Social media can feel like a scary thing, but if you work on a schedule and promise yourself a little time on it each week, it’ll grow before you know it.
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Social media and marketing can feel like such a pain, but remember, writing is essentially starting your own business, which means you have to manage your product and its image accordingly.
Most writers don’t write to market, but write because we are artists, yet, without doing some marketing, we miss out on big audience interactions.
The main thing here is that it isn’t a mystery, and it isn’t a secret. Social media is a long term place to be, so this will take start up energy, but, like Isaac Newton says, an object in motion stays in motion. Once you’re up and running, social media will be easier to manage, and the results only grow over time. The goal is to be authentic and a human being while keeping to some sort of schedule.
Note from Kiffer: Digital Marketing is all about “long-tail” strategy. Consumers no longer watch shows or read books the day they launch. We are all too busy. But eventually, we do get around to viewing the Netflix series that everyone is talking about or reading that book that intrigued you with its cover that you saw on your social media platform. Social Media posting is a corner stone of any book promotion strategy. Social Media helps to build awareness of your brand and titles.
Want more marketing tips? Check out this article written by Kiffer Brown and David Beaumier here!
1. Who are you Writing for?
By the point you start marketing your book you should hopefully know who your audience is. Young Adult readers? Mystery lovers? Nature enthusiasts? This will all determine the kind of content you want to be sharing on social media. Elana A. Mugdan does a great job of this focusing her Twitter toward fantasy.
You can’t scroll through five posts without seeing a dragon! She also advertises to the Ace Community who, you guessed it, loves dragons! All that’s missing is cake!
The next question to ask yourself is how many copies of this do you want to sell? If you’re looking for a smaller print run, maybe your focus on selling will only come in brief bursts rather than be something you link to regularly, and then once you’re out of books, you let your feed return to normal. But we at Chanticleer imagine you’re in this writing business for multiple books.
Once you figure out who you write for and how many people you hope to reach, that information will help guide what you put in your profile. Like your book cover, readers should be able to tell at a glance if your social media platform will appeal to them or not, so make sure you make it clear who your audience is.
2. Find a Consistent Voice and Theme
It helps if the voice for your social media matches or at least is adjacent to how you write for your novels.
If you are a fantasy writer it makes sense to share information about fantasy topics and images. Maybe you have faerie circle Sundays where you share beautiful photos of mushrooms. Whatever it is, go with it and let your work inform how you post. We’ll look at Avanti Centrae a little more later in this post, but you can see her posts Twitter here is a great example of keeping the focus on global thrillers. This will be important in all the following suggestions. The next thing to keep in mind is…
3. Keep a Social Media Calendar
Like any business, you want to have a schedule of some sort. The current top media organizations (it will change) are Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Here are some good rules of thumb:
- Twitter: post once a day with a focus on text and sometimes media.
- Facebook: post twice a week with a balance between text and media.
- Instagram: post twice a week with a focus on media. Even if you just want to do text, make it an image somehow.
- TikTok: This one deserves to be separated out because it’s so easy to cross post onto other media platforms. It seems like posting twice a day, three times a week is probably a good starter for TikTok. Vary your video lengths, but remember, you want to keep people who approach your social media content focused on the reason that social media exists. TikTok is meant to be entertaining!
Since TikTok is the fastest growing social media platform and a significant number of Indie authorsWe have scheduled several sessions on TikTok for CAC 22.
This level of posting also fits well for the amount of attention the users for these sites give to their respective styles of media. Your posts don’t have to be radically different across platforms, but they should be tailored to the feel of each, Twitter being more of a slice of life, Facebook being a little more thoughtful and engaging, Instagram more focused on visual media, and TikTok focused on video.
Consider doing themed days, such as Selfie Saturday, Superhero Month, whatever will fit in with the voice and theme you believe will appeal to your audience. A theme also takes away some of the work of needing to decide what to post about from square one every day.
And be sure to use hashtags for your themes to expand your audience reach. Click here for our article on #Hashtags. Kiffer
Now, if none of these platforms work for you, there are plenty of others with their own recommendations to be researched. TikTok is the newest and shiniest, while Tumblr can work better for people who are more content driven and discomforted by Facebook and Twitter. We count Patreon as a social media since you can use it to connect with other creators, and it can be a good way to generate some passive income (though making a living on it is a whole other level). Likewise, YouTube can be a wonderful platform if you make videos. You can always “Go Live” on the original platforms mentioned, and we’ll talk about that later in this post.
4. Be a Human Being
The main goal of social media is to connect with other people. Don’t be afraid to be yourself. You can post pictures of yourself, your life, your pets (please post pet pictures), and even thoughts that are generally on your mind. Do you have any life questions you’ve been considering? Holiday plans that you want to share in order to hear about the plans other people have?
Going along with the idea of holidays, it’s okay to take social media breaks. Let your followers know when you step away, so they know not to expect a response. That also shows you’re a person and not a bot programmed to send out canned content.
