This week we continue our five part blog series on How to Use Social Media to Promote Your Book On-Line! Each week we will discuss a new and original way for you to use social media tools to publicize a new book, draw in a broader and more diverse audience and create a personal brand on-line. These tips will allow you to not only connect with your audience but they will help you bring in a new batch of fans that you may not have known existed!

I really hope you are enjoying this blog series as much as I am enjoying writing it each week! This week we will be discussing how creating a Facebook Fan page can help create interest and excitement for your new book! This is a great time to start up a fan page because they are just starting to gain momentum on Facebook. Previously the pages were just that, a page of information that Facebook folks could become a fan of but not much more. Now, Facebook pages are designed more like a profile which gives you almost unlimited options on how to customize your page!

Let discuss the difference between a Facebook Profile and a Facebook Pages:

A Facebook Profile is your personal identity on Facebook. The profile can be either public or private and allows users to learn more about you.

A Facebook Page is a public profile that enables you to share information about your professional career or your publications with Facebook users.

You can have only one Facebook Profile but you can make several Facebook Pages for your personal brand and your books! We will be focusing more on Facebook pages rather than Facebook profiles but please be aware that you MUST have a Facebook profile in order to create pages so be sure to work on your profile as well. Your profile is a critical component for your personal brand so be sure to create a complete profile and give as much info as you are comfortable sharing. The more you share the more your readers will appreciate you and what you bring to the world of writing!

Now let’s talk about creating your Facebook Fan page! As we discussed previously with Twitter, be sure to go into the fan page with a plan for how you will use it. You can help draw in new readers, help current readers stay up to date on your new projects and even promote a new book all with a facebook fan pages, but only if you have a plan. Let’s say that we want to create a fan page for a new book that will be published later on this year. The book will be  a novel so we will have characters to work with which will add another layer to our promotion. We could use the fan page as a mini launching page with a countdown clock to show when the book release will be and create updates about when and where we will be speaking about the book. We could also create fan pages for the main characters in our book and invite readers to submit questions and engage with the characters.  We could also use the status updates to create interest in the book by releasing interesting quotes from the book each week!

Facebook pages can also be a great way to promote non-fiction books as well! Let’s say that our book is now a non-fiction book and we want to promote it on Facebook. Again we could use the site as a launching page with a ticker showing when the book will be released. We could also release quotes or statistics, depending on the subject, from the book as status updates as well linking news stories and articles related to the book to the page to get Facebook folks ready for the information that we are getting ready to release.

There are a multitude of Facebook applications and add ons that can personalize your Facebook Page and make it stand out in a crowd. There is a discussion board where you can post topics and have two way conversations with your readers and apps that allow HTML content. You can even upload video and pictures like you can with a Facebook profile! I would encourage you to explore adding applications to your page but be sure to decide which ones will work best with your content. As with any social media site, you will want to add your Facebook page link to your website, Twitter profile, blog site ect. in order to draw readers to the site! Be sure to friend other authors and people in your genre in order to build up your following as well!

So there it is, a very simple introduction to how you can make your Facebook page work for you and promote your brand as an author as well as your books!

Here is your summary for this week’s tip:

1. If you don’t have a Facebook Profile create one!
2. Create a Facebook Fan page for either yourself or one of your books. (Choose just one to start with but you can always make more than one page.)
3. Decide on a marketing plan and explore the Facebook applications to see what will work best for your subject matter.
4. Link your page to your other social media sites and start drawing in your readers!
5. Search facebook for other authors in your genre and friend them with a personal request in order to grow your reach in Facebook!

Remember, if you have any questions, comments or observations about this tip be sure to leave a comment or e-mail me! I would love to hear from you!!

Here are my Facebook links, but sure to come friend and fan me!

Sara’s Profile

Right Click Office Services Fan Page

Have a Great Week!

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This week we continue our five part blog series on How to Use Social Media to Promote Your Book On-Line! Each week we will discuss a new and original way for you to use social media tools to publicize a new book, draw in a broader and more diverse audience and create a personal brand on-line. These tips will allow you to not only connect with your audience but they will help you bring in a new batch of fans that you may not have known existed!

This week we will delve into the world of Twitter! The topic of Twitter is so broad that this will be a very small glimpse into the world of Twitter. Be sure to contact me with any questions you might have in regards to using Twitter because I want to help you succeed with your promotion, not overwhelm you!

Twitter is, in its simplest form, a short messaging services or mini-blog that you update with 140 character answers to one simple question, “What are you doing?” This popular social media site can be an amazing tool or an amazing time waster, depending on how you work with it. Before you dismiss Twitter and decide that you have no time for such a tool, let me give you a few easy ways to explore Twitter that WILL NOT take up hours and hours of your time!

