a comment

I’m trying to become more active on Twitter. For the past few days, I’ve been scrolling through my feed, checking things out. I’m following 800 people. Surely there will be something interesting, right?

Wrong. Unless you like hundreds of promotional tweets shoved in your face.

Much of Twitter is wading through truckloads of spam. It’s slightly classier than Viagra ads. Then there are those pithy quotes, from famous people and from books authored by the Tweeter. One step up are tweets of interesting articles, some of which I’ll look at. But it’s not what I want.

Finally, I spot a real, live human being (Nat Russo) who mentions losing weight this week. I tweet him back. “Good for you,” I said. Nat responds. OMG I feel like Robinson Crusoe finding Friday. He assures me that there are actual people holding conversations on Twitter and recommends a few (BTW, Nat has a whole series about Twitter on his blog, A Writer’s Journey, which I intent to gobble up as soon as I get a chance).

I’m thinking about those hundreds of writers and others, spending all those hours tweeting, whose promotions I skimmed over because I had no connection with them.

So, Rule 1: Be authentic and share yourself, connect with people. Hugh Howey and Colleen Hoover (follow Colleen on Facebook, her posts are hilarious) are extraordinary at their ability to share themselves with the public. I hunted up Nat’s blog because he talked to me.

Rule 2: People are either looking for information (otherwise known as “help”), or they’re looking to be entertained. That’s why they buy your books. This is called “adding value,” and that’s what will help them connect with you.

Rule 3: Put Rules 1 & 2 together. Connect in an authentic way while being helpful or entertaining. Or both.

Rule 4: Telling people about your book is neither connecting nor is it helpful or entertaining. Promotional posts, shares and tweets should be about 1% of your social media output.

So what exactly does this mean?

The new mantra in marketing is “Something for Nothing.” I just made that up, but savvy marketers like Tim Grahl of Your First 1000 Books say it is vital to give away your content.

If you write non-fiction, it’s easy. Give away valuable bits from your book. Tim says to be sure to give away your best stuff. Make it immediately useful. His mantra? “Be relentlessly helpful.” He says not to worry about giving away too much. It makes sense. If I like what someone has to say, I’m going to go buy their book rather than waste time digging through hundreds of archived posts or waiting for them to put it all on the internet.

If you write fiction, you can post free short stories on your site. If you post an excerpt, make sure it is a complete story in of itself, or the reader is going to be turned off. Find ways to connect with your target audience. Fiction writers typically blog about writing, post book reviews or post about subjects dear to the hearts of their target reader.

I’m still figuring this out. I’m in the process of making this site more attractive to dog owners, my target audience. I’m now creating dog memes for #WoofWednesday, and I have a gallery of my real-life four-footed muses. This is a work in progress.

Oh, but wait, there’s one more rule!

Rule #6: Give the people on your mailing list a gift they can’t get any other way, and keep giving them unique content.

This needn’t be onerous. For my emails, I send out my dog memes in addition to any notices. I add a line or two of back story about the dog or the meme to make it special. As for that special gift, be creative. I give members of my mailing list access to a drop box folder with deleted scenes from my books (Okay, there’s only one in there so far, but I have lots to add!).

For more about this, check out Tim’s book. To see if he puts his money where his mouth is, sign up for his mailing list and get his free 30 day course on building your platform.

On Being a Writer

Social Media for Authors: The Funnel

Leave a comment

The funnel is the most important concept in using social media. It’s the endgame. The funnel is how you obtain permission to directly contact your fans. It refers to the process of using social media to connect with your target audience, then draw them closer to you with great content that adds value (I’ll talk about that in my next post in this series) so that they want to give you their email list.

“Email? Isn’t that passe? I thought the whole point of social media was to get beyond email lists!”

You want email addresses. Why?

  1. Remember MySpace? Social media platforms go in and out of style. If someone loses interest in Facebook (or wherever) or the platform goes belly-up, you’ve lost contact.
  2.  Just because you’re in contact with someone on one of the platforms is no guarantee they’ll see your posts. The popularity of social media sites is also it’s biggest flaw. Feeds can become so crowded, posts spin by at the speed of light or they never show on feeds at all.
  3. Even the social media platforms have discovered they need email to keep members engaged. Which is why they send out notices for every little thing to their members.
  4. People check their email multiple times a day. It’s guaranteed they’ll see anything that winds up in their inbox.
  5. Even if they don’t open your email, they’ve seen your name and that keeps you in their mind. I may only open my LLBean emails a couple times a year, but seeing the name on a regular basis reminds me that I like to shop there.

