Last month, Amy Rogers Nazarov instructed us on how to engage followers on social media in her inspiring article, “Let’s get engaged: How to use social media effectively.” That was such a hit that I invited her back! This time, Amy’s addressing an issue some of you might have in common with me: How to get comfortable being on camera in social media videos. 

Amy is a former journalist who teaches people how to use social media more effectively, with less scrolling and more serendipity. Before she launched Spark: Social Media Strategy in 2014, she was both a freelance and  staff writer. Amy’s byline has appeared in Cooking Light, Slate, The Washington Post, and American Songwriter among many others. Be sure to check out her affordable course, Seven Easy Social Media Hacks for Entrepreneurs & Creatives, especially if you find her articles here helpful.

Video camera shy? Try these expert tips from a top social media pro

By Amy Rogers Nazarov

One day last week I coached three clients on posing and speaking for my smartphone camera so I could build up a little bank of content to draw upon for various social media purposes.

Two are in the home renovation world, the other in performing arts. Each is a confident, accomplished, expressive person thriving in their respective industry.

Yet when I told them we’d be generating video for their social media feeds, dismay flashed across their faces. (The good news is that as I coached them, they all relaxed into the process. We had some fun with it, and I got what I needed. Here’s one of the results.)

Feeling vulnerable?

I tell you this to remind you that if you feel vulnerable trying to make a TikTok video about your release date, or to participate in an Instagram Live with your agent, you have lots of company!

Number one, most people feel anxious at first when showing their voices and faces on social media.

Number two, with practice, you won’t always feel that way.

And number three, nothing is better for building your credibility and trustworthiness with your followers than letting them see and hear you.

3 steps to camera confidence

Ready to feel less video camera shy? Feeling confident on camera will actually make the time you spend on social more fulfilling.

Here’s a step-by-step plan to help you grow your confidence and get comfortable showing up on social media.

1. Start small.

Think of a topic you know inside and out: why you decided to self-publish, the benefits of publishing on demand, why you love to write at your kitchen table, the best YA book you ever read.

2. Rehearse.

Jot down a few lines about this topic, no more than three to start. Read them aloud in a conversational tone, as many times as necessary to sound fluid and conversational. Try speaking into the mirror or to a friend.

3. Speak on camera.

Use your phone’s reverse feature to train the lens on yourself and capture a video of you speaking the lines. Play it back, checking for good eye contact with the camera and that there are no visual distractions in the background. Re-record as needed.

Pro tip: Make eye contact with the camera lens, not with your own reflection. That way it will appear that you are speaking directly to your listener.

Getting on camera, without getting on camera

To get my clients comfortable with this, I suggest they try a couple of approaches that help them slowly move into that full-on, talking head visual that so many are so good at, but others find intimidating. Here’s what I recommend to them and you.

Start with stills.

Just as you walk before you run, try sharing a selfie before a video clip of you speaking.

Partially obscure your face.

It might feel less intimidating to peek out from behind a prop – an N95 mask, a hat, a plant, a laptop lid – in your first selfie or first video.

Blur it.

Tilt Shift, Portrait mode and other settings allow us to make part of our image blurry, while rendering another part more crisply.

Voiceover.

Many social media platforms have a voiceover feature that let you narrate a process – reviewing galleys, say, or writing an outline for an article, making your morning coffee, taking your afternoon stroll to clear out writers’ block.

Props for props!

Speaking of props, they tick a lot of boxes. Just a few:

They add instant flavor and personality to your social media content. How about:

• A hat or other article of clothing
• A mascot, like a pet or a goldfish
• Something that reflects your brand colors
• The cover of your last book

They can convey a message without your having to say it aloud. How about:

• A political poster, current or vintage, that hints at or makes obvious your affiliation
• A religious symbol
• A view out your window to the city or rural setting where you live or work

They can be used as a signature piece in all your content for continuity. Consider:

• A slogan
• A sign
• A memento
• A location
• A piece of wall art

Breathe!

Whatever method you use as you begin to show your face little by little on your feeds, a key thing to remember is one of the simplest, and that is this: Take a deep breath. You’ve got this – or, perhaps more accurately, you will get this.

Giving your followers a window into who you are and what makes you tick as a writer can be one of the most fun parts of social media.

Remember: your followers are already interested in you and what you have to say. As you let them see and hear you, the quality of your interactions with them will only grow richer.

Are you using video in your book marketing? Tell us about it in a comment! And if you aren’t, what’s holding you back? Maybe we can help.

I was so impressed with Amy Rogers Nazarov when we were on a DIY book marketing conference panel together last month that I asked her to write a “how to master social media” guest post for us. Amy is a former journalist who teaches people how to use social media more effectively, with less scrolling and more serendipity. Before she launched Spark: Social Media Strategy in 2014, she was both a freelance and  staff writer. Her byline has appeared in Cooking Light, Slate, The Washington Post, and American Songwriter among many others. Be sure to check out her affordable course, Seven Easy Social Media Hacks for Entrepreneurs & Creatives, especially if you find her article helpful.

Let’s get engaged: How to use social media effectively

By Amy Rogers Nazarov

Today’s authors and writers have available to them a free and fantastic tool their counterparts a generation ago could only have dreamed of.

It is a bottomless resource of inspiration, prospective readers, generous colleagues, tips on editing and selling, leads on relevant podcasts, and a great deal more.

This free tool is social media.