One of our favorite authors who really puts herself into her posts is Janice Ellis, PhD. You can see her Twitter here, and you can see how her own work and passions are entangled throughout her posts. She does a great job sharing more content about her life than selling her work, which is a great way to reach people. No one wants to follow a one person advertising company that only tries to get you to buy their product.
Take a little time, after your posting, the scroll through and be social with people. Scrolling to comment and react to people’s content only needs to last ten minutes at most. A little goes a long way, and with a few comments on posts that interest you, your friends and followers will remember that they’re in your thoughts, and then you’ll be in theirs. If some of their content really speaks to you, share it! And speaking of sharing…
5. Recommend Material
When you find something you love spread the joy! I still gush about Rob Slater’s Deserted Land series five years after reading it because I was so carried away by the way he brought a dystopian YA to life in a city I know and love, which I had never seen before. Whenever one of those “Post only 7 Titles of Books you Love” posts goes around, you can bet I share my favorite Chanticleer authors first and foremost.
When you share material you like that’s in the genre you write, you’re also re-emphasizing the voice of your social media and letting that author’s audience know that they might like your work, too.
And it goes beyond just books. Products, photos, memes, these are all fun posts that let people see who you are and get to know you a little better. It helps clue people in to the world you are passionate about.
6. Create Shareable Content
This one can be a little tricky of all the suggestions so far because it’s not always clear what will do well. Here are a few examples:
- Make a meme. These are images with text superimposed, usually with some relevant pop culture reference
- Send out an author Newsletter
- Write blogposts, either on your own website, on Medium, or for a friend’s website. Anything to increase your name recognition out on the web.
- Create giveaways for your book
- Announce a cover reveal for your book
Fundraisers can be great, too, but those typically work best only once you’ve already developed a solid platform. You want people to give you the greatest gift they have to offer: Their attention.
This content will ideally speak to your audience and be an effective way for you to communicate and interact with them. Think creatively about what you can share because chances are, you already have a good candidate. When it comes to shareable content and interviews, check out Avanti Centrae whose Twitter you can find here.
7. #Hashtags
Another difficult concept to grasp is the mystery of hashtags. While we’ve all felt #blessed at some point, the important thing is to use hashtags that will actually stand out to your audience. The trickiest hashtags are the ones that you want to convey a sense of what you’re doing, for example #amwriting has over 2 million Google results while #writeratwork has just over ten thousand. It’s clear which one will find more engagement and will be searched more often.
If you aren’t sure what hashtag to use, look up a few of your favorite authors in your genre and make a list of what they’re using, and then check what’s most popular.
The easy side of hashtags is when you’re attending a specific event with a readymade hashtag. At the Chanticleer Author’s Conference, we use variations on #CAC followed by the year. This was #VCAC21 and next year will be #CAC22 because we are so hopeful that we will be able to have an in-person conference next year! Hashtags should be simple and easy to use. Our 10th Anniversary Chanticleer Authors Conference (CAC22) will happen LIVE at the Hotel Bellwether in beautiful Bellingham, Wash, April 7-10, 2022.
8. Be Live
Interact with people and let them into your life. Consider launching polls for your readers to be able to respond directly to you. These can be related to titles or what should happen next with a character. You are an active writer, and that means people can actively participate with you.
You can also “Go live” and post video of you interacting with readers in real time. Things you can do when you are live:
- A Q&A session about your work, writing process, and the research that goes into your writing.
- Introduce people to your pets
- Read some of your work
- Read someone else’s work that you recommend
- Promote your books
- Run a fundraiser or giveaway
- Raise awareness about a subject you are passionate about.
John Green, Author of The Fault in Our Stars and many other books, even goes live when he signs the pages that are to be inserted in his upcoming books. He just chats casually with the camera to help the time pass.
9. Where Chanticleer Fits
When you have a victory, especially related to one of your books, you should crow about it! A Blue Ribbon for a First Place Category or Grand Prize win in one of our 24 contest divisions you can enter here? A positive Editorial Review which you can sign up for here? Digital badges from both of those? All of it can be posted on social media and your website to highlight the progress and recognition your book has earned.
There are millions of books being published, and you can take all of these steps and still get missed. But if you participate in a writing community with international reach and gain recognition with it, that can be one more step to better sales.
Remember, social media takes some up front work, but once it’s set and you’re on a schedule, it’s just another part of the writing career. You can make it work by putting in less than an hour a week once all the pieces are in place. Set your schedule and keep at it!
Writer’s Toolbox
Thank you for reading this Chanticleer Writer’s Toolbox article.
Remember! The Chanticleer Author’s Conference is coming up, April 7-10, 2022! Don’t miss out, register here!
Writers Toolbox Helpful Links:
10 Questions with ELANA MUGDAN
JANICE ELLIS, Ph.D. 10 Question Interview
The traditional publishing tool that indie authors can use to propel their writing careers to new levels? https://www.chantireviews.com/2016/05/15/the-seven-must-haves-for-authors-unlocking-the-secrets-of-successful-publishing-series-by-kiffer-brown/