In an article posted on Nielsen Online researchers found that over 60% of new Twitter users fail to return for a second month, mostly due to the fact that they join without a clear goal in mind for their account. If you join without a plan you are dooming yourself from the beginning! Let me give you a few examples of how you can start your Twitter account with clear goals and actually get some marketing use out of this great tool!

Similar to what we suggested in our previous post dealing with how to set up a blog, you can create a Twitter account for a fictional character from one of your books and post random musings and ideas from that character that relate to the book. There’s no limit to what your character might say and this might be a great idea for discovering new book ideas as well. You can also use your Tweets as little teasers for an upcoming book. Post interesting quotes from the book each day or each week for a few weeks or months before the book is released. This way the reader is drawn in by the quote and by doing it on a regular basis you will create a following that will continue to come back on a regular basis! By using a site like Hootsuite or Tweelater you can schedule tweets ahead of time and send tweets for multiple accounts! For example – You could schedule your quotes to go out every Monday at 8:00am and update several character accounts at the same time without logging on and off of the accounts each time!

Please remember that these tips and activities will only work to promote your books and yourself if you add followers and follow users in return. Be prepared to spend some time your first month  building a following and connecting with your followers. Even though Twitter has a built search feature, you will soon realize that it is lacking when it comes to finding followers. Try using one of the many other Twitter searches to help find users to follow. Not everyone you follow will follow you back, but a great majority will; you will just need to be patient when you first start up! Twellow is a great way to find users by interests and occupation and it’s the search tool I use the most to find new followers.

You will also want to connect your tweets with your blog, website and Facebook page in order to draw more followers to your profile. Twitter has several embeddable widgets for your blog or website (check out my side bar for an example of one type of widget) that will show your updates and help advertise your Twitter usage. (We will discuss more about how Facebook fan pages can help promote your book in next weeks blog post so stay tuned!)

If this still seems like too much to deal with, consider hiring a virtual assistant or social media consultant to help create a plan for your Twitter usage. Twitter can be a great addition to your marketing plan as long as it’s used correctly. A VA can help you decide what to update as well as how and when to update as well.

Here’s your summary for this week’s tip:

1. Create a Twitter account!

2. Decide how you would like to use Twitter. Choose one of the following to get started:

• Personal updates
• Professional updates
• Character updates
• Book promotion (quotes)

3. Search Twellow for new followers!

4. Schedule 5-10 tweets using Hootsuite or Tweetlater.

Twitter is an excellent tool and can be very useful when trying to promote yourself, your business or your new book but be sure you go into it with the right plan in mind and the patience to stick with it and see results!

Here’s some Twitter humor for you to enjoy! Twitter is definitly a great marketing tool but it can also be a lot of fun, as long as you don’t get carried away!

Have a Great Day!

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This week we continue our five part blog series on How to Use Social Media to Promote Your Book On-Line! Each week we will discuss a new and original way for you to use social media tools to publicize a new book, draw in a broader and more diverse audience and create a personal brand on-line. These tips will allow you to not only connect with your audience but they will help you bring in a new batch of fans that you may not have known existed!

This week’s social media tool is YouTube. YouTube was created in 2005 and in just a few short years it has become an internet goliath and a must for business owners and individuals alike who wish to share content on-line. YouTube allows users to upload content and share the content on their website for millions of viewers to see but there is also an option that allows users to then embed the video file into a blog post or webpage of their own. This option allows you to link your YouTube channel to your website and draw in new fans and readers.  This, or any video site, is a fantastic way to drum up interest in an upcoming book!

Think outside of the box when using YouTube and use this tool to create a video trailer for your book! Once created, the video can be embedded into your blog or website and help promote your book in a new and interesting way. Here is an example of a really well done book trailer for a teen fiction novel entitled Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli.

This trailer is professionally done and resembles a movie trailer which gets the viewer excited about the book and draws them in.  This example shows how you could use a video trailer to showcase your fiction novel but non-fiction authors could create a trailer just as exciting. A non-fiction author could create an interview based trailer showcasing the theme of the novel and creating an intimacy with the audience that a non-fiction book jacket cannot achieve. Even if you don’t have the finances for a professionally done trailer there are a multitude of local videographers who would love to work with you to help promote your book, you just need to look! Check out local groups and meet-ups related to social media, webcasts, podcasts and video to link up with people who may have tips, tricks and contacts to help you with your book trailer.

Here’s your summery for how to use YouTube to create a video book trailer:

1.       Do research on some videographers in your area and create a trailer for your book.

2.       Create an account on YouTube. If you have a Google or Gmail account you can use that login information to create your YouTube account.

3.       Upload your video to YouTube.

4.       Share your YouTube video by embedding it to your website or blog.

Have fun exploring YouTube and all the possiblitities it creates for you! Next week we’ll discuss how using Twitter can be a great way to connect with your audience and promote a new book in a new and exciting way!

Have a Great Day!

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