It doesn’t matter what you write or how you choose to publish; most authors agree on one thing: social media has redefined the way books are promoted today. You no longer need to rely on the traditional press system for a successful book launch. You’re no longer at the mercy of a publisher that chooses to promote your book to a certain group of bookstores, and you don’t need a million dollars in marketing money to reach your goals.
With a well-thought-out social media plan and a bit of creativity and effort, you can promote your book to millions of potential readers. However, what’s the best way to get started with social media when you want to promote your book? You don’t need to spend thousands of hours online to start using social media to promote your books effectively. We have outlined some of the best ways you can sell more books online with social media marketing.
1. Create a Facebook Community Around the Theme of Your Book
One of the best ways to promote your book online is to create a Facebook community around the theme of your book. When you create a Facebook Group for your book’s topic, you can easily bring together individuals who share a common interest. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you create a group for your book itself, even though you can do that. It’s a great technique for fiction writers and especially those who write series.
However, remember that you can also create a group that’s about the theme of your book. It could be natural wellness, entrepreneurship, epic fantasy, or sweet romance. These types of groups can attract more fans, but you’ll need to post content that isn’t directly related to your specific book, as it’s more about building community than about promoting a title.
To keep your group’s members engaged, you need to actively share posts and stories, start discussions around your book’s theme, host author cover reveals, and have fun conversations with like-minded readers and authors. Beyond creating a buzz for your book, such activities also help in networking, establishing relationships, and productive connections that may later turn into sales.
You can also take part in Facebook communities to build these relationships and can find many Facebook book groups where readers actively take part in discussions and share their thoughts.
2. Create an Author Website
No amount of social media exposure can substitute for a well-designed author website. Your author website is absolutely necessary to tie together all your branding or social media activities and give you maximum exposure. Don’t worry about creating a website, as you can easily hire a designer to create a targeted website for a very affordable price.
When it comes to their website, some authors prefer a clean, minimal website that simply provides some basic information about the author, their work, book summaries, contact info, an author’s bio page, media kit, purchase links for buying books, and social sharing buttons. Other authors prefer creating an elaborate website with an active blog covering various topics related to book writing.
Your blog can highlight the genres or subjects that you write about, sharing the inspiration behind your upcoming book and your passion as a storyteller. Regular blogging also helps you engage with readers, bringing more people to your website and introducing them to your work. You can also add a section for subscribing to your newsletter or encourage email signups to let you share regular updates with your readers.
People love feeling that they have a personal connection with an author. For this, you can add a comment section or contact form on your website. Be sure to always acknowledge your readers’ feedback and views as it gives them further importance and helps you establish a connection.
While it may seem obvious, you should include links to your social media profiles on your website. Many authors forget this simple task. However, you should give visitors an easy way to connect with you on social media.
3. Create an Author Fan Club
Another proven strategy to promote your books through social media is creating an author fan club on Facebook. This gives fans a dedicated community space where they feel more connected to the book and the author. With an author fan club, all your members get an opportunity to chat and ask questions in a closed setting. Most authors have successfully used this strategy to promote their book and actively connect with their fans.
One of the biggest benefits of creating an author fan club on social media is that it allows fans to connect and interact with authors on a personal level. Authors can also hold live video chats to answer fans’ questions and share promotional posts related to upcoming book releases. You can also host giveaways, where you offer free gifts or book downloads to keep your audience engaged.
4. Launch a Twitter Campaign
Twitter is a powerful marketing tool for promoting your book, and when used effectively, it can help you drive sales and reach the bestseller lists in no time. To get maximum results from your Twitter campaign, we will be sharing some tips to get you started:
· Keep the Book Title Short
Twitter is a tricky medium to master, as you don’t get many characters to promote your book. Therefore, keep the book title short and make it brief and catchy so that they are easier to tweet.
· Create a Unique #Hashtag
It’s a good idea to create a unique hashtag around your book title, as it allows you to mark keywords or topics within your tweets. It also lets other people create tweets that help promote your book and spread the word even more. When choosing a hashtag, it’s best to use a shortened form of your book title to be recognizable and relevant, which will help you create a buzz about your book.
