Setting up Social Media

[D.J.]

Not really sure if this is the right section for this but It does have to do with helping you market and promoting your own books.

I have seen a few while looking around this site that already have a website, Facebook author page, Twitter etc and they are still writing or in the process of getting their book published.

Some have told me to wait till the book is ready to be released and some suggest to do it now to create buzz about your book. That it is a good way to get feedback while you are still writing your novel. If you want to share snippets of your book or help when choosing a cover etc.

I am still in the process of writing my first novel and I am curious, when did you decide to set up your social media pages?

[Martin]

I had my blog a year in advance. It tracked the process. The FB author page was set up when I published my first novel and got a flood of friend requests from fans. Then a amazon author page and a good reads page and twitter and a linkedin page.

Social media is fun! People are awesome!

[Christina]

Well, considering I started writing back when computers were $2000 bricks that connected to the internet via landline... ;)

Everyone is different. Some people enjoy creating hype, others don't. You can certainly start getting your marketing going before your book is ready, but you probably at least want to have something written and 'coming soon' because people tend to have short attention spans.

Creating a social media presence to announce 'Hey, I've got a book coming out, watch this space for a cover reveal/contest/teaser/etc...' is probably going to be effective. Creating a page to announce 'Hey, I've got this idea for a book that is really good, but I've got nothing written. Keep looking here for updates on when I've finished my outline/rough draft/etc...' probably won't generate as much hype.

[Justin]

I set mine up a little after my first book and after my third I changed it to an author page rather than a site that focused on sole books. I would say it's good to get social media pages made early that way you can build interest.

Also in my opinion the best social media sites to go on is FB, Twitter and Pinterest.

[Ellison]

Christina makes a really good point. Social media is flash delivery of news and you have to have something to engage people with enough to follow you.

At the same time I agree with Justin, your readership will not appear overnight. If you haven't gathered your crowd, who will be there to listen to what you have to say?

I launched my book and then my social media presence. I was never social medially social before becoming an author. So my meager friends and family list heard my news and a week after launch there was nothing but crickets.

If I knew then what I know now I would have started building my platform at least three months before I published. If you have solid plan for your writing, you could start to engage future readers by first sharing about topics that interest you and will interest them (without actually announcing anything about your book).

[Sarah]

There are some who argue that as an indie author it's best to focus on your writing rather than waste time developing a social media presence. Many literary bloggers and established writers claim the more you write the more readers you will ultimately attract.

Some claim that too few readers will feel engaged enough to invest in a debut and/or standalone novel, especially one written by a novice author which is why most publishers won't even bother responding to a writer who cannot prove an established platform.

In light of this, I've discovered that it's important to do both, and as Ellison mentioned, engaging potential readers before releasing your book is extremely important no matter the size of your social network.

[Adelaide]

I agree with you Sarah about trying to keep writing and engage with readers at the same time, ie. try to do both. I struggle with this. I've just released my first book and the second is in its infancy and being seriously neglected while I try to promote the first (does anyone remember those Tamagochi "pet" things, whenever I think of something dying of neglect I think of that! pls excuse my stupid sense of humour...)

I just wanted to add that I've had a bit of success in marketing my book via social media, without actually having a following or really engaging much with readers. Hashtags!! I've found book bloggers have contacted me on my Instagram page or private messaged me by searching using hashtags. They've requested copies of my books for review, which has been great because my "cold call" emails to book bloggers has so far had no success. This can be awkward if the blogger just wants a free book and you can tell from their reviews that it's not their reading genre, but so far that hasn't happened and I've said yes to every request.

I've also found using hashtags to promote freebies/giveaways/promotions has helped even where I have close to no followers on Twitter and Instagram.

Dawn, I set up almost all my social media accounts a month before publication, but didn't really do anything til the day of publication.

[Anika]

I already set up social media for two reasons:
- assuring the names I want r still available
- trying to get some followers before my first book launch

what I do now is focus on two of them, placing entertainibg content not to do with my book but if they start following because they like my current humor they might buy in future.

plus: if u get really very many followers that could have other perks.

but I do struggle with dividing my time between sm and writing.

[Christina]

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[Robert]

I've had a Facebook page for some time, with mixed results. Over the past year I've been serially publishing a novel on WordPress for free, to try to establish some recognizability for my name. It's been mixed. Over that time I've grown the Facebook page for my website to almost 150,000 in over 130 countries worldwide, but the problem always lies with Facebook intentionally hiding your posts. Even if you have a following of that size, your posts aren't going out to all of them unless you pay for advertising, and even then, you'd also have to pay to boost posts. Pretty much as soon as Facebook catches on that you're doing something right, they counter against you to extort money from you. I personally hate Facebook as a avenue to promoting your book for this reason.

I've only started doing Instagram and Twitter recently (at least seriously, as a way to get away from Facebook), so I have an almost nonexistent following, but I've had far more engagement from just a percentage of the people. The reason is that your posts actually go out to your followers. Funny, right? Hash tagging also gets them out to more people more effectively than Facebook.

What I've been doing that seems to really work in the past is setting quotes of your book to an interesting picture. You can look at my Instagram "RobertKilcrease," more recent Twitter posts "@RobertKilcrease" or my Facebook page "Povre Wight" to see some examples, but I've had far more engagement when I set quotes to pictures, than the same quotes sans pictures. The same is true for releasing segments of my book. When I have a photo, people engage with it more, and it gets seen more.

I've really enjoyed serially publishing my book, because it gets people reading it, and I figure that if enough people do that, eventually they'll buy my other books. (Haven't had much luck on that part, though.) Serially publishing makes sure that there's always original content on the site, and coupled with appealing quotes set to pictures, it provides your own content that people will like and engage with.

I've said to myself that I'll serially release a book series that I'm working on for free (which I have been doing) and then try to sell my standalone books for money. The money part hasn't come through yet, but I'm cautiously optimistic.

In sum, quotes from your books set to pictures will help. You can use Canva.com for a photo editor, or even picmonkey.com, and use sites like unsplash.com for stock photos. Short quotes work best, since people don't want to read a lot, and having the book title and your name helps with visibility.

It may sound simple, but people can be very visual. Sometimes they ignore plain text, no matter how quote worthy you think it is. That same quote with a picture will get more engagement.

In using hashtags, there's a bit of a tact. If you use one word, like #quote, there will be a larger community, which means you'll be buried in no time. You'll have less staying power. But if you use more specific hashtags, you might have less people searching for it, but you'll stay near the top for longer. With Instagram, you can see just how many people are using that hashtag. Pick a few popular ones, but pick a few specific ones as well. Try narrowing it down. Maybe instead of #writing pick #writingislife or #writerslife. You can try your own hashtags, but people likely won't search for it, so it defeats the point.

Good luck.