Practically everyone over the age of 15 is on Facebook. Which makes it an incredible opportunity to promote your book. Think of it as a newspaper that everyone is reading … and you can advertise for free in it!
But just how to do that can be a little more challenging than you think.
Facebook can be a bit intimidating for those out of high school. It’s huge, it’s fast-moving, and the functionality and privacy settings seem to change monthly. And, most challenging of all, there are no “directions.” You just have to figure it out.
With that in mind, here are the steps authors should take to promote themselves and their books on Facebook….
1. Create a profile. If you already have a personal profile on Facebook (that you use for personal reasons), then create a separate, professional profile for you and/or your book. It may be a pain to have two profiles, but it’s worth it. You want to have one that’s focused on your career. And you don’t want the general public looking at pictures of your kids!
2. Start friending people. This is the primary way that people will find you on Facebook, so it’s really important that you start adding friends. Start with your list of personal friends. Then browse the friends of your friends and invite all of them to friend you. All “friending” means is that your notes will show up on their homepage and vice versa. When your Facebook profile is for marketing purposes, the more friends the better!
3. Post, post, post. It’s easy to create a Facebook profile and then never touch it again. But that would be a huge mistake. It’s important that your name stay right in front of all your Facebook friends. And the only way to do that is to keep posting on Facebook. Your posts will then show up on all your “friends'” homepages, along with links to your Facebook profile. Again, it’s free exposure! Posts can be as simple as “Working on my next novel now” to announcing your book’s sales milestones.
4. Sync up your blog with your Facebook profile. There’s a nifty feature within your Facebook profile called “Notes.” I would tell you where to find this, but it seems to change all the time. But if you can find it, there will be a place where you can enter the URL of your blog’s RSS feed. It sounds complicated, but it’s pretty easy if you can find it. This is something I do for clients all the time. Once it’s set up, any blog post that you publish will automatically populate in Facebook. This is a HUGE time-saver. These posts will show up on your profile AND on the homepage of all of your friends, just like if you posted it on Facebook yourself. One caveat on this, though … your blog posts don’t show up immediately. There’s a delay of a few hours. And unless you know exactly when it posts, it may be pushed down on your homepage pretty quickly. How quickly depends on how many friends you have an how often they post. But rest assured, some people will see it!
5. Join groups. Find the Facebook groups that are filled with people who are interested in your subject matter. Join those groups, invite those group members to “friend” you, and join the group conversations whenever possible.
6. Don’t forget about links! Within your Facebook profile, make sure to include links to your website, links to buy your book, etc… After all, that’s the whole purpose of it! You don’t want people to be interested in you and your book, but have no idea where to find out more about it!
Have you found Facebook to be an effective marketing tool for you and your book? Do you use any cool features or widgets that aren’t mentioned here? Share your thoughts! And don’t forget to contact us for your free consultation about building and/or marketing your author website!