And whether or not you are just beginning to explore it or have been making TikToks since the platform launched, I promise you that by intentionally engaging with followers on any social media platform, you will derive a host of benefits, from unexpected support from strangers to an idea for your next book.

What is “engagement?”

Let’s talk about that word “engagement” for a second. This is the key to all of the potential goodness waiting to be unlocked. What exactly does engagement mean where social media is concerned?

I’d sum it up this way: When we engage with others on social media, we are being a bunch of different things, such as:

• Responsive
• Conversational
• Reflective
• Curious

We are also doing several things, such as:

• Teaching
• Guiding
• Questioning
• Connecting

The dreaded boring dinner party guest

Yet in the absence of these behaviors and traits, we show up on social media as a virtual version of the tedious guest you hate to be seated next to at a dinner party: the one who goes on and on about their projects, their successes, their goals, their relationships, etc. and never once asks you about yours.

via GIPHY

It’s the kind of individual that has you dreaming up excuses to leave the gathering early. (“Sorry, Sheila, but I just got a call that my parakeet somehow escaped her cage, Gotta dash…”)

Ugh.

Online or off, don’t be the person that drives away dinner guests – or followers!

Trust me when I say your Instagram gallery or your Facebook page or your Twitter account will be much more fun to read, follow, and maintain when you are doing and being the things I just listed.

Like, comment, share, save

In practice, then, what does engagement look like?

It looks like answering a poll question on Twitter when an editor you follow posts it. It looks like weighing in on the pros and cons of newspaper paywalls, or on mergers in the New York publishing world.

Perhaps it will simply be saving an Instagram post that resonated with you to read more carefully later (note: Instagram lets you organize saved posts by topic, which makes them much easier to locate later.)

Engagement looks like following authors in your genre, or in the genre you aspire to. It might be posting thoughtful questions when an agent hosts an Instagram Live. It might be taking a stab at answering a question someone else posed.

Quality engagement = quality conversations

Through this type of engagement with others, you might be pleasantly surprised at the quality and depth of conversations with strangers as passionate about a topic as you are – and conversely disappointed by the lack of engagement with people you’ve known forever (one of my key arguments for only following, on any social platform, people and organizations who are squarely in your niche, not your Uncle Vernon. Save following him for your personal accounts!)

Best of all, engagement begets engagement. The more you thoughtfully engage, the more others will return the favor.

Generating content vs. engaging

My rule of thumb for the amount of content you create versus the amount of content you engage with: 1 to 5.

For every carousel ad you generate on Facebook, for every Reel you make on Insta, leave a comment, question, query or opinion on five other accounts. Not just strings of emojis, either, cute as rows of hearts and puppy faces may be. Type in actual words and sentences! As writers, this part should come pretty easily to us.

By the way, when followers engage with content originating from you, and you comment on their comments or answer their questions, that, too, counts as engagement!

Keep the conversation flowing in a couple different ways:

• Don’t “post and ghost.” Check back within a couple of hours on your latest posts to see if it has elicited responses from followers.
• Each time you add a comment, toss in a related question. “I see you’re a fan of Stephen King. What newer horror authors do you enjoy?”
• Loop in someone else. If you’re a food writer chatting with a journalist who covers the local food scene, tag a chef you know and invite them to join the conversation. You never know what kind of synergy this kind of additive approach to an online conversation will have.

Set a timer for 10 minutes

One of the best things about spending time on social media intentionally engaging with others is it will make your time there feel less burdensome and more serendipitous.

Try engaging for 10 minutes a day, maybe 15; set a timer if you have to in order to guard against slipping into a passive scroll.

I get that many people don’t like social media.*

While it’s certainly not without its problems, social media still enables all kinds of random and rich connections with the sort of readers, writers, and thinkers who will be intrigued by you, your work, your process, and your projects.

Go engage with a few of them today, and for the next month or so, and see what kinds of inspiration and connection you can discover. That might even convince you that it’s worth it to master social media.

What works best for you on social media? Please tell us in a comment.

(*Editor’s note: If, in spite of this excellent advice, you still have no interest in social media, take a look at my short training program, Book Marketing Without Social Media, on the Writing Blueprints site. They’re offering Build Book Buzz authors a $10 discount.)

She was terribly disappointed. In fact, it was clear she felt betrayed by the thousands in her social networks.

I understand her frustration.

Like so many other authors, she has heard lots about the importance of social media in book promotion. There’s a reasonable expectation that a chunk of those connections will buy your book, right?

Unfortunately, it’s an expectation that isn’t necessarily based on reality. And that’s why it’s important to manage your expectations.

Manage your expectations about social media

There are a couple of reasons why any author, but especially this author, might have unrealistic expectations about what’s possible with social media.

To begin with, social media algorithms are such that most of your followers don’t even see what you share about your book. This is especially true with Twitter. Blink once and your feed has all new tweets.

And if most of your connections come through your Facebook business page (which is not your profile), fuhgeddaboudit. The only way most will see anything there is if you pay to “boost” a post so it gets fed to more newsfeeds.

Just ask famous authors

In addition, the size of your social network isn’t an accurate predictor of your book’s success, as The New York Times points out in “Millions of Followers? For Book Sales, ‘It’s Unreliable.’ ”

For example, popular musician Billie Eilish has 97 million Instagram followers and 6 million Twitter followers, but only sold 64,000 copies of her book in the first six months.