It works like this: You connect with people via social media. You post new content from your web-site regularly (blogs are great for this). People go to your site to see this content. You have a prominent offer of special content if they sign up on your email list, including a specific (and attractive) gift for signing up, Then you keep that permission by sending out some form of relevant content once or twice a month (or even more often) .

I know this sounds a bit cold blooded. If you set it up properly, it’s an organic means to connect with the people who are most interested in what you have to share, and stay connected with them.

MailChimp is an excellent email service that allows you 2,000 subscribers free, with some limitations. You get great stats so you see who is opening your mail and clicking your links.  They have great tutorials. You cannot get the auto-responder with the free account, but the paid accounts start at $10 per month, if you want to go that route.

The key to all of this, the key to keeping this manageable for you and attractive to your target audience, is content. I’ll talk about that in my next post in this series.

On Being a Writer

Social Media for Authors: Venues

Leave a comment

Everywhere you turn, a new social media venue is popping up. It’s tempting to believe you have to have a presence on all of them. This is a mistake. Instead, choose the venue(s) that you enjoy the most and serve you best. Invest yourself there.  Make one your home and add more if you have a specific reason for doing so.  Some venues can act as bridges between venues or as a mean of providing additional content. Here are my observations about some of the more popular venues.

Facebook is the big daddy of social media. It’s so big, many other sites, such as Goodreads, allow you to use your FB account to sign in with. Facebook offers business pages to go along with their personal accounts. While a personal account is invaluable, I would not bother creating an author page.

The business pages are not set up to encourage interaction, and with the changes in FB’s algorithms, there is no guarantee your fans will see your posts. Feeding content to an author page to keep it viable consumes time that would be better spent elsewhere. Of course, if your readers love cat and bacon memes, go ahead and set up that author page, you’ll be able to funnel plenty of content into it via shares from your feed.

You need to consider what you will and won’t make public. Just remember that anything you put online can wind up anywhere. Keep in mind that the politically incorrect meme full of F-bombs that you “like” can show up on your friends’ feeds, just like your “shares” do.

I live by a “I yam what I yam” philosophy. My page is public because I want people to find me. I don’t worry about what I will and won’t say. I figure if you get my books, you’ll get me, and vice versa. I’m happy to accept friend requests from people who identify themselves as fans.

Not everyone feels that way. Some folks set up personal accounts that are specifically for author business. Others take advantage of the different levels of privacy available on FB.

Find groups that relate to your book topics and participate. I don’t bother with the open writer groups. I hear they are mostly spam. I do belong to a private author group. This is an invitation-only net work of people who know each other and it is a spam-free and troll-free environment. We’re totally dedicated to supporting each other, and I love it. Writing is a lonely profession. Finding or creating such an environment can be a huge boost to your state of mind, your writing and even your sales.

Twitter is a “microblogging” site. Each “Tweet” is limited to 140 characters. If you know someone’s twitter handle, you can direct a tweet to them. I was so put out with the last John Sandford, that I tweeted my review to his official account. I suspect it’s managed by underlings, but there is at least a chance that someone in his entourage read it. With Twitter you can do things like that. Twitter allows you to bypass gatekeepers to important people. My friend, Desiree, tweets with Michael Moore on a regular basis.

These days, too much of Twitter is spam, and a lot of it is authors following authors who follow them back. Still, it can have an extensive reach. I set up my blog to auto tweet my blog posts, and Twitter to automatically repost to my FB account.

The folks with the best followings are those who tweet random bits, things that are meant to amuse or glimpses into their life, usually with a wry slant.

Twitter invented the Hashtag (#) If you add popular hashtags to your tweet, it is likely to be seen by people interested in those subjects and can possibly extend your reach. I often use #dog, #mystery and #woofwednesday.

If you’d like to find actual readers to follow (and hopefully follow you back), look up the authors of books similar to yours. click on their list of followers. Follow their followers and some of them will follow you back. You can click on each name to get a mini version of their profile to vet them first.

When you get hundreds of followers, the feed becomes unmanageable. You can create lists of followers, and when you click on that list, you’ll only see those posts.

Pintrest lets you set up boards where you post like items. Instead of disappearing into the void of a feed like FB posts, these remain visible. On Pintrest, you can share book research with fans, create pages devoted to books, characters, or personal interests. You can organize book research and resources. I have not done any of these things. but I might. One of these days.

