Don't Follow Their Bad Advice
Don't Follow Their Bad Advice - Four Social Media and Marketing Tips for New Authors They Either Didn't Mention, or Lied About.
by E. E. Winston IV
Thursday, February 4, 2016.
New authors are coming out everyday, it's easy to get lost in the flood. And for each new author, another “Tips for New Authors” article gets published. 99% of those articles are just repeating the same messages as the one before it. Hell, I'm still relatively new to this whole thing, but there are a few lessons I learned rather quickly that didn't seem to get covered by those other articles. So I'm just going to cut straight to the point and give you some tips that others may have missed.
Advertising and Promotion Isn't Free:
There are hundreds of ways to advertise and promote your book for free, but I still haven't found one that actually works. The best results are from paid advertisements. I'm not rich, and if you're in the same boat, you just don't have the money to throw around on promotions. Yet, it's necessary. Set some money off to the side, and save up. A couple dollars here or there is all you need to advertise on Facebook and Twitter, and there are other inexpensive options as well. You might want to look into “Affiliate Marketing.” That's where you give your advertisement to a company, who then pays other websites to display it for you. Google Adsense is the most popular, but they're getting more and more strict about their applicants.
Your Facebook and Twitter Followers Don't Want You to Sell Them Your Book:
They don't. It's simple. Put all the links to your website and your books where they can be easily found on your profile, but don't flood their feeds with “My book is only $.99!!!!” followed by an Amazon link. Post like you're talking to friends, post about news, make jokes, share photos, pretty much anything other than advertisements. Chances are, if they're genuinely following you as a fan, they already have your book. Make the occasional promotional tweet or Facebook post, and pay to advertise those as mentioned in the previous tip, but try to keep a limit on how many you make. You can always promote the same older post multiple times. A lot of reviewers will tweet your links for you, so Liking and Retweeting/Sharing those aren't as annoying, but even that should be limited. Your fans will like it more if you post a review and link to someone else's book, than a review and link to your own.
Automated Twitter DMs Drive People Away:
Every one of us have gotten a Direct Message on Twitter saying “Thanks for following” and containing a link to someone's book, and almost every one of those messages ends with “via @crowdfire.” Now, before you jump on me for trashing Crowdfire, I'm not. It's a useful tool. I use it mainly to keep track of people who unfollowed me, and to see new followers I might have missed on Twitter’s Notifications page. The app (and several other apps) also has a feature to automatically send a welcome message to all of your new followers. This sounds like a good idea, until you begin noticing that all of your followers start unfollowing you the instant they receive an impersonal and generic form letter. I personally stopped looking at my inbox altogether because it's full of this junk. If someone were to send me a genuine message, I'd never know it. I've had to disable most of Twitter’s email and Push Notifications because it gets really annoying when my phone pings every two minutes from someone setting a computer program to send me a message. I can see how you might think it's useful to update your followers on new events, or to thank them for the support, but that's what your Twitter Feed is actually for. Not the Direct Messages. Make posts about your news, that's why people follow you in the first place. I guarantee that a genuine thank you in a regular post will garner a much more positive response. I wouldn't go overboard in tagging all of your followers and thanking them either, but it's still better than automated DMs.
Be Careful Which Facebook Author Groups You Join:
Every article tells you to use Facebook to spread the word about your projects, and that's very important, but a lot of those articles also tell you to join as many author groups as you possibly can to help you out. This is where they're wrong. There are tons of helpful groups to join (anything from BooksGoSocial and the like) that actually will help you out, but I learned the hard way that devoting time and effort into “Advertise Your Book Here” groups is a complete and utter waste. Those groups may have good intentions, and you might even get a sale or two out of them, but you will be almost instantly drowned out by the barrage of other authors screaming “Buy my book! Buy my book!” These groups focus on the wrong aspects, and their members are more interested in selling you their book rather than buying yours. Look for groups that are targeted at readers instead of writers to promote yourself, and look for groups that don't allow spamming and advertising to get advice from other authors.