But here’s there’s another even more important reason why the disappointed author’s social media followers didn’t buy her book: They weren’t interested in it.

Who’s in your networks?

Pretty simple, isn’t it?

This author’s social network is built around an impressive nonfiction body of work that has no connection to her novel. That’s why it’s unrealistic to expect that those she’s connected to for one type of writing will automatically be interested in anything she writes in a totally different arena.

It’s a reminder that you need to know your book’s target audience. They might not be your colleagues on LinkedIn or your high school classmates on Facebook.

Friends and family might disappoint, too

I also hear regularly from many authors who are crushed because too few of their friends and family are buying their books.

I feel their pain, believe me. Don’t get me started on how my siblings were too busy to watch me talk about my first book on national TV.

Some push their relatives to review their books on Amazon, then are annoyed when they don’t.

Your relatives are doing you a favor when they don’t review your book. Family reviews violate Amazon’s review policy because relatives can’t be objective.

(Look at it this way: It’s one less opportunity for you to be disappointed.)

Try to be fair

If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll realize there’s a good chance your friends and family aren’t interested in what you’re writing about.

And, quite frankly, it’s unfair of you to expect them to spend their hard-earned dollars on something they won’t read.

You might think they should do it out of loyalty, or maybe curiosity, but I disagree. Judging by the number of authors who complain about close connections who don’t buy their books, I’m a bit of a lone voice here.

Continue to tell your friends, family, and social media connections about your books. It’s a smart thing to do, and it’s not a waste of time.

But don’t hold it against them when they don’t buy. They know what they enjoy reading, and it might not be what you write. It’s not personal — it’s life.

Manage your expectations about the marketplace

You also want to manage your expectations on a more macro level — the publishing universe.

Unless your book is on a very niche topic, it faces a lot of competition.

That means that yours has to be better. You also have to work to make sure the people you wrote it for know about it.

No overnight successes

Even with a great book and an exceptional marketing effort, most of us aren’t going to hit The New York Times best-seller list. Bona fide best sellers (as opposed to short-term Amazon category best sellers) are usually traditionally published books by authors with large, well-established audiences.

You’ll also be less stressed if you don’t see your book’s launch as the be-all and end-all.

Sure, do your best to introduce your book to your ideal readers as soon as it’s published, but don’t stop there. If you understand that this is a long process that only starts with a launch, your book sales are more likely to meet your expectations.

And please, try not to be angry or disappointed with people who aren’t as interested in your book as you’d like. Writing, producing, and marketing a book is hard enough. Protect yourself by avoiding that extra, toxic layer of resentment.

Focus instead on reaching your ideal readers. It’s the best use of your time.

Much of this is article is about understanding your book’s audience. Who do you think is most likely to buy your book?

(Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2014. It has been updated and expanded.)

While one of my missions is to help authors see that there’s more to book marketing than social media, I realize that many (if not most) use it as their primary marketing tool.

So if you’re going to focus on social media, you might as well use it effectively, right?

With that in mind, I read Secrets to Selling Books on Social Media: Social Media Marketing for Writers – How to Get Readers to Buy Your Book by Bethany Atazadeh and Mandi Lynn. Both are novelists who also offer products and programs for writers.

It’s the fourth in their five-book Marketing for Authors series of short, how-to guides on important book marketing topics.

What you’ll learn about selling books on social media

Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, this book offers you a framework for social media activity.

You’ll learn a few essential marketing principles. One is why quality is more important than quantity with your social media connections. Another is why you must focus your social media time on where it will do the most good.

And, if you’re a nonfiction author, you’ll learn about why your audience needs to know, like, and trust you.

What I absolutely love about this book is its specificity with regards to what you should post and how to create that content. It includes:

• Three sales formulas you can use to create posts
• Templates for your postings
• Instructions for creating a content calendar

You’ll find the formulas, templates, and examples in the second half of the book so if you’re something of a social media power user already, you can skip right to that.

A few things to be aware of

Some of what’s in this book made me think, “Hmmmm….”

Selecting the right network for selling books on social media

The authors recommend that you put your effort into mastering and using a single social network. I’ve offered that same advice here and elsewhere many times.

In my course on how to figure out and find your target audience, you learn how to uncover details about your target audience. With that information, you use audience and social network demographics to determine which platforms they use. The course provides demographic information about  each network’s users.

This book mentions in passing that younger readers use Instagram and TikTok and aren’t on Facebook. But other than that, they don’t directly recommend comparing your reader’s characteristics with each social network’s users.

Instead, they recommend selecting the social network you’ll focus on based on what you enjoy doing.

That’s a big part of success, of course. You’ll spend more time on any platform that’s inherently easier for you to use. But if you head to TikTok because you love making videos, you won’t accomplish much for your books if your readers aren’t there.

You want to find the intersection between your skills and the platform most used by your readers.

Social media income

The authors suggest that authors who learn how to sell books using social media will earn more money than social media influencers.

Referring to authors as “entrepreneurs,” the book says that “Entrepreneurs have it slightly easier [than influencers], because the profit margin is naturally a lot larger than affiliate sales would be, since they’re the creator of the product.”

I’m not sure that logic applies to “entrepreneur” authors selling e-books, the least expensive book format.

In addition, the co-authors sell training programs and other products to writers. I think their work to build a following on social media among writers rather than readers skews things a bit.