YouTube allows you to post videos. Some folks love it. If you have the skills to make a video (some of us dinosaurs don’t) it’s a nifty way to create content to share other places. For younger people, Vlogs are popular. Hugh Howey frequently makes videos for fans.

One of the best opportunities for authors on YouTube is  Parapalooza   This is a project that posts videos of authors reading their favorite paragraph from one of their books and fans reading a paragraph from favorite books.

Linkedin is great for connecting with people professionally. If your book is related to your professional life, or of interest to a particular professional group, this can be an invaluable resource.

Vine is another video site that limits you to six second videos. It’s good for being random and silly and mostly appeals to a younger audience.

Instagram is a phone app and a community. It allows you to easily post videos and photos online. It also allows you to share on FB and other sites. This is a terrific tool if you are the sort to make random posts/tweets about everyday events.

Reddit is an online community of forums. They have forums for pretty much everything. While not as direct as Facebook and other venues, this is a good place to find people interested in niche subjects. I found forums for UFOs, Atheism, Dinosaurs and Astrology. As with all public forums, don’t feed the trolls.

Goodreads You can list your books on Goodreads and have a Goodreads author page. You can also embed your blog to your author page.  You can give away books in the hope of getting reviews. Just don’t talk about being an author, unless you’re clear the group is okay with it. Join a few groups that interest you and talk about your reading experiences. Post reviews. Don’t respond to reviews of your own books, lest you get tagged “author behaving badly” and open yourself up to the Goodreads trolls. Goodreads has been taking steps to address trollish behavior, but it’s best not to take the chance. GR members are demons for group etiquette. Establishing a presence on GR takes a long time and a lot of effort. For some people it’s worth it, because your average GR member is a rabid reader and many are librarians.

KDP forum If you self-publish on Amazon, the KDP forum is an invaluable source of information about the ins and outs of publishing ebooks on Amazon. The Kindle changes every year but the posted guidelines don’t keep up with the technological advances. This is the best place to find out the latest about how to produce the best ebook formatting. I dumped the boards a year ago when several of us broke off to create a private forum, but I still recommend it to newbies. Don’t trumpet successes, because this can lead to troll Amazon reviews (which is why my friends and I play elsewhere now). It may be best to not use your real name here. This isn’t a place to promote your books, anyway.

KBoards (formerly known as Kindle Boards) This is a forum where writers are encouraged to mingle with readers, and some successful authors are known to hang out here. I don’t know much about it. Again, be sure to mind your internet manners and don’t feed the trolls.

WordPress is a blogging venue that functions somewhat as social media because it allows you to follow other blogs. It’s also easier for people who don’t know you to find your content. This is why my blog is posted here instead of at an independent website. It’s got plenty of bells and whistles and you can add pages and upgrade to turn your blog into a full website with an independent URL.

Next: The Funnel

On Being a Writer

Social Media for Authors: Your Platform, Pt 2

Leave a comment

In part 1, I talked about cultivating a core group of cheerleaders for your books. Today I’ll talk about directly reaching your target audience.

Lets face it, not everyone is going to love your book. Even “To Kill a Mockingbird” has 92 1 star reviews on Amazon. So figure out who your target audience is, and find ways to connect with them. Notice, I said “connect with” not “sell to.”

If you write about what you know, you already have some connections with your target audience. Write down everything you can think of. My books have murders, mystery, romance, dogs, a dog park, a female amateur sleuth, and Cincinnati locations. My main audience is dog people who read mysteries. It behooves me to find ways to connect with dog parks, rescue groups and book clubs that cater to mysteries. Imight also be able to capitalize on the Cincinnati connection.

Next figure out what books your audience is already reading. If you can’t fit yourself cleanly into a genre, start with books YOU like to read. Presumably some of what you like has rubbed off on your writing. (I’ll talk more about connecting with these folks in a future post.)

In real life, connecting in all those places will leave you with no time to write. While face to face contacts have more value, internet contacts can be made at home, in your pajamas, in much less time. And it’s much easier for introverts.

I know, you’d much rather write. Self-publishing magnate Russell Blake advises spending 20% of your writing time in promotion. Bite the bullet. Find places on the internet where your audience is congregating and join in. Places to start are Facebook, Reddit, Pintrest, Twitter, Goodreads and thousands of special interest forums.

Pick one or two internet venues and invest time in them as a participant. Spend a little time there every day. Let people get to know you. Do NOT bring up your book unless someone asks, and if they do, keep it brief. Exercise good internet manners. Stay out of arguments, don’t feed the trolls, and don’t discuss religion or politics unless those topics are key to you as a writer. If you choose to discuss hot topics, make sure you are being calm, rational and respectful about it.

