Navigating Social Media Marketing

Being a writer is tough enough with creating worlds, building dialogue, researching, endless editing, and thinking of the new book while finishing up the present one. Then you have to contend with not only the writing, but with social media, where you are writing the same thing in different forms.

I am amazed at a career that screams SOLITUDE, would need a medium that shouts SOCIAL. The written word is now consumed in so many different ways that it can be difficult for a writer to choose, and understand them. And why would we? Because the ways of consumption are also the ways of marketing. Passing out flyers, and standing around at book fairs, while great for exposure, is not the best way to gain an audience.

PUBLISHING

The days of waiting by the mailbox for rejection letters are over. Publishing has gone digital, which opens up many opportunities for writers, but also opens us more competition. More people are able to submit more work, from all corners of the world. Having dealt with traditional and self-publishing, the act of sending your work out to the digital universe has created one real problem…who legally owns it?

Sending out your work, or even portions/excepts can cause a publishing company to disregard you. Publishing is publishing after all, and publishing houses like to be the first in discovering your work – digital or not. Copyright laws are violated once you send out work to be viewed by the masses.

So how do you market your work, without the public seeing your work?

Blogs can be a great avenue for this. As a writer, creating a following, and understanding the needs of your audience is important. As writers we amass tons or research, knowledge on trends, trial-by-error in the writing process. Share this to the world. Being relevant is the key. When people see you create, they are excited about your creations.

Blog Building sites like GoDaddy, SiteBuilder, and Wordpress, can get you started, with simple templates and easy to navigate platforms. You can co-create a blog with a friend, offer to submit articles to an existing one with a topic you are familiar.

This allows you constant variety in what you are able to write, and what you can promote on social media about yourself.

Reviews and Commentary:

Another way to gain a publishing leg in the digital world, is through commentary or reviews. Sites like RottenTomatoes, and Yelp, not only allow you a platform to express yourself, they do so while showing your creativity. You can see a movie and write an amazing review, then promote that through your social media. It is an established audience and exposure.

The best thing about social media, and having an online presence, is that with a few shared link, you can share your latest publishing endeavors at the click of a button.

WRITING

The process of writing has taken a shift too. For me, I still carry around a small pad to pen my stories in, then translate this to the typed word. But with social media, you can store you work online in many forms, and use this media to log ideas. From Google Docs, to your simple notepad on your smart device, you can always have the opportunity to write. There are ways to update you blog on your smart phone, send your notes to your Facebook, using services like IFTTT, Buffer, Hootsuite, or Sprout Social, you can keep your links, and updates ever present, letting the masses know when and what you have written.

Having the time to write can be as challenging as the actual process, but with social media, we not only have writing at our fingertips, we have research there too, allowing us to move deeper into our stories, our creativity, on-the-go.

MARKETING

This can be a monster in the age of Social Media. Learning to navigate an ever-changing field of technology can make the creating of a story appear to be the easy stuff. Learning to get in touch with your audience once the writing is done, can be daunting. The reality is that we don’t know sometimes, just how a reader has come across our work, so that makes marketing a dip into the darkness.

Knowing how to engage your audience these days has changed from word or mouth, to shares and likes. You have to not only know your market, you also have to know what they like. You must know the places they shop, the events they attend, the trends they follow. It goes beyond the Twitter and Facebook pages you follow, and just announcing you have a new book coming out.

You have to understand the power of the Hashtag (more on this below), in including your book into an already established community. Saturation is the key to marketing these days. Having your name show up in many different social media outlets is the way to go. Ask friends to share or like your book announcement, do an Author Exchange, where you reach out to an author, promising to promote your work to their list of friends, and you do the same. Create a video on RIPL or YouTube (because statistically, people share and view videos more than text posts).

Marketing means checking out the latest in social media tech, and jumping in on it at the start – even if only for a moment. Follow the Book Fairs, see who is attending, follow them, understand their following, be there (most times you don’t have to even sign up – just be there with a backpack filled with your books).

Lastly, engage your audience by making them a part of the experience. Have a community board help you with book titles. Create a photo campaign that involves your book title (maybe if it is about Roses, start posting photos of roses throughout the internet, with your book link. Introduce your book to a book club with discount price for purchase.

Reach out to other authors for advice.

BRANDING

Branding and marketing can go hand in hand, the difference is in Branding you are prompting your name, not necessarily a specific piece of work. You are promoting your ability to write, validating your worthiness to not only produce a novel, but that it will be good.

A simpler way to explain it is: If it is making you money, it is Marketing; if it is giving you exposure, it is Branding.

Creating a plan.

Social Media navigating needs a plan about platforms, and a consistency in content. True, this does take away your time to actually write. Many writers do not like the act business, as writing is creative, and business running is not.

Test your market, and your branding outlets. The best thing about social media, is the results are faster than any other traditional form. True, it takes time to build an audience, but with so many outlets at your exposure, the feedback can be faster.

So choose 4 months out of your calendar, and write two topics you would like to discuss per week, and opinions you want to share every other day –

Example #1: You write about foods your characters eat each day, with a recipe you pulled from online. Twice a week you discuss a character, and how you either developed them, or what you learned in the process of developing them.

Example #2: Video/Images. Very popular in social media. Take a week to collect images of lets say, stuffed animals (a plush lion in a toy store), and create a cute tagline about them “Leo growled in his head…because his lips were sewed.” Or Video of you talking about the hottest topics of the moment, “What I think of MoviePass,” or “My Top Ten List of Bogging No-No’s.”

Have them all collected and post them on as many sites as you can, through your social media, and to always include a link to anything you may be selling. Facebook and Instagram have statistical reports where you can see what medium is getting the most attention. You can take a look at the end of the quarter, to see which audience you can increase.

Hashtags:

This has become the trend among many. Hashtags gives you the ability to “Tag” along in an already established trend. It is primarily image based, but it is very effective in getting your brand out there and allows you to mingle among the stars. Hashtag is the new browsing of the internet and understanding how they are used can also help lift a brand.

So in your preparation, take a look at a few hashtags to see their content. Try a few popular ones by seeing what your favorite author has on their twitter pages. Copy them to a document, and copy and past them in your postings. A tool like Keyhole, is great for this, as it tracks a hashtags performance.

Create a business account in your social media, or start a group in Facebook, so you can watch the progress, and remember to always reach out to members within the hashtags that have a similar direction as yourself.

FINAL THOUGHTS

While a personal connection is important, like attending book fairs and having book signings, it is more likely you will be selling your work to people you have never met, as digital purchases are faster and more convenient. Publishers look at your social media account and consider this along with your manuscript in deciding to publish you. So, do a search on the Latest Apps, or Social Media Posting tools, and keep your brand, your name, out in the forefront, no matter what you decide to post about yourself, always make it fun, on trend, and engaging.