Fact is, legitimate (vs. wannabe) Instagram influencers make money in a variety of ways that include sponsorships and affiliate marketing. A recent Wall Street Journal article features a 19-year-old college student who earns as much as $30,000 a month as a TikTok influencer, thanks to brand sponsorships and TikTok’s Creator Fund.

BusinessInsider reports that one Instagram influencer with more than one million followers charges $1,000 for a sponsored story. Another “micro influencer” with a smaller audience earns $100 for the same.

How many books would you have to sell to earn $1,000 in royalties from an Instagram story? Or $100 worth? And will you earn that much from most of your stories?

Sure, some social media influencers earn next to nothing. You can say that about lots of authors, too.

The personal touch

This book offers excellent guidance on how to craft a social media post that will help you sell in a non-salesy way.

At the same time, I got the impression that the authors think you should be focused on selling 100% of the time.

Even when the selling is subtle, I don’t recommend that you sell in all of your posts. I think it works better when you fold in some slice-of-life content, too.

But if you do follow their advice, consider having two accounts for your chosen network – one for your author career and another for your personal life.

Your book is key

Secrets to Selling Books on Social Media doesn’t mention the elephant in the room, either – a book’s quality.

Their advice will help you write persuasive social media posts, but if readers are turned off by an amateurish cover or other flaws, you’ll struggle to sell books.

I recommend Secrets to Selling Books on Social Media

I realize I’ve covered several downsides to the book, but the upsides outweigh what I see as missing or flawed content.

I can’t think of a single author who wouldn’t appreciate the sales formulas, post templates, and sample posts. For those alone, I think this book is a great investment for your book marketing library.

Learn more about Secrets to Selling Books on Social Media: Social Media Marketing for Writers – How to Get Readers to Buy Your Book and the other books in the series on its Amazon sales page.

What’s your favorite book marketing book or course? Please tell us in a comment.

Because they’re so reliant on social networks, it’s extra important that they use them effectively. And yet, so many don’t.

Whether you use social media exclusively or incorporate other strategies into your book marketing calendar, be aware of these three “don’t do” tactics.

1. Posting the same content, word-for-word, across all platforms.

Do you post the exact same language and image on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.? Social scheduling tools make it easy to do that, but it doesn’t mean you should.

Let’s use sharing from Instagram to Facebook as an example. Many people do this because Instagram’s owner, Facebook, makes it easy to do so . Here are a few reasons why you want to be careful with this:

• If you have the same connections on both platforms, they’re seeing the same content twice. Is that your goal? Or would you rather use the overlapping audiences to share two messages instead of one?
• The tagging – when you include the Instagram name of people or brands or businesses or locations – looks different on Facebook. That renders it useless and out of context when the post is shared to Facebook.
• When you’ve included tagging, it’s obvious that you’ve posted on Instagram first. That suggests to Facebook connections that they aren’t your most important audience. Like, maybe, they’re an after-thought. Again, is that your goal?
• If your Facebook post privacy setting is set to “friends only,” only people you’re already connected to will find your Instagram-to-Facebook posts by searching for the hashtags used in the original Instagram post. That means that unless you use the “public” setting on Facebook, Instagram hashtagging won’t lead anyone new to you. (And when’s the last time you searched for hashtags on Facebook, anyway?)

via GIPHY

The tagging problems show up when you post text with Twitter tags to LinkedIn, too.

Instagram image issues

Sharing images across platforms with social scheduling tools can also lead to wonky Instagram shares. Most social networks don’t require images to be a certain shape, so they look the same on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Not so with Instagram. If the image you upload there isn’t square, the software turns it into a square for you (unless you make a manual tweak, but we’re not talking about that here). Here’s what it looks like when using a scheduling tool to post a rectangular image to Instagram at the same time you share it on other networks:

Not pretty, is it?

Personality plus

In addition, each social network has its own personality and purpose. That means you should tailor images and text for each.

Think of it this way: Imagine you have four children. Are their personalities all the same? Does what motivates one motivate all? Do you treat all of them the same, or do you relate to each as an individual?

It works that way with social networks, too.

2. Blogging on Facebook and Instagram to establish thought leadership.

Facebook and Instagram aren’t long-form content platforms. That means that users aren’t expecting (or hoping for) 600-word essays.

But it’s not just that. If you’re looking to establish yourself as an expert or gain a following for your opinions, you’re more likely to achieve that goal with a blog. Here’s why:

• It’s easier to share a link to that “here’s what I think about that” essay on your blog than it is to share it on other social networks when you’re blogging on Facebook or Instagram. The harder you make it for people to share your content on other social networks, the less likely they are to do it.
• Blogging on your website lets you easily build an opt-in email list by capturing email addresses as people read your articles. With social networks, you have to place a link to your website page with the opt-in form in a post or your profile bio to collect email addresses. Because it adds an extra step or two, fans are less likely to take action.
• If Facebook or Instagram disappears tomorrow, your content and connections will disappear with it. If you write to display leadership or expertise, own your content and your fans’ information by keeping it under your own roof.

There are exceptions to this, of course. My favorite is Humans of NY on Instagram. If you have a unique concept that you can sustain and that will attract an audience, then go for it. But most of us will do best by leveraging a blog’s flexibility and functions.

Blogging on LinkedIn

LinkedIn, on the other hand encourages you to blog there. It’s a smart strategy for authors targeting the LinkedIn business crowd.

I generally recommend keeping all original content on your website blog and re-purposing those articles into new-ish pieces for LinkedIn.

