Tips and tricks for successful book marketing on social media
My tips and tricks for book marketing on social media
If you have decided to step up to book marketing on social media I have a few tips to maximise your success and avoid making any gaffs that lead you to become a social outcast.
Key to building your tribe is pitching your content right for your audience. Posting the type of content that engages and inspires them. In this post I run through some general tips and tricks for book marketing on social media that will help you grow your tribe and hopefully sell more books.
How to succeed with social media marketing for books
Don’t overdo the selling. If you already follow successful authors or publishers on social media you will notice how few selling posts they actually post. Make sure there is a link to your website or Author Central in your bio so it is convenient, but remember that people go on social media to chat and interact – less so for buying. Social media is more about building a fan base and engaging an audience rather than direct selling.
Post quality over quantity. Plan your posts in advance and only post when you have something to say. Think about who you are speaking to and what they want when they are scrolling.
Post nice graphics that are branded and follow a brand colour palette to appear more memorable and professional amidst a crowded social media platform. Make sure your graphics are the correct size for your chosen platform or they will be cropped or blurry. If you have Canva pro you can easily resize graphics for different platforms.
Crunch the numbers . Whatever social media platform you choose for your book marketing, studying your analytics will make you much more efficient and avoid wasting time on content that isn’t valued. If something is working, do more of it. If something isn’t working do less of it. Rinse and repeat.
Set goals and measure your results against those goals. Sell more books? Get more followers? Get more email addresses on your mailing list? Set some goals and measure your results. I like to use GeniusLink to track book sales as Amazon doesn’t give us any of this data. The affiliate commission I earn from the books I sell on through those links more than covers the cost so it’s a win all round.
Decide on a schedule and stick with it, whatever that schedule might be. If posting daily (or multiple times a day!) makes you recoil in horror then set yourself a less ambitious target and stick with it. Quality over quantity wins yet again.
Plan your posts Having a plan of what you will post and when really takes the pressure off and helps you stick to the schedule you have set. For example you might decide to share a meme or joke every Tuesday and Friday. If you use a scheduling tool like Later or Tailwind you can easily pop those jokes into the scheduler so a couple of your posts are sorted.
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Batch your content. Once you have your posting plan in place you can batch create a whole load of content. This is super easy in Canva. If you plan on regularly posting jokes, memes, top tips or quotes you can easily make a branded template and create a whole load of posts in one go.
Commit for 6 months and re-evaluate. You probably need to give it 6 months of regular posting before deciding whether social media marketing is worthwhile for your books. By then you should have an idea of whether you like it and whether it is effective in reaching your goals.
Interact with your followers. The bit I find hardest is keeping on top of replying to messages, responding to tags and thanking people or commenting back when they comment. I struggle with the ‘social ‘ aspect of social media because if my phone is always ‘pinging’ I get distracted and way less productive at the other things I need to be doing to run my business. Managing my social media was the first thing I outsourced in my other (in person- not online) business which seems bonkers when I built the business on social media and it was integral to the running of the business. I just couldn’t cope with the constant pinging and the ‘chat’ and the emojis 🙂 So I made a plan and a schedule and passed it over to an employee to execute. I don’t have the same luxury with my book social media marketing. I mute my phone and check in on messages once or twice a day.
Don’t compare yourself with others. There are social media superstars who seem to find it really easy. Some people are super successful at social media, have trillions of followers and can seemingly get hundreds of comments, likes and emojis for posting utter drivel. However, they probably spend a huge amount of time or money developing their craft behind the scenes or have been doing this for years. Because of the public nature of social media you can follow, watch and learn to pick up a few tricks of your own.
Don’t get downhearted. There are very few viral overnight successes on social media. Mostly is it is hard graft. Never forget that your success or otherwise on social media is not a reflection on the quality of your books or your talent as a publisher or author.
