Monday, May 6, 2019

Book Promotion: 5 Tips for Authors on Using Social Media


Writing the book might be one of the most demanding and difficult parts of being an author, but spreading the word about it is another part that will require some attention.

Social media gives its users the power to connect with others who have similar interests. An author can greatly benefit from this, as they can easily have access to thousands of people who will potentially be interested in the genre of the book. Here are some tips to help you promote your book on social media without much trouble.

1. Focus on the quality of your promotional content

The very first thing you should focus on if you wish to attract more potential followers and spread the word about your new or upcoming book is to make sure that the promotional content you create and promote is of the best quality.

While interacting with your fans is important, it is not the only thing you should be focusing on. Your promotional content might be in the form of a picture, a video or simple written text. Any of these things need enough preparation and knowledge from your part and it is not impossible for an author to find it difficult to write promotional-type text.

2. Host a giveaway for your book

Giveaways are a great way for you to get more people to see your new book and also follow your social media pages. The only thing you will have to do is take a creative picture of your book, post it on your social media pages and ask your followers to follow a certain set of rules in order to join the giveaway. These rules can include:

• Liking the post regarding the giveaway
• Sharing the post in their feeds
• Tagging one or more friends in the comments
• Following your account

You can choose one or more of these rules to follow and make the post more suited to your preferences. In any case, though, you will come to find that giveaways are not only easy to host but also actually effective at promoting your new work in a short amount of time.


3. Offer a chapter of the book for free

Another thing you can use in order to promote your book through your social media pages is to offer your followers the chance to read the first chapter of your book for free. Not only will this tactic make more people want to buy it so they see what comes next, but you will also be able to get more people sharing the post about the free chapter and talking about it.

You should not forget to include a link to purchasing your book online at the bottom of the post. If you have the link placed conveniently at the end of the post, the reader is much more likely to make an impulse buy and purchase your book right after reading the free chapter.

4. Stay in contact with your fans

Fans like to know that their favorite authors are willing to come in contact with them online. Along with that, people who come across your page and see you being kind and willing to interact with your audience will definitely create a positive impression.

There are many ways for you to interact with your audience through your social media pages and every one of them can help you boost your book promotions. You can reply to DMs, host live chats where you answer questions about your new book and of course reply to comments and follow your fans back.


5. Create and use your own hashtag

Last but not least, another thing you can do in order to help your book promotion is to create a hashtag which will represent the new book. For example, if you are writing a fantasy book, the hashtag can be the name or a variation of the name of the universe the story takes place in. It can also be the name of the main hero.

You can invite your fans to use the hashtag in order to share pictures of them with the book which you can then repost on your social media pages. You can also follow people who use the hashtag or give them a shout-out. The more visible your hashtag becomes, the more people will be interested to learn more about its origins and therefore the more people will come across your new book.

Which one of these methods do you believe is the one that will best help you promote your book through your social media pages?


Kristin Savage is interested in writing and planning to publish her own book in the nearest future. Also, she has been a reviewer at Pick Writers for a few years and is known for her thorough approach to accurately assess newcomer translation services. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter .

11 comments:

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Hi Alex - I can see that these tips will be so useful to many IWSG members ... good luck to them with marketing their books. Reaching out is an essential ... cheers Hilary

nashvillecats2 said...

Thanks for sharing all those great tips Alex. I have been pondering whether to attempt to write another book in memory of my late son to "Celebrate" his life. But will have to see, these tips will be most useful.

Yvonne.

The Cynical Sailor said...

Some great tips! I especially like the one about creating your own hashtag.

L. Diane Wolfe said...

Creating your own hashtag is a great idea.

Lynda Dietz said...

These are all solid tips! One of my author friends writes short stories she posts for free on her blog from time to time, and when she has a new book release, she posts the first chapter. By then, people have read enough of her free stuff that they know already they're going to like the full-length novels, so they're very willing to share that first-chapter post on their own social media.

I can't agree with you enough on staying in contact with your fans. When authors have no interaction online other than when it's time to promote their own work, they shouldn't be surprised that there's less of a response. Fans love to have that back-and-forth conversation with their favorite authors, whether it's getting a glimpse into their personalities here and there (like Gaiman on Twitter) or personal replies to comments (like Diana Gabaldon on her blog and on Goodreads).

Great post all around!

Pat Hatt said...

Staying in contact is the way to be indeed.

Ornery Owl of Naughty Netherworld Press and Readers Roost said...

I use the Weekend Writing Warriors blog hop (www.wewriwa.com) and the Snippet Sunday group on Facebook to share snippets of my work. For anyone who publishes to Kindle, you can have a free giveaway of the book available for up to five days. I do this with every new book and publish the link to my blogs.
I've found that Facebook is becoming more and more irritating when it comes to sharing links from my blogs. I always have to tell them that the link is not Spam. I generally get a big, scary message that my link contains "material that Facebook users have determined to be abusive." Like book reviews, I guess?

Natalie Aguirre said...

Thanks for the tips. I hadn't thought of creating a hashtag What a great idea.

Susan Gourley/Kelley said...

Haven't tried making up my own hashtag yet, but it's an idea worth considering.

Elizabeth Seckman said...

Great tips. Spreading the word can be so exhausting, it's good to make the effort worthwhile.

Jemi Fraser said...

Great ideas!
The hashtag idea is a great one - may just have to use that soon!