Even if you’re brand new to book promotion, you’ve probably heard that you need to start a blog, get on Facebook, “tweet” on Twitter, and basically put yourself out there wherever you can. But you might not be sure where to start. Here’s a basic overview of Twitter and Facebook, two of the biggies when it comes to social media:

Create a Facebook Fan Page

You may already have a Facebook account that you use to chat with friends and family, but you’ll probably want to keep your personal life separate from your public “author” life. A good way to do this is to create a fan page.

You can set one up here.

I was slow myself in getting on Facebook, as I’d never been a fan of the clutter-filled platform, but when I made my author page, several people found me right away with comments like, “Oh, you’re finally here!”

Even if you’re not a huge Facebook fan, realize that hundreds of millions of people use the platform, so it’s a good idea to have a presence there.

What do you post on your page? Things your readers might be interested in. Book updates, giveaways, links to interesting stories related to your niche or genre, etc. It probably goes without saying, but there’s no need to post about your kids or dogs here. Sure, you can share tidbits about your life, but go for the tidbits that are quirky or endearing, rather than the mundane.

I suggest creating a “welcome” page, so new visitors aren’t dumped onto your “wall.” If you’re tech savvy, you can learn the Facebook programming language and tinker on your own. If that doesn’t sound fun, you can use PageModo to create that welcome page. (PageModo costs money if you want to build numerous pages, but you can make a welcome page for free.) You can include things like a contact form and a “like” prompt (meaning people need to click like to move on to the rest of the content).

Regardless of how you set up your Facebook Fan Page, do consider building one, and then post to it regularly (it doesn’t have to be every day, but shoot for a couple of times a week).

Further Facebook resources:

Get Started on Twitter

Twitter seems to be one of those things where people either get it and like it or they don’t get and don’t see the point. This is the earliest social media site I joined (I was on there before I ever thought of publishing independently), as I appreciated the forced brevity. You only get 140 characters for each post, and I find it harder to waste time here than on Facebook.

The idea with Twitter is to share interesting tidbits to your followers and engage with people in your target audience (many writers, myself included, end up chatting with other writers, but you’ll get a lot farther, insofar as book promotion goes, if you chat with those who might read your books). To find possible members of your target audience, look at people’s profiles and search for key terms related to your niche/genre.

For example, since I write high fantasy and steampunk, I’ll search for “steampunk” and find people who are fans of the genre. Then I’ll send them a couple of messages and see if I can round up new followers (some people only follow friends on Twitter — you can tell if they don’t have a high “following” number — and they’ll be harder to woo, but other people will follow anyone who follows them and who looks interesting).

It’s easy to get involved on Twitter, so don’t be shy about using the @ symbol to send messages directly to folks. You might not want to jump into their conversations with others, but if they throw something out there that’s not directed at someone else (no @so-and-so), then they likely want responses. After you’ve chatted with someone, try following them to see if they follow back. (Don’t worry about following too many people; you can learn how to create lists to sort the various streams later on.)

You might also “retweet” people’s links (repost what they’ve said to your followers). This will make them more likely to follow you and retweet your messages.

And that’s where the power of Twitter comes in. If you tweet a message (such as a link to a blog post you wrote or a book giveaway you’re doing), these friends you make will help you promote your stuff by retweeting. I’ve had more than one person say they first found my books because of a tweet they saw on someone else’s Twitter stream.

Do resist the urge to tweet self-promotional links incessantly. Nobody likes being sold to all the time, and folks will be more likely to help you out (with retweets) if your promotional posts are rare and interesting/special in and of themselves.

Further Twitter resources:

I’ve just scratched the surface with this introduction to Twitter and Facebook (as you can see from the links I posted, there are entire books on each of these platforms), but the basics are fairly simple. This form of marketing is something you can gradually learn (no need to master social media front to back before jumping in), and if you just spend a few minutes each day on these platforms, you can indeed sell more books.

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