3. Ignoring social media’s potential for community building.

There’s a reason why these platforms are called “social” media and “social” networks. It’s because they’re supposed to be . . . social.

It’s so easy to drop in and post something, then disappear. I’m guilty of that myself now and then because of time limitations.

But posting and running keeps you from making important connections and building a network, which is what social media is all about.

Rather than have a shallow presence over many networks, pick just one or two and dig in. Here are just a few things to consider if you’d like to build a rewarding online community:

• Ask questions in your posts.
• Respond to comments on your posts – and use the commenter’s name when you do so they feel seen.
• Support other authors by sharing and commenting on their content. Lift them up.
• When you get a new follower, ask them a few questions that help you get to know them better.
• Comment on your connections’ posts. Get a conversation going.

You’ll find that when you focus less on what you want to communicate and more on what you can learn from others, you’ll not only get more out of that platform, you’ll enjoy your time there more, too.

How do you use social media in ways that work? Please share your tips in a comment.

I received more excellent advice than I could use in my assigned article, but there’s no need for it to go to waste, right?

Today’s article shares the “overflow” social media tips. After all, authors who want to sell books are small business owners, too. The advice below will help you use your social media marketing time more efficiently and effectively.

9 social media tips you can use

Here’s advice from the pros in no special order.

Don’t limit the images you use to stock photos.

Use original photos at least some of the time. “Your followers want to see behind the scenes. They want to see the face of the brand,” says Melanie Herschorn of VIP Business Connection.

Study your competitors.

This will help you better understand what works well with your audience – and what doesn’t.

“If your competitors are not fully leveraging specific social platforms, then you can double your efforts on those networks. The goal of the analysis is to gather insights and adapt and improve upon your competitors’ strategies to create your own,” says Hardeep Johar of Stone & Tiles Shoppe.

If you use Instagram, develop an “aesthetic” for your posts.

“It is very helpful when it comes to ‘the look’ of how your account appears,” says Tijania Goodwin of Events 2 the Tee. As an example, she suggests using the same filter on all images.

If you create “quote cards” – images with quotes – that might mean using your website or book cover colors.

When sharing content on multiple platforms, change the content to fit the platform.

For example, if you’re announcing that your book is on sale for a limited time, what you share on Facebook shouldn’t be exactly the same as what you post on Twitter.

“Don’t use cross-posting functionality. It seems like a great idea to connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts so you post once and it goes both places, but don’t. You need to create content that will resonate with each of the platforms’ audiences, and seeing those fb.me links on Twitter can come off as unprofessional and sloppy,” says Patrick Gillooly at Constant Contact (that’s my affiliate link because I use and recommend this email marketing service).

Expect to advertise.

If you’ve got a Facebook business page, you already know that few of your followers see your posts organically.

“Thanks to Facebook’s prioritization of friend-to-friend content, brands have to work way harder to experience the same kind of reach and engagement they used to receive. In order to reach your audience, it is likely you will have to devote a media budget to promoting your social efforts,” says James Clark of Room 214, Inc.

Use tools.

Norhanie Pangulima of Gigworker recommends these tools:

• BuzzSumo for content research and analytics
• Google Keyword Planner for keyword research and analysis
• Hootsuite for social media posting, responding, and scheduling

Nikola Baldikov at Brosix likes ViralContentBee, which helps get more attention for your posts.

Include a call to action.

A call to action – “CTA” in marketing speak – in your content tells your audience what you want them to do next.

Noting that this “simple piece” is often overlooked, Meg Prejzner of Hackett Brand Consulting says, “A CTA can really drive strong results.”

Post video.

Many of the experts I heard from advocate using video because people like it, but I have to admit, I’m not good at this. Seeing myself just yakking away simply does not appeal to me.

So . . . don’t use me as your role model for video. Listen to the pros like Rich Cardona of Rich Cardona Media, who says, “Social media audiences are looking for real people, doing real things, and who aren’t online simply to sell. People want to see how you interact, how you feel most days. Foster a community of fans in your industry by showing up on video often and consistently.”

Test and monitor your content.

What does your audience respond to? What doesn’t get likes, shares, or comments? Monitor reactions so you know what works and what doesn’t.

“Trying out different types of posts allows you to find out more about the people who are engaging with you. After you’ve learned what posts tend to generate the best results and what audiences are the most responsive, then a paid ad can help maximize the return on investment,” says Femke Lenstra of Vistaprint.

Take action!

(Do you see what I did there? That’s a not-so-subtle call to action!)

There’s a lot of wisdom here. When my article with more tips goes online, I’ll link to it here, too, so be sure to come back for that.

Right now, though, which of these concepts will you apply to your book marketing today? Which will wait for later?

Please tell us in a comment what social media tactics are working for you now. Your input might inspire another author! 

They understand how social media works and they use it effectively.

For example, they know that each social media site has its own personality, so they don’t share the same content across all networks. Each post is tweaked according to the social media platform’s unique needs.

I’m also seeing a lot of book launch mistakes on social media.

This can turn into a real issue for authors making several of them because it can kill their connections quickly.

Here are the three I’m seeing most often, along with suggestions for turning them around.

1. Every single thing you post on every single platform is about your book.

Every. Single. Thing.

I’m interested in your new book. Really, I am. I am all about books and your books in particular.