The only time to approach a group cold is if you are offering something special (not your book) that would interest them. For example, I ran a cover-dog contest on this blog, offering the prize of the cover painting to the winner. So I posted that in a variety of dog park pages, where people who own dogs would see it.

Does this sound like a pain? It can be, and if it is, it’s not going to work. Pick groups you are compatible with and make it fun. Forget about your book and focus on the group. Respond to posts, ask questions, engage. It’s more important that you invest quality time in a few places than spreading yourself all over the web.

Next, I’ll talk about some popular Social Media venues on the web.

On Being a Writer

Social Media for Authors: Your Platform, Pt 1

Leave a comment

“What’s a platform?” I get asked this a lot. It’s a fancy name for the people interested in your work that you can sell directly to when you launch your book.  It’s also the stage you need to create BEFORE you release your book, if you want to sell books the day you launch. Everyone has some kind of platform, even if it consists of your mother and your best friend.

Nick Russell is the author of Gypsy Journal (an RV travel Newspaper) and two blogs. His thousands of readers provided a platform which sent his first book, Big Lake, to the New York Times Bestseller List.

Colleen Hoover is a gregarious social media addict who makes adventures out of her life’s foibles. She has the ability to make strangers feel like friends. Before she published her first book, she had a huge Facebook following. She also has sisters and other family who banged the drum for her to anyone who would sit still long enough to listen. Slammed made it to the NYT Bestseller List and was followed by two more titles that year.

A large initial surge of sales boosts your visibility and makes success stories like these possible. Of course, you have to have a dynamite book with a professional presentation in order for that initial surge to morph into word of mouth and lasting success.

Many folks think, “I’ll just post my book on Facebook and Tweet it, and people will buy bushels of them.” Ummm . . . it doesn’t quite work like that. That ship has sailed. Now Twitter is clogged with spam, and Facebook has changed their algorithms so that it’s harder and harder for people to see the posts they WANT to see, never mind yours.

Social media is a great tool, but when you begin to think about your platform, you need to start closer to home. Identify two groups of people: the “A” group is people around you who like you and will support you just because you’re you. Group “B” is your target audience, people who will love your book. Your first goal is to cultivate Group A in order to increase your reach to Group B.

Why? Because if you go around telling people to buy your book, you are likely to annoy them. If someone else says, “Hey, there’s this great book out, you need to read it,” they are grateful. Your best marketing is done by other people.

“How the heck am I supposed to get THAT to happen?”

I know many of you are already pulling your hair out, about how you hate marketing and are socially inhibited and . . . and . . . and.

I get it. You’re nerds, like I am. I was not gregarious in school, but I figured out this nifty thing. If you want to throw a party and get people to come, get them involved first. The person who has promised to bring the potato salad (or whatever) is going to show up, and chances are, they’ll bring a friend.

Take that thinking and apply it to your book. Instead of hiding in your closet with only the light from your laptop screen to guide you, involve other people. Let your friends and family know you’re writing a book. Consult them whenever possible. Use beta readers. Poll friends about cover designs. Allow them to share in the excitement of publishing.

A friend of mine is writing a book about a tattoo parlor. I suggested she consult with a local tattoo parlor and ask if she could pattern her fictional parlor after it, maybe even get permission to use their name. If she has a good experience with them, they are going to be bragging about being in a book. They will WANT to tell people.

Many people will volunteer to help you if you already have a connection with them. The key is, you have to be authentic about this. I didn’t ask people to shout out about “A Shot in the Bark.” They did it on their own and I’m convinced they’re responsible for the modest but respectable success my mysteries have achieved.

I’m presuming you are a nice person with a positive attitude, good manners and a good book. These are musts. If your book is not great and you go around alienating people, forget it. Being shy is not a deterrent. There are people who love to adopt shy people.

“But I write Sci-Fi. Who am I going to consult?”

Look, I can’t do everything for you, you’ve got to use your creativity to figure out ways to connect around your book. There is always something. A friend of mine writes Sci-Fi and he polled people to get weird names for the new races he was creating.

Not everyone will become your cheerleader, but some will. As a bonus, they will come up with things that never occurred to you. One of my betas thinks it would be fun if a friend of hers who is fundraising for an animal rescue did a murder mystery dinner based on my books. Even if it doesn’t work out, that’s more people talking about my books.

Get out of your hidey-hole and turn your book into a group project. You’ll be glad you did.