The Right Way and the Wrong Way to Promote Your Book Online
by Meg Mims, Award-winning Bestselling Author of Double Crossing, The Key to Love and Santa Paws
Promotion – is it the evil twin of being an author? Years ago, authors wrote books, perhaps did a book signing or two, wrote the next book. The publisher handled the bulk of promoting their books. But the times, they are a-changing – and now the author (whether small press published, Big 6 published or self-published) is mostly responsible for doing their own promotion.
About five years ago, “platform” was a key word. An author’s platform raised them above the others who hadn’t caught on to the changing promotion game. Add to that the Social Media Tools an author needs to learn to keep up with the market. Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and plenty of new ways pop up, ballooning the burden. Hoo boy. What’s an author to do? How much time can you spend away from writing and yet still promote?
I try and balance out writing and promotion – although I know several writers who still only write and do minimal promotion. Several do major promotion, and must not sleep a wink since they manage to hold down jobs and crank out new books. Like I used to tell the kids I taught, “worry about yourself and do your own work.” I have kept that as a mantra. I devote myself to three things – Twitter, Triberr and Facebook. I chose that. Other authors choose differently, and that’s okay. You have to do what you’re most comfortable with.
So once you’ve chosen your Social Media target, like Twitter, what do you do? Sure, you can talk about yourself or pimp your books over and over again – and bore Tweeps to death. They will never follow you or click those book links. Think of Twitter as a “relationship” with people. Share their tweets and reply to some fun stuff, use the hashtags #MM, #WW, #FF, chat on occasion about current events, keep it positive! Does anybody really wants to see bitching or moaning? You’re an Author – consider yourself a “public figure” and keep that in mind. Maybe share an excerpt using #novelines, on occasion. When you do post a link to your book on a certain day (like Valentine’s Day for your Valentine’s day romance, or the Christmas season for a Christmas-themed book), then they might just click and buy. No more than once a day, if that. Triberr expands your Twitter reach, and it’s a handy tool to retweet posts of your “tribe.” Again, relationships matter and your tribe mates will (or should) reciprocate.
I do the same thing for Facebook – think of it as a “relationship” with your readers. And consider your “profile” as public – so keep any rants about family in your house. Many authors maintain only an author page. I keep book pages as well (figuring the more exposure, the better) and post at least once every other day to each page. What do I post? Links to blogs I’ve written, or others who write something interesting, or a fun photo or cartoon, a positive quote, whatever might be something for people to see, like and perhaps comment on – but don’t worry if they don’t. That’s not what’s about. Questions are sometimes good, but take more time to answer. And people often don’t have time to do more than hit “like,” so keep that in mind. Use Facebook groups to expand your reach, if you have time. And remember, the more time you spend promoting is less time at your writing desk.
In short, people and relationships are as important as promotion. So have fun with it!
Buy Now @ Amazon & Smashwords
Genre – Contemporary Romance
Rating – PG
More details about the author & the book
Website http://www.megmims.com/
2 comments:
Good advice - nothing more annoying on FB or Twitter than folks who do little else but promote their work.
I agree JoAnne - or a Twitter feed where all they do is promo their own stuff! No RT's, nothing but me, me, me. Boring! :-D
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