But I’m connected to you on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and all I’m seeing from you is how excited you are that your book will soon be published/is being published today/was just published.

People will tolerate that for a few days, but three weeks of nothing but new book posts is pretty intense.

At first, we might think, “Oh, that’s interesting! I’ll have to check it out.” As we see more and more posts, we start to think, “Is that all you’ve got going on these days?” Eventually, we disconnect from you because of the constant repetition.

During your book launch period, share some of the content you usually share, too, so you’re not a one trick pony.

Maddie Daws, the pen name of best-selling author Sandi Kahn Shelton, is an example of somebody who has this figured out. Her Instagram account has a nice mix of book and everyday life content as she approaches the launch of a book that is part of Amazon’s May “First Reads” program for Prime subscribers.

2. You’re doing what everyone else is doing.

Classic example: The “OMG My First Case of Books Arrived” video post. One I saw recently went on for at least five minutes. That was four minutes and 30 seconds too long.

If you’re doing it because you’re certain that your network truly can’t wait to see you cut open a box of books, then go for it.

But if you’re doing it because everyone else is doing it, don’t. Try something different to capture interest and attention.

Start by asking yourself: “What does my audience need to know about this book?” or “What about this book will excite my readers?”

3. You aren’t helping us help you.

We want to help you let the world know about your wonderful new book, but we’re all pressed for time, ya know?

So, when you ask, “Can you help me spread the word about my book?,” give us the tools we need to do that.

Please provide:

• A short book description so we can describe it accurately
• Sample tweets and Facebook posts
• A few social media graphics we can share
• A link to your book on your preferred retail site or to your list of purchase site options on your website

When my friend Monica Bhide asked me to support her new book, Read. Write. Reflect., she also provided a social media graphic with a pre-publication blurb I had written (see below). This made it easy for me to promote her book on the social networks where I’m active — all I had to do was add some text that reinforced my testimonial, grab an Amazon link, and post with the image.

The more you help us help you, the more we can do to support you.

Everything in moderation

To help keep your network engaged, learn what works on the various platforms you’re using and create custom content on each so there’s less overlap (and network burnout). Then, create a mix of everyday life and book launch posts so what you share isn’t such a dramatic change from your routine when you don’t have a new book.

Finally, remember that everything doesn’t have to happen during the small window of time surrounding publication date. You should be promoting your book as long as it’s available for sale. If you burn out your audience during the launch, you’ll have many fewer connections to promote to later, when it’s just as important.

What’s the one thing you’ve done on social media during a book launch that you think has had the greatest impact?

If you are, I’d like to use my Instagram business account to give your book some attention.

I’m about to make a few changes to that account that were inspired by Hilary Rushford’s “Free Instagram Class” on how small businesses can use that social network more effectively. I tuned in to last week’s webinar specifically because I wanted to start doing more with my Instagram business account and was looking for inspiration.

I got it.

What I’ve been doing on Instagram

I’ve used my business account (versus my personal account) to consistently post my weekly blog image and occasionally post an image that reminds people that I’m not a blogging robot.

It’s lame.

I know that.

Hilary’s webinar gave me ideas about what I could be doing differently. One of the best “ahas!” I got from the free training was that I should view the images on my profile as a collage of photos that needs to be visually balanced.

This screenshot below from my Instagram profile about a year and a half ago is a good example of what you don’t want to do — every post but one is an image with text. Most of those text images come from  blog posts.

It’s monotonous. There’s no visual variety.

What I’m going to do now

In order to figure out what types of images I can and should be sharing so I get both the requisite visual variety and relevant content for my Build Book Buzz brand, I needed to think about my purpose on that platform.

My goal here and on every social network I use is to help authors learn how to market their books.

I usually do that by providing links to helpful information online but that’s not possible with Instagram. Links are only clickable in profile descriptions and ads. So . . . I had to look at this network differently.

I had to shift away from providing how-to information to supporting authors in another way.

The solution is obvious by now, right?

I want to share images of your books!

By doing that with the full titles in the accompanying text (caption), I can bring more awareness to them.

Will it rock your world? Nope. Will it help you? Who knows? Will it hurt your book. No way!

Here’s what I’d like you to do

Will you let me to support your book with my Instagram account?

If yes, here’s what I’d like you to do — and please follow these instructions carefully:

1. Follow my business account. Find me on the Instagram app by searching for “Build Book Buzz” or “BuildBookBuzz.” This is required. I will follow you back. Followers mean book exposure.
2. Send me an email message with the subject line: Instagram. Click here to send the message. Attach a photo of your book cover. (Link not working for you? Email address is on about/contact page.) It can be just the book cover, you and your book, whatever — just make sure that the book is the main attraction. In the message, provide the full book title and your Instagram profile name so I can find and tag you easily.
3. Follow the instructions in steps 1 and 2 carefully. I’ve set up an email rule so that all messages with an “Instagram” subject line go into a specific folder. If you don’t send what’s requested and I have to contact you, we will both be disappointed in resulting delays.
4. Watch my Instagram feed for your book. Consider sharing it with your connections, too, so you have what marketers call “social proof” that people are talking about your book.

Note that if you don’t use Instagram, I won’t be able to share your book cover and title.

Thank you for helping me start using my account in a way that helps you. I appreciate it.

How do you use Instagram for book promotion? Tell us in a comment.

