When promoting your book on social media the most important thing you have to keep in mind is why people actually use social media.
They use it to escape, to learn something, to laugh, to find link-minded people – but they typically don’t use it for the sole purpose to spend money.
But stay with me, that doesn’t mean promoting a book on social media won’t serve your bigger picture of building readership and selling more books!
You just have to have the right mindset and work with buyer behavior instead of against it.
Here are 5 important tips for you that will likely change the game and take out a lot of the guesswork.
Make it About Your Followers
People want to feel special, and they want to feel understood and connected. Having a mental or emotional connection to a person, brand or product is extremely important for people to spend their money, even if it’s just a $3.99 eBook.
So with that in mind, promoting a book on social media means understanding who your followers (aka potential buyers) are. Hint: they’re not just readers. They have other interests and specific demographics, and how they connect with what’s going on in the news and popular culture matter.
The point is, your followers are dynamic. So treat them like dynamic people and not just wallets. Give them content they can connect with. This leads to my next point.
Make Yourself a Resource
Everyone is busy. Literally everyone. So yes, while a lot of us are epically guilty of wasting time on social media, we’re still choosy about what we’re scrolling through and what accounts we engage with.
So when I say promoting a book on social media means making yourself a resource, I’m saying you need to post content that’s useful and stands out.
Fortunately, useful can take on a lot of different meanings! Useful to an exhausted working mom could mean funny memes that show other women are experiencing the exact same feelings. Or if your readers are retired political thriller fans and predominantly men they might get really engrossed in government conspiracy theories!
So you make yourself useful by understanding what my first tip means to you and who your people are, and delivering that kind of content on a consistent basis so they can count on you. Which also plays into my next tip!
Make Your Content Both Predictable and Unpredictable
In the last tip, I mentioned promoting a book on social media requires consistency, that’s how you become a resource for your fans and followers. And that’s absolutely key.
Create a content plan and stick to it!
The number of posts per week should depend on the platform. For example, the common recommendation for Instagram is 3-5 posts a week. But on Twitter, a lot of times you’ll read advice that says 5 tweets per day!
Knowing how many times you need to post every week will give you an idea of how much predictable content you’ll need – meaning, how many funny memes you should do per week, how many inspirational quotes per week, how many book recommendations you should make per month, how many how-to or advice tips you should post per week – I hope you get the idea.
Then there’s the unpredictable content. This should be less common but more personal. Maybe it’s a picture of your dog, or your workspace, progress on your garden, or the barista you count on every morning for your daily cuppa! Be spontaneous and fun with this content because it’s gold – it humanizes you and makes you relatable, and it’s priceless.
Make it Count When You Talk About Your Book
Here we go. Many of you have probably heard of the 80/20 rule. If not, it’s pretty simple; 80 percent of your content should NOT be about your book (or services or business). That’s right, only 20 percent of your content should be blatantly selling your book or reminding people you have books to buy.
That might sound debilitating, but don’t think of it that way. Think of it this way: when you do post about your book, it will stand out more.
And it means you have to make it count, so your book-related content will be better. Have something important to say!
Perhaps it’s a limited-time discount, a giveaway you’re doing, or a stand-out review you want to highlight – or an exciting interview or feature somewhere online or an event at your local library.
Use the idea that you only get to post about your book 20% of the time to fuel your drive to not get lazy and keep the things you have to say about your book exciting!
Make It Easier on Yourself
Did I bury the good stuff on this one? Maybe. But there’s no reason to talk about making promoting your book on social media easier if you don’t first wrap your mind around tips 1-4 first.
And here’s how you make it easier – you plan.
Planning is front-loaded work, but a couple of dedicated hours at one time can save you a dozen hours of scrambling, or even worse, posting lame content that doesn’t give you a return for your effort. Eeek!
But seriously, we’re big fans of themes. Maybe you always kick off Monday with something funny or light-hearted. Perhaps Wednesday is your day to get serious or offer a useful tip or recommendation. Friday could be motivational.
My point is, this is where consistency comes into play – full circle!
When you plan out a month or two of Monday posts, BAM, promoting your book on social media gets so much easier.
At the end of the day, we always say you don’t have to be everywhere, you need to be where it matters. Each social media platform has a majority demographic, and if that aligns with your demographic then that should be your primary focus. And if that means changing things up, embrace it! You’ll get a better return for your efforts when you check all the boxes and stop spinning your wheels.
As always, please reach out if you need some help brainstorming ideas. I’m here to help!
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Interesting perspective. What’s missing from the article is an objective look at results from using social media to sell books–especially on Facebook–with data from book marketing pros and authors. See more in this article: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6926878870050680832/
excellent tips
Thank you for this fresh perspective on social media for authors. I am put off by the spammy posts so frequently found on social media groups and avoid falling into that trap. This post has given me ideas to better deliver valuable content for my audience.