MANEUVERING THE MEDIA OCEANSocial Media for Authors

“You can sell books using social media.You also can’t really sell books using social media. The cat is both dead and alive. For quite some time, social media has been promoted by nearly everybody, including publishers, as a Very Good Way to SELL YOUR BOOKS. You have a Certified Platform. It is the place where you express your Authorial Brand.

- Chuck Wendig

THE PROBLEM

➤ The Lie: With time, talent, followers and luck, anyone on social media will make 1,000’s of front end sales.

➤ Overstimulation:

➤ Too Many Voices

➤ Too Many Platforms

➤ Takes Time & Money

➤ Followers = Buyers

“One of the most important factors that traditional publishers use to decide whether to acquire a book is the marketing platform of its author.

- Guy Kawasaki

YOUR TIME IS WORTH MONEY. SPEND WISELY.

Decide how much your time is worth, & how many books you have to sell from each campaign. Is it worth it? Is it feasible?

What’s your budget financially & chronologically?

PROFIT = # BOOKS + NEW FOLLOWERS TIME + MONEY

THE TIME FACTOR

➤ Most Social Media Campaigns can be undergone with nothing but a computer, a head on your shoulders, and time.

➤ How much time is enough?

➤ Take 2/3 time as a curator/creator, and 1/3 time to interact with the followers who reply. Build Community.

➤ Twitter: 5 - 8 tweets per day.

➤ Facebook: 1 - 10 per week.

➤ Pinterest: 1 - 10 per week.

➤ LinkedIn: 1 - 5 per week. (Weekdays)

➤ Blog: 1 - 3 per week.

CONSISTENCY IS KEYFind the sweet spot of posts per week to which you can commit.

CONTINUITY & FREQUENCY

➤ Facebook pages which posted once per week reached ~ 12% of users/followers.*

➤ Facebook pages which posted 10 times or more per day reached ~ 6.51% of users.

➤ For increased reach rates, promotion costs apply payable to Facebook.

Frequency = Increased Reach

Interest = Increased Reach

* Statistics from Locowise study.

LESS IS MORE AS A FACEBOOK PAGE

MORE IS BETTER ON TWITTER

FIND & OWN YOUR DEMOGRAPHIC

Join the social media platforms where your readers/potential readers congregate.

Not all social media platforms will give you positive results.

Streamline your promotional process.

DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN OF SOCIAL MEDIA

All graphs property of PEW Research Centre

DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN OF SOCIAL MEDIA

All graphs property of PEW Research Centre

FACEBOOK WWW.FACEBOOK.COM➤ 71% of internet users

➤ Most users are on daily at 1 - 3 PM

➤ Thursday & Fridays are peak days

➤ Most users are White/Hispanic college educated women aged 19 - 49.

➤ More monthly users than WhatsApp, Twitter & Instagram combined

➤ Posts are liked for relevance, entertainment, contests or social need

➤ Monetized posting to majority of audience through Promote & Ads

PINTEREST WWW.PINTEREST.COM

➤ 28% of all internet users

➤ 42% of women users

➤ Active users spend more time on Pinterest, than Facebook.

➤ Most users are white, college educated suburban & rural women aged 25 - 64.

➤ Pinterest is graphics-oriented & based around secondary links.

LINKEDIN WWW.LINKEDIN.COM

➤ 28% of internet users

➤ Most users are Urban, multicultural college educated men & women btw 30 - 64 making $75,000+/year

➤ LinkedIn impacts the community with the highest amount of disposable income

➤ Business & Professional oriented

➤ The best place to build a professional community

TWITTER WWW.TWITTER.COM

➤ 23% of internet users

➤ Most users are urban, college educated, multicultural 18 - 49 year old males who make $50,000+/year.

➤ Interaction & Engagement is Key.

➤ Reply to your followers.

➤ 5,700 tweets per second globally.

➤ Best used with infographics, photos & #Hashtags between 5 - 8 times per day.

GOODREADS

➤ “Goodreads has become the most important book networking site on the Internet…” Forbes

➤ 40 Million Members. 1.3 Billion Books. 47 Million Reviews.

➤ The Goodreads Author Program is free, functional & fantastic.

➤ Self-Serve Advertising is relatively cheap. Choose $/click, $/diem, $/campaign, demographics.

➤ View, choose, sample, add, review, list, quiz, Q & A, read Author blogs…

GOOGLE+ PLUS.GOOGLE.COM

➤ Google’s unpopular step-child, Google+ is interest-based. Not person-based.

➤ Useful due to Google’s analytics. Google+ and YouTube are high-placed in the Google Search Engine, due to brand cohesiveness.

➤ Creating and curating Collections based around your content.

SEARCH ENGINE

DARLING

YOUTUBE WWW.YOUTUBE.COM

➤ Another Google owned platform, YouTube is still the best video uploading site due to its availability, popularity and analytics.

➤ Short (under 5 min) interviews, readings, live events, talks about characters, or process, etc. Can drive readers to your site and prove your public speaking skill.