Our guest blogger today is Chris Syme, principal of the award-winning agency, CKSyme Media Group. She is a former university media relations professional, a frequent speaker, and the author of the popular SMART Marketing For Authors book series. She is also the co-host of Smart Pants Book Marketing podcast. Her new book, The Newbie’s Guide to Sell More Books With Less Marketing, is available for at a special pre-order price of $.99 until June 5. 

Three keys to selling more books with social media

By Chris Syme

There are hundreds of social media networking sites on the Internet. Of those, there are 10 or so that most people can identify. Five years ago it was pretty easy to be found and followed on social media. Now the Internet is bulging with information.

This proliferation of bits and bytes has caused some authors to throw up their arms and declare that selling books on social media is not possible. But the keys to selling more books with social media are not about doing more, but doing less.

Key #1: Win the right to sell: Engage first, sell second

Social media content gives us an unprecedented opportunity to build loyalty, trust, and endearment like no other platform out there. And that loyalty translates into more sales. How do you do that? In the book Content Code, author Mark Schaefer concluded that, “Heroic brands, or businesses that people love, exceed customer expectations and stand for something other than selling stuff.”

Social media’s strength is connecting people. In my new book The Newbie’s Guide To Sell More Books With Less Marketing, I teach one golden rule of selling on social media: You must engage where you want to sell. These two are inextricably linked. You will not sell successfully without engaging first.

Here lies the conundrum. How can you do both?

The answer is to follow The 80-20 content rule.

The 80-20 content rule simply states: To sell books with online media, 80 percent of your posts must give something valuable to your fans and 20 percent should ask for a sale. The rule is based on a long-established marketing principle called the law of reciprocity. Show yourself to be a source of value and people will want to buy your books. Not only that, they will recommend them to their friends as well.

Jay Baer said it this way: “Smart marketing is based on help, not hype.”

Key #2: Go narrow for more engagement

Let’s start with a look at data.

According to Pew Internet Research, the majority of people on social media interact on more than one channel. The most common overlaps are Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Facebook users make up a whopping 72 percent of the adult online population. The other two have less than 30 percent. Facebook’s demographics are the best across the categories of age, gender, education, ethnicity, and location. Facebook is indeed king of the social media universe.

And the good news is, Facebook has the second highest ability to help new readers discover you and to sell products—surpassed only by YouTube (AOL Platforms).

Choose a primary channel for engagement

Three of the major social media channels now have engagement-restricting algorithms: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. That means they have a formula that chooses how many of your fans get to see your posts. As a percentage of your fans start to engage with your posts, they send the post out to more of your fans.

So instead of reaching a small portion of your fans on many channels, I encourage authors to spend time and money sticking to one channel that has the best overall ability to reach the majority of their fans. For 90 percent of authors, that venue is a Facebook business page. Some call it a Facebook author page.

Choosing one primary channel for fan engagement will boost your engagement rate. I’ve seen it happen time and again to students in my online classes. Instead of spreading themselves paper thin across several social media channels, they narrow their focus to one primary channel and build a strong engaging presence that creates the best sales environment.

The rest of the social media channels become outposts where you redirect fans to the channel where you are engaging with a holding message or graphic. You don’t engage on an outpost, just redirect.

Key #3: All social media channels are not created equal

According to marketing research done by AOL Platforms, there are only a couple of social media channels that are any good at selling anything. One is YouTube and the other is Facebook. Of the six main channels measured, Twitter was at the bottom when it came to aiding discovery and ability to sell.

Facebook is wired to help you sell. It has a number of tools to help:

• Shop tab that operates as a one-click bookstore on your business page.
• Advertising options from inexpensive boosted posts to full-blown campaigns.
• Ability to embed email sign-up forms with direct integration to the most popular email providers.
• Call-to-action buttons that host a variety of conversion actions.

According to Marketing Week, 26 percent of Facebook users say they are looking for something to buy there. The next channel in line, Instagram, only boasts 8 percent and Pinterest is at 6 percent.

I would be the first to admit you can sell books on any social media channel if you work at it hard enough. But if you’re looking to get the maximum ROTI (return on time investment) I would put my money on Facebook burying all the rest.

What’s working for you on social media? Tell us in a comment. 

Tip of the Month

I always share a “Tip of the Month,” a free resource or tool for authors, on the last Wednesday of the month.

Most of you who blog know by now that it’s important to use high-quality images in your posts. There are several reasons for this, but the primary one is that images make your posts more visually appealing.

My favorite source of paid images recently changes its terms, which sent me looking for an alternative source of images. While looking for paid image sources, I stumbled upon an excellent free source: LibreStock.

LibreStock is a search engine that scans and indexes stock photos from more than 40 websites. Type in your search term and get free. high-quality. stock photos.

All the photos indexed on LibreStock are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, which means you can use these pictures freely for any legal purpose.

Learn more at the LibreStock site.

10 terrible social media myths authors should avoid

By Chris Syme

When it comes to social media, it seems like we will believe just about anything. If we see it on the Internet it must be true, right?

Much of what we’ve come to think about social media is just wrong. It’s time to tear down those tips and tricks that people keep telling us and close the door on bad social media advice.

Sometimes it’s obvious that some practices are wrong; other times not so much—especially if we see them over and over again online.

In order to produce content that people will love enough to pass on to others, we need to clear the table of bad practices so our fans can see the real value in what we post on social media.

If you see yourself in any of these 10 myths, take heart. We’ve all been there. I want to challenge you to challenge yourself. Together, we can stamp out these terrible social media myths.