Speaking of hashtags, it’s a good idea to learn the best hashtags to use for book marketing. You’ll need to uncover the hashtags that are genre-specific to your book. Plus it never hurts to add a general book marketing hashtag or two when you are posting about your book.
· Decide On a Landing Page
You need to decide on a landing page where you want to direct your followers for more information. It can be your author website or a product page on a retail website, like Amazon. If you offer your book at multiple retailers, you might want to make a landing page on your website that makes it easy for visitors to go to the retailer of their choice.
· Identify a Series of Tweetable Quotes from Your Book
Pick some short, insightful, and intriguing statements that make interesting tweets for promoting your book. However, don’t flood your followers with tweets, and only share about one or two promotional tweets in a day. Keep the rest of your tweets conversational, as you must not promoting all the time. Instead, engage with your readers about relevant topics, interesting news stories, tips and tricks, behind-the-scenes looks at your writing, and more.
5. Get Bloggers to Promote Your Book
Getting book bloggers to promote your book can greatly increase your success rate. Renowned book bloggers enjoy tens of thousands of followers, and your book can get fairly good exposure through blogging appearances. Asking influential book bloggers to do a book review for you and actively sharing that review on their social networking channels, like their Facebook page or Twitter account, can give your book a lot of traction.
Most authors have joined hands with popular book bloggers to get a book review and enjoyed a great response. Here are some of the things you can do to make the most of blogging opportunities:
· Share Permalinks on Social Media
To spread the word, share permalinks of bloggers’ reviews and posts on your social media accounts. For instance, when mentioning a new review, add ‘Read full blog’ with the permalink leading back to the original blog post.
· Use Short Snippets
Use short snippets from the blogs or reviews as tweets to generate more interest.
· Share with Blog Communities
You can promote new reviews and blog posts mentioning your book in several blog communities to get the word out. Think about sharing in Goodreads communities or your Facebook Groups.
· Add Video
Adding a short 30-second video to your blog post mention can do wonders for you. Consider adding a quick reaction video that shows you read the blogger’s reviews and share your excitement at their response to your book.
6. Create Shareable Content
To promote your book extensively on all social media platforms, you need to create a constant stream of content to keep your fans and followers hooked. The most popular content strategies used by authors are:
· Images
Visual marketing is more popular than ever. So, try to use a lot of images with your content to grab the attention of your audience. Using an image of a book cover is also a good idea, as everyone loves a great book cover. It’s an easy way to spread your book’s branding.
You don’t have to be an expert in Photoshop to create your own images. Many authors use tools such as Canva, Crello, and DesignBold. They each offer free accounts and templates to help you get started.
· Snippets
Use snippets or samples from your book or quotes from characters layered on catchy, Instagram ready images is another good idea to attract your fans. Once you’ve learned to use a design tool, you can make images with your snippets.
· Reviews
We all know that Amazon book reviews are important to give any new book more exposure. Share these reviews on all your social channels to create interest among your audience.
· Video Clips
When it comes to social media, videos are a huge hit with the audience. Create short video clips like an author interview or a fun video that showcases behind-the-scenes footage about the making of the book. You can also create video blog posts, book trailers, and more.
· Animated Covers
Another way to promote your book on social media is with an animated cover. An animated cover is often a short video or animated GIF that animates elements of your book cover and adds additional imagery. These are easy to share on social media and should definitely be added to your media kit on your author website.
Conclusion
Social media has limitless potential, whether you’re using it to promote your latest book, build a dedicated fan base, or strengthen ties with your audience. Failing to make social media part of your Marketing Plan would be a big mistake. However, to gain maximum response, you need to understand that social media and content marketing go hand-in-hand. So, you need to optimize your social media efforts for each platform to gain momentum organically.
Don’t make it all about selling, as it’s important that you are communicating with the people who love reading books, and your sales are going to follow naturally.