E. E. Winston IV is the Author of The Cold Dead and Reversion Series.
Visit him online here.
by E. E. Winston IV
Thursday, February 4, 2016.
New authors are coming out everyday, it's easy to get lost in the flood. And for each new author, another “Tips for New Authors” article gets published. 99% of those articles are just repeating the same messages as the one before it. Hell, I'm still relatively new to this whole thing, but there are a few lessons I learned rather quickly that didn't seem to get covered by those other articles. So I'm just going to cut straight to the point and give you some tips that others may have missed.
Advertising and Promotion Isn't Free:
There are hundreds of ways to advertise and promote your book for free, but I still haven't found one that actually works. The best results are from paid advertisements. I'm not rich, and if you're in the same boat, you just don't have the money to throw around on promotions. Yet, it's necessary. Set some money off to the side, and save up. A couple dollars here or there is all you need to advertise on Facebook and Twitter, and there are other inexpensive options as well. You might want to look into “Affiliate Marketing.” That's where you give your advertisement to a company, who then pays other websites to display it for you. Google Adsense is the most popular, but they're getting more and more strict about their applicants.
Your Facebook and Twitter Followers Don't Want You to Sell Them Your Book:
They don't. It's simple. Put all the links to your website and your books where they can be easily found on your profile, but don't flood their feeds with “My book is only $.99!!!!” followed by an Amazon link. Post like you're talking to friends, post about news, make jokes, share photos, pretty much anything other than advertisements. Chances are, if they're genuinely following you as a fan, they already have your book. Make the occasional promotional tweet or Facebook post, and pay to advertise those as mentioned in the previous tip, but try to keep a limit on how many you make. You can always promote the same older post multiple times. A lot of reviewers will tweet your links for you, so Liking and Retweeting/Sharing those aren't as annoying, but even that should be limited. Your fans will like it more if you post a review and link to someone else's book, than a review and link to your own.
Automated Twitter DMs Drive People Away:
Every one of us have gotten a Direct Message on Twitter saying “Thanks for following” and containing a link to someone's book, and almost every one of those messages ends with “via @crowdfire.” Now, before you jump on me for trashing Crowdfire, I'm not. It's a useful tool. I use it mainly to keep track of people who unfollowed me, and to see new followers I might have missed on Twitter’s Notifications page. The app (and several other apps) also has a feature to automatically send a welcome message to all of your new followers. This sounds like a good idea, until you begin noticing that all of your followers start unfollowing you the instant they receive an impersonal and generic form letter. I personally stopped looking at my inbox altogether because it's full of this junk. If someone were to send me a genuine message, I'd never know it. I've had to disable most of Twitter’s email and Push Notifications because it gets really annoying when my phone pings every two minutes from someone setting a computer program to send me a message. I can see how you might think it's useful to update your followers on new events, or to thank them for the support, but that's what your Twitter Feed is actually for. Not the Direct Messages. Make posts about your news, that's why people follow you in the first place. I guarantee that a genuine thank you in a regular post will garner a much more positive response. I wouldn't go overboard in tagging all of your followers and thanking them either, but it's still better than automated DMs.
Be Careful Which Facebook Author Groups You Join:
Every article tells you to use Facebook to spread the word about your projects, and that's very important, but a lot of those articles also tell you to join as many author groups as you possibly can to help you out. This is where they're wrong. There are tons of helpful groups to join (anything from BooksGoSocial and the like) that actually will help you out, but I learned the hard way that devoting time and effort into “Advertise Your Book Here” groups is a complete and utter waste. Those groups may have good intentions, and you might even get a sale or two out of them, but you will be almost instantly drowned out by the barrage of other authors screaming “Buy my book! Buy my book!” These groups focus on the wrong aspects, and their members are more interested in selling you their book rather than buying yours. Look for groups that are targeted at readers instead of writers to promote yourself, and look for groups that don't allow spamming and advertising to get advice from other authors.
E. E. Winston IV is the Author of The Cold Dead and Reversion Series.
Visit him online here.
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