1. Copying and pasting the same content word-for-word on all my social media channels will help my message reach more people.

This myth basically infers that all social media audiences are created equal.

Today, if you post the same message verbatim on every social media channel, people will think you are lazy and ignorant.

Every channel has its own demographics and channel culture. If you go to a black tie dinner wearing your yoga pants and sweatshirt, people will know you didn’t take time to understand where you were going. You’ll stand out and not in a good way.

Learn how to reframe your message in the channel culture’s frame. This fun infographic from instamom.com does a fantastic job explaining how your social media messages should differ in approach.

And don’t forget age demographics. Some channels have younger audiences and require a different approach. If the channel’s target demographic isn’t in your audience, you are really wasting your time there anyway.

2. The more hashtags I stuff in a tweet, the more people I will reach.

There are just so many ways this is wrong.

Hashtags have strengths, but stuffing is not one. I could list a million reasons but I’ll just stick to data. In 2014, Buffer published data from an extensive study by Buddy Media to find out the exact science of how hashtags affect a social media post. They found that tweets with hashtags receive two times more engagement than those without.

But more is not better. After two hashtags, engagement levels started to drop off drastically. Bottom line: a post full of hashtags is never a message, it is a distraction.

3. I need to join every social network to reach more people.

This myth violates a couple basic principles of effective marketing:

• Your marketing has to be manageable to be effective. You need to be able to write, promote your books, and have a life. It won’t happen if you spread yourself too thin.
• You want to key in on the channels where your readers are and develop an effective audience there. You don’t want to necessarily reach more people, you want to reach the right people. Facebook is the only platform out there that has enough range in demographics and captures enough online traffic to justify saying everyone should be there. After that, it’s iffy.

For marketing purposes, it is not enough to just join a network. You have to be working at producing engaging content and building loyal relationships wherever you are.

Be smart about which networks you use. Some may return much less than the amount of effort you are putting in.

4. Buying followers and fans will help me sell more books.

There are several reasons buying followers is a waste of your money. Besides being unethical, here are a couple:

• “Followers for dollars” are not qualified customers. Heck, they may not even be real people. Chances are very high they are not your targeted audience.
• Buying followers just increases your reach (number of people that might qualify to see your posts). Reach is a low-level goal. And it is a no-level goal if the followers you bought don’t care about what you have to say.

Note: There is something to be said for the credibility of having lots of followers but today everyone knows that people are buying followers and scamming for auto follows, so who are you trying to fool? Concentrate on engaging the number you have and they will grow organically.

You can run contests and giveaways to increase your qualified followers (people who want your books). I would rather have 1,000 people who like to read my kind of books than 10,000 bots and fake followers who will never buy one book.

5. Social media will not help me sell any books.

This is a particularly common misconception for authors. If done correctly, social media does help sell books.

The problem with this myth is that represents a misunderstanding of the benefits of social media marketing. Authors have two basic needs when it comes to marketing: sell more books and build a dedicated fan base. Social media is better at the second but it can certainly do the first.

6. Social media results cannot be measured.

Social media can certainly be measured, but you need something to measure first.

What is your goal? Increase followers? Build an advance reader team? Increase sales with a launch campaign? Build an email list?

Most people don’t know how to match goals to measurement. But don’t worry—this can all be learned. The backbone of good marketing is a plan. If you have a plan that includes goals, measurements, strategies, and tactics, you will know exactly what you are measuring.

If you are just playing darts with a blindfold on, even if you hit the bullseye, you won’t know how you got there.

7. Social media is only for young people.

This myth is easily busted with data. Just take a look at the latest data from Pew Internet Research, the top internet research organization in the world.

A whopping 71 percent of American adults online use social media—53 percent of them use more than one network. As of last year, for the first time in history, the majority of online adults over age 65 now use social media. The 18-29 group has the highest percentage at 90 percent, but all age groups are on social media now. The 30-49 age group is second at 70 percent of online adults.

This myth is a lame argument anymore.

8. I am too old to learn how to use social media.

This myth is vaguely related to number seven.

Social media savvy is not the domain of the young. If you are adept enough to write books, you can certainly learn how to use social media.

The trick is finding help learning how to do it right. Find some resources you can trust. Take some free online webinars from trusted sources, follow bloggers who know what they’re talking about, and network with other authors who are in your same boat. I think the really intimidating piece here is the learning curve. But once you get around the curve, the road is pretty straight.

9. Social media is free.

Boy I wish. Most of the platforms are free to use but maintaining a consistent presence takes time and resources, and sometimes money. You know the old saying, time is money. And time will be your biggest cost.

In addition, email providers, website hosting, images, and advertisements all cost money. Although it is possible to do social media well on a shoestring, reaching a wider audience often costs money. The good news is, there are ways to control your budget and still be successful.

10. Social media is a soap box for me to sell my books.

I don’t know if anyone really says this, but they certainly act it out. If all you do on social media is tweet or post “Buy my book” then you are failing. If you sell a handful of books with this method, think of how many you could sell if you actually built a platform to sell more books and develop a dedicated fan base.

The formula for selling on social media is “you have to earn the right to sell.” You do that by producing entertaining, helpful content that shows people you care more about them than you do about selling books. It doesn’t matter if you write fiction or nonfiction, this is still the formula.

What can you do to bust some of these myths in your own social media today? Share your thoughts in a comment below!