➤ Professional filming, professional editing.

PROOF OF

PROMO

THE BLOG: TUMBLR/WORDPRESS/BLOGSPOT

➤ The blogging “revolution” started 7 years ago.

➤ The average blog reader is a 41 year old man or woman, looking for information.

➤ The best Origin-Point of all social media campaigns. It’s your “Read More”.

➤ All self-generated social media content should come back to the Blog/website.

➤ A consistently curated blog is the best way of keeping new followers interested.

➤ Post a minimum of once per week.

THE MUST

DO

HOOTSUITE WWW.HOOTSUITE.COM

➤ A site which collates your social media feeds in one browser based window.

➤ Scheduling to multiple social feeds is simple, and intuitive.

➤ Replying to your content/your interests is streamlined.

➤ Free when you have up to 3 social media streams.

➤ Inexpensive for larger options.

➤ The most intuitive & best value of the collating programs.

THE TIME

SAVER

FOLLOWERS DO NOT EQUAL

BUYERS

VIEWS

CLICKS

BUYS

BECOME AN INFLUENCER CURATOR

A person who curates the tsunami of content into an intelligent, fascinating & easily followed package.

A person who focuses on one or two themes & becomes an expert, adding their own created content to fill in gaps.

CREATED CONTENT

➤ Content which you personally created to be used on social media platforms.

➤ eg. A short story/book preview, An Author Interview, book trailer, cover art photos, quotes.

CURATED CONTENT

➤ Content from outside sources to be used, with appropriate credit given.

➤ Content chosen for its’ similarity, impact or proof to yours.

➤ eg. A scientific paper/article on gene splicing, while you’re writing your science fiction novel about super-soldiers.

HARD SELL

➤ A direct, forceful marketing technique which aggressively pursues overt sales.

➤ eg. “Buy my Book for $14.97 off my website. Buy it! What’s stopping you from buying it now?”

➤ eg. “Novel the Novella is $4.99 on Amazon Today. Buy it.”

SOFT SELL➤ A subtle, casual marketing technique which persuasively

pursues through amity & implied selling.

➤ eg. “Here’s chapters 1 - 2, and a link to the book for sale”

➤ eg. A well designed colourful banner for your book on your Facebook/Twitter Page.

THE SOLUTION

➤ Soft Selling is social media gold. Hard Selling is social media lead. Focus on 90% soft, 10% hard.

➤ Become both Creator and Curator of content surrounding your genre, books & readers.

➤ Focus on building a community of like-minded people who enjoy & get excited for your content.

➤ Remember the reason social media calls it ‘friending’ or ‘following’. Becoming a social media success is about building trust, emotional bonds with your material, and community.

➤ Include links to your books in your primary content, so interested people can buy them.

“Inspire us. People follow conviction. We don’t take orders well anymore. We come to our own conclusions, on our own.

- Followers

ANATOMY OF GREATSocial Media Content

A GREAT POST CHECKLIST

➤ Specific & Builds Curiosity

➤ Eye catching colourful art or words

➤ Consistent in Frequency

➤ Relevant to Overarching Themes

➤ Call to Action (Link/Buy/Follow)

➤ Incites Conversation

➤ Shorter is Better for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn

➤ Longer is Better for the Blog

➤ Share Buttons on Bottom

SPECIFIC, RELEVANT AND ENTERTAINING SOCIAL MEDIA IS A GATEWAY FOR YOUR BLOG

OR WEBSITE

Putting quotes/phrases into graphics or pictures makes them more viable to clicks.

“We are all broken, that’s how the light gets in.” #ErnestHemingway #Quote #LitQuote #Encouragement

“Future behaviour is fully determined by their initial conditions.

Calvinistic Atheists,

Predestination Scientists

Rubbernecking at deep sea steam vents

For bacteria which gets no nourishment from the sun.

“Uncle Bob? Is that you, 400 million years ago?”

-Excerpt from Chaos Machines and the People Who Buy Them (Link)

RIDE THE WAVE BETWEEN ACCESSIBILITY

& REDUNDANCY. Find your area of expertise & live it, research it, post about it & share it.

THE ‘FREE’ REVIEW

➤ Consumers are more likely to purchase books their peers say are worth the read.

➤ Consumer reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Shelfari are filling in the gap from professional, critical critique.

➤ Giving free eBooks to ‘layman’ reviewers can supplement your publisher’s search for traditional print reviews.

➤ tweetyourbooks.com, goodreads.com, bookwormsandwriters.com have free listings of reviewers.

“Social media is an intangible community created by and for people who want to expand their world. Being successful with social media is less about the hard sell and more about creating and curating a community around you, and your works. -Sapha Burnell

FOR QUESTIONS CONTACT

➤ Sapha Burnell

➤ saphaburnell@icloud.com

➤ saphaburnell.tumblr.com

➤ Twitter: @UsurperKings

➤ Facebook: Sapha Burnell

➤ WattPad: @Sapha_Burnell

➤ Pinterest: @Saphab