Tip 1 for Marketing You and Your Book - Facebook

Love it or hate it, social media is how our world operates these days. In some sort of fashion, majority of people are on social media.
As you begin to think of your author platform and marketing your book(s), you need to start thinking what form of social media you wish to use.
And here's a hint: Don't do ALL of them. There's just too many for one person to keep up with. Now if you have an entire team helping you, then maybe, but if it is just you, and most likely starting out, it is... then choose a few to focus upon. For me, I use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Though I have a presence on Linkedin, I do not actively participate in it. I just update my profile every now and then.
So let's focus on Facebook and Twitter since those are the two largest social media platforms. For this post, we will focus upon Facebook. I will do another post in regards to Twitter. :)

What are your options?
Okay, so I have seen this done both ways.
1. You create an author page.
2. You create a page for your book.

I personally do number 1. I'll break both of these down for you.

1. Author Page:
   - A page dedicated to you as an author and all your books.
   - Allows you to interact with audience
   - Brings your audience to one page instead of multiple.
   - Allows you to have one destination to market.
I like this particular method, because it allows you to build a central reader base where you can post everything and anything. An updated blog post, done. A new release, done. A current promotion, done. A random thought, done. A sneak peek, done. You get the picture. It's a way to interact and engage with your readers and bring all your other platforms and information into one spot.
Here's the link to mine: Check it out. You can obviously see that it does not have to be anything super fancy.
www.facebook.com/Katharine-E-Hamilton-282475125097433/

2. Book Page:
   - Gives each individual work a fan base.
   - Allows you to give insight into the book.
   - A page where discounts for a particular work can be displayed.
   - Helps pull an audience to a particular work.
I have seen this done, and I have seen it done effectively. However, I have also seen it done ineffectively. The problem with multiple pages to manage is, if you plan to write more than one book, this can get tedious. And to put it bluntly, you will have a hard enough time managing one page, much less multiple pages. So keep it simple.
People can search for you via your name or the book title in this case. If you are great at managing multiple pages, go for it. It is a neat way to showcase your works individually. Here is an example of an author buddy of mine: Lesley Hayes for her book The Drowned Phoenician Sailor. (GREAT read if you have not read it...) You will notice that there are review links posted on here as well, which is a great promotional idea as well.
www.facebook.com/authorHayes/

Moving on...

NEXT STEP:

So you head on over to Facebook, click on Create Page, and done. You make an author platform. Now what?
Good question.
What you want is for people to like your page, obviously, because this links you to their Newsfeed. Anytime you post something, it will show up on their newsfeed. And if someone likes your post, then every now and then that action will show up on their friends' newsfeeds saying, "So&So liked Author Joe's Post."

And then it will show a snippet of that particular post, which leads to more people seeing your page. More reach. :) Now you see how this can spread the word about you and your books????
On top of that, Facebook allows you to create Ad Campaigns to promote your book throughout the Facebook world. Yes, you have to pay for these ads, but they can bring in more traffic to your website or Facebook Page. I use Facebook Ads quite often. The secret to these puppies is to start small and really try to shrink your target to 500,000 or below. So work on those keywords and get that number to go from 13 Billion to 250,000. ;) It sounds complicated, but it really isn't. It will walk you through step by step, and seriously just play with it. There are also some helpful services that you can purchase that go into this further. One being: www.selfpublishingformula.com/

Mark Dawson, well to say he is an expert might be an understatement, though there are services here that require a fee, he does offer some free videos to walk you through some basics in Facebook Advertising. I have done both the free and the packages. Both were worth the time. :)
There are others as well, like Sprout Social: sproutsocial.com/insights/facebook-advertising-guide/

They actually walk you through step by step as well. So either way, you should get a good idea on what to do. :)

Remember that it will take several times to pinpoint your demographic and target audience. Once you do, each ad should boast some solid results for you.

Another thing to remember on Facebook is the opportunity to create events, which comes in handy when you have a book release coming up or a book signing. I actually plan to do this for my next book release to try it out. I have done it for a book signing before, and it was worth the time. So I will have to keep you updated on how it goes for the book release. ;)

If you have any questions in regards to anything I've mentioned above, feel free to message me. There really are so many opportunities for marketing with Facebook. It is hard to touch upon just one or two aspects.
But I hope this at least helped some, or provided you some handy sites to check out.
Until next time...
Kat


***Photos courtesy of Facebook