Dear Author, you are here to get your hard work recognized by the billions of people using social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. You came to the right article, we work with numerous authors that want to expand their reach and ultimately bring in those sales they desire. We dig into a transparent approach to ways that allow you to grow your social presence on these platforms and bring your literature into the right eyes.
Using Instagram For Authors
I will assume most of you reading this have dipped their toes into Instagram already and are familiar to how it works. Many authors have taken to Instagram, expanding their brand, and letting readers learn more about them than what they write or blog about. You can use this to your advantage by letting your audience get to know you on a personal level, essentially becoming your own influencer for your work.
With this being said, make a schedule to when you will be posting your content, sometimes you need to break out of your comfort zone but life will reward you.
We typically see the best results when posting for clients are times ranging from 12pm, 3pm and 5-6pm... even 2am. The reason for 2am is that you will be the first post your viewers will see when first checking on Instagram.
Using a scheduling application or hiring a Instagram manager to do this for you will go a long way to your longevity on this platform. This is not a get famous quick plan, building a social presence on any platform takes time and hard work.
Below I will tell you some key points to write down in order for you to expand your Instagram presence:
Choose a posting frequency and stick to it. Being consistent will keep your followers consistent as well.
Cross-promote from other channels. Network with your Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, and Snapchat followers to check you out on Instagram.
Create a photo theme by creating consistency in theme by using the same font, filters, and cropping style.
Use hashtags related to the writing sphere. (Create different lists)
Use emojis on captions. (Don't go overboard with this)
Do giveaways regularly.
Create quote images.
Share your followers’ posts.
Include faces in some of your images.
Share Instagram posts to Facebook.
Using Instagram Stories To Connect & Promote
People enjoy the Instagram story feature because it allows for everyone to connect with each other. Such as showing a subtle way of saying hello, or approving of the actual story... all this is an essential way that allows for you to let people see the brilliant author you truly are.
Make engaging story posts, such as your latest book that you are working on, the blog that you have been writing, the instrument you are learning to play, the song you love, the list goes on. This causes not only a great connection to your audience but also a positive word of mouth that can be spread like wild fire if used correctly.
Another key note into using Instagram stories to promote your work, is using hashtags on your story post. Do not staple on a plethora of hashtags to your post, it will just look sloppy and obnoxious. Play around with the hashtags you put on your post and try to limit two or three of them. Eventually, you will find one that works best for you and strike gold. Some of our clients reach 1-10 thousand views on a single story post alone! That is great amount of traffic!
Below are Hashtags you can use for the optimal results, we saved you the time of looking up these up!
Facebook For Authors
Facebook and Instagram are essentially the same animal and run the same, other than Instagram using images as a focal point more than Facebook. As an author you want to get your social media platforms up and running as soon as possible. This leads to poor set up tactics and details being overlooked. Make sure to get your page fully optimized, if you do not know how, contact us and we will help.
For example, a good tip to use if you have your writing on a online store such as Amazon, you could put a link of your listing on Facebook or Instagram to drive direct traffic...this can lead to awareness of your work and of course, a potential purchase. Just make sure if you are going to run paid ads on any of these platforms and you are trying to use Amazon as your base of selling... make sure to have a good amount of reviews first. We dive in much deeper in this article about selling on Amazon.
We also are highly specialized in selling on Amazon and we have multi-platforms deals that allow us to work with you across your social media platforms and Amazon to double and even triple sales. Check us out.
Understanding Facebook Ads
While Facebook ads for authors are becoming increasingly competitive as more and more independent authors make use of them (and target the same audiences), they are still one of the best avenues to market a book. Such as all industries, everything is getting more and more competitive, so do not be discouraged. A saying I like to tell myself and clients is, "There are many bread brands in a grocery store aisle... there is always room for more to reap the fruits of your labor."
Facebook ads now show up in a multitude of places, which can be a good thing and bad. If you select “automatic placements” in your targeting criteria, Facebook will potentially show them in your target audience’s:
Desktop news feed
Desktop right sidebar
Instant articles
Mobile news feed
Instagram news feed
Messenger inbox
Depending on the length of your news feed text and headline, they might very well get cut off on mobile news feeds, desktop right column and instant articles. Instagram is a whole different game – Instagram = visual first.
By previewing your ads, you can already determine where your ads are not
going to convert or if the ads is cut off in anyway. With that being said you should manually select the placements that make sense for you.
Split Testing your ads on Facebook is fairly straightforward. It is an essential practice we do for out clients in order to achieve the best success for their goals.
Split Testing in its simplest form is the process where you create one Ad (let’s call it Ad A), then duplicate it (let’s call that Ad B), change the image or some wording in Ad B for something different to what is used in Ad A.
So the only thing that is different between Ad A and B is the image and some key wording. Once you have created Ad A and B, Facebook should now show both variants of your Ad equally to your target audience. From there you can then check your reports to see which ad is performing better. Rinse and repeat this process until you feel like you got the results you are satisfied. We never are so we continually change ads from time to time for you.
I hope this article served you right and you are ready to take on the challenge of advertising your work to the masses. It can be daunting but within time you will see the results.
We also made another article that could interest you, it will show you which social media platform you can benefit from the most. Check it out Here.