Modern Good Reads discussion
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How to Use Social Media - Help!
lol I noticed that, too. I'm Angela and I don't know why the page won't use my full pseudonym.I also want to add that having a good list of words in a word search database is really important if you want people to stumble across your books. You don't want ones no one is looking for, and you don't want ones that'll get drowned in the competition. It could take you days/weeks to find the Goldilocks zone of searchable words.
Right now my ePublisher is experiment on one of my books. He got stupid lucky with one of his books and now has a trio of books selling amazingly well. He's trying to do the same with me after discovering this nugget of information the Big 6 try to keep to themselves.
I'm currently trying to link all my social media outlets to my blog. So far I'm am abject failure though my grandson suggested Hoot Suite. I have a Hoot Suite account but it's Greek to me so I ignore it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
One thing I have found helpful in promoting books is to create an autotweet list. My autotweet list has all of the bitly's for my different sales channels, and then some snazzy teasers, quotes from the books, and hashtags. I save it, and then set up programmed tweets using tweetdeck. This does not replace my general interaction on twitter, of course. It goes in between my general interaction. I have done an autotweet list for each of my books, and I set it up to tweet one tweet every two hours, rotating the books so that they all get exposure. With hash tags, I do create my own, but I also look and see which ones are being used, through the search button on twitter. I mix them up. Hope that helps.
As for linking, I did use tweetdeck for that, but then things changed. I just don't bother. I wouldn't want to post as frequently on Facebook as I do on Twitter anyway.
Interesting. I have a Twitter account but I hate the whole thing. I don't read anyone's tweets. I can't absorb so many morsels of discard-able information. It's information overload to me.
Heidi, I'm going to copy your post and see if I can figure out what you're saying. It sounds great and like it's exactly what I want.
Here is the link to tweetdeck http://www.tweetdeck.com/And a smaple of my autotweet list:
The hottest #new #Scifi series, of @castletonseries Lost Crew, http://bit.ly/18Ntk45 book 2 is now out!
Where can you visit #France, #New Orleans, and #Ancient Rome? http://bit.ly/1e6FwKi #LostCrew, #TimeTravel
Mike Castleton, http://bit.ly/1e6FwKi the boy every daughter’s mother wishes she would bring home. #LostCrew
I get the smaller site links through bitly https://bitly.com/
I write them in twitter, to get the length right, then save them in a word doc to be re-used. My list for four books is about 10 pages long, so they don't get recycled too often. It is a lot of work, but setting those up all at once to go out for a whole week takes about an hour. Remembering to go on twitter and send a tweet every hour? Forget about it!
It is important to engage with your followers though. I spend 15 minutes each day scanning and try to comment on a couple, favorite a lot, and retweet a few. If you engage, they will return the favor. There are too many people trying to sell stuff, and not bothering to look at other people's stuff. Twitter is a tough world!
Mod
I also want to add that having a good list of words in a word search database is really important if ..."
What "nuggets" Angela, if you wouldn't mind expounding?
The nuggets I'm referring to are the pieces of information my ePublisher digs up about the Big 6 and how they operate. The latest nugget is how the employ the word search database, or whatever it's called. He explained it to me but I'd have to have him explain it again to fully wrap my brain around it. I can ask again and pass on the information again. All I know is that he spends days with movies playing in the background, searching with Google for just the right words. It's a hell of a hunt for that proverbial needle in a haystack. Just one letter can change things immensely. Ex: searching "strong female character" vs. "strong girl" vs. "strong girls". Eesht. I'm leaving it up to him.
btw my S.M." stands for "sans mal", which is Latin for "without evil." Come from my genealogy. May I ask what yours stands for, dear other S.M.?
Heidi wrote: "Here is the link to tweetdeck http://www.tweetdeck.com/And a smaple of my autotweet list:
The hottest #new #Scifi series, of @castletonseries Lost Crew, http://bit.ly/18Ntk45 book 2 is now out!
..."
Heidi, do you find this directs more traffic to your blog or helps with sales? I'm friends with a lot of authors on twitter and find every time I log in, it's one book advertisement after another. I tried it for a week, to see if there was any merit in it, but I ended up losing followers! I find the only time tweeting about my book is helpful is during a giveaway or when I publish a satellite story (short story). Then there is a spike in traffic and sales both.
I admit, I don't use tweetdeck or any other automated tweeting platform. If I make a tweet, it's all me... which explains why I don't tweet much ;)
S.M. wrote: "btw my S.M." stands for "sans mal", which is Latin for "without evil." Come from my genealogy. May I ask what yours stands for, dear other S.M.?"S.M. stands for Susan Mary - my initials. A good Catholic name! Perhaps my parents were hoping I too would be sans mal. LOL! Fooled them.
I have to admit I had to look up your translation of sans mal. I'm Canadian and the French translation would be "without bad" or "without difficulty".
S.M. wrote: "S.M. wrote: "btw my S.M." stands for "sans mal", which is Latin for "without evil." Come from my genealogy. May I ask what yours stands for, dear other S.M.?"S.M. stands for Susan Mary - my initi..."
Sans mal was a motto from back in the day when there were knights in the family. We rode the ever so intimidating clam shell crest into battle >.>
Susan Mary,I have found that I get a lot of RTs, and a steady stream of downloads. I look at twitter as more of an impression than an actual sales point. In marketing classes in college I was taught that it takes at least 7 impressions to make one sale. So if someone sees it on twitter, Facebook, linkedin, goodreads, pinterest, and then reads a blog post about it, they might actually buy it. (Or sees it four or five times at any of those one sources, and then a couple of other places. Whatever!) I retweet a lot of other people on twitter, and often get my share of RTs, I suspect because of that. Their viewers then see my posts as well. It creates buzz. Buzz leads to more impressions, which will eventually *fingers crossed* lead to sales.
It is important that you aren't just following a bunch of other authors, though. Then you are all just "selling" to each other. Authors do read as well, but the goal is to get a larger audience. I've found that following book bloggers is a good technique. I also follow people who mention in their profile that they love to read. And of course, there are those I follow because they look interesting ;)
Heidi wrote: "Susan Mary,I have found that I get a lot of RTs, and a steady stream of downloads. I look at twitter as more of an impression than an actual sales point. In marketing classes in college I was tau..."
Good advice Heidi. I admit I'm not using twitter to its full advantage, mainly due to time constraints and being on a learning curve. I find when I get precious time to myself, I use it to write! And, obviously, hang out on Goodreads. However, if I don't start using twitter I'll never get the hang of it. I'll have to have a look at tweetdeck. Thanks for sharing the link and your strategies!
Heidi wrote: "Susan Mary,I have found that I get a lot of RTs, and a steady stream of downloads. I look at twitter as more of an impression than an actual sales point. In marketing classes in college I was tau..."
Thank you for the advice.
Heidi, it's interesting what you said about Twitter not being the actual sale place because that's what I'd figured. How do you find bloggers, etc? I follow a lot of authors because they are what comes up on that list of 'suggestions' of people I might like to follow that's on the left side. Is there I search for bloggers, readers, wonderful people, etc? Sorry to be so basic but I'm really, really technologically challenged, which is why I'm such a poor marketer. I read all the advice but don't know how to implement it because when I try to do something I don't know how to do it.
I'm in the same boat Florence. I understand Twitter, I suppose, but I can't stand it.
You can do a search for book reviewers in their search box and then follow several. After that, twitter will start sending you suggestions. They send their suggestions based on what you are already following. When I follow a reviewer, I will take a peek at their followers and see who has "love reading" or something similar in their bio and follow them. I only did that for a couple of months and now most of my suggestions come out as people who mention reading. Whenever it slows down, I troll for new ones!I also used who unfollowed me http://who.unfollowed.me/ in the beginning to manage my followers, though I haven't used it much lately as my followers numbers are pretty in-line and I haven't hit any follow limits. I use the free tools because I am cheap ;)
Social media can become a real time-suck, if you aren't careful. I have allotted two hours in the morning to manage my e-mails and social media channels, an additional hour for marketing during non-launch times (that goes way up as I get close to launching a book, or a major promotional event, of course!) two hours for editing and then at least two hours for writing. Then, in the evenings I might do some more social media stuff.
I also keep a running list of all the things I need to do and work from that! Being your own boss is sooo much fun!!
Heidi, that's a lot of time. How do you find time for writing? If I spent that much time at a computer I'd have to see a divorce lawyer, though DH is fairly tolerant. I'm trying to figure out Hootsuite because it's supposed to save time. Last night I managed to get 2 tweets scheduled for this morning and they actually showed up so I guess I'm getting somewhere. Now if I can just figure out how to connect Twitter and Wordpress so they talk to each other! I'll figure it all out before I'm six feet under. Maybe.
go to your blog admin, settings, sharing, then add twitter account.
While I have studied social media and am proficient with it, I have to say I absolutely hate most of it (indeed, I just finished a blog post on how it affects my depression). It's pretty much my least favorite aspect of the web and yeah, it takes a lot of time. Personally, once my first book is published I plan to pay a promotion service to do much of the work as well as automate a few tweets with tweetdeck. It's worth the $100 a year or whatever to spare my time and sanity. Maybe those of you not familiar with social media should try a similar route? Has anyone here had success with book promotion services on Twitter and the like?-Phoenix
http://phoenixhearth.blogspot.ca/
Florence, I make time. But I also have the privilege of working as an author (and stay at home mom) full-time. Still, I average 60 to 80 hours a week working (my kids thought me staying home would be good for them ;)) Phoenix, be careful with paying someone to do the work for you. There are so many out there offering services that are just taking your money... Sad, but true. I kind of go with the philosophy of Mr. Pink from Resevoir Dogs, and echoed so nicely by Dwight from The Office. I'm not going to pay someone to do a service, I am perfectly capable of doing myself. And it is amazing what you will learn that you can do for yourself ;)
That being said, there are lots of writers who are still working a part-time, or even full-time job and in those situations it might very well be better for them to pay someone else to do it for them because they don't have the time. Just be careful who you hire!
Yeah, I work part-time and also plan to do more schooling when I can so busy, busy. It would be handy if there was a directory for reputable promotion services (maybe there is; I should look it up).
I hired a company to do a book blog tour when I published my last novel. They were nice people and I got what I paid for. I chose the cheapest service because I wanted to find out how it worked more than to get the exposure. I might do it again but I suspect that I can do as good myself if I just actually do it. But it's a real time suck.
Florence, I have a list of over 250 book review bloggers in an excel spreadsheet with blog name, link, contact info, what genres they review, notes on submissions, etc. It has taken me two years to put it together, and as I work through it, I have to update regularly. The first time I worked my way through it for submitting, it took me several weeks. My last launch, it only took me 3 days, and I was able to send out to 63 bloggers. Already getting good responses for the event! The more you practice, the easier it gets!
Also, that was three days, but only about six hours, because I only did it during my marketing time.
Heidi wrote: "Also, that was three days, but only about six hours, because I only did it during my marketing time."That sounds awesome.
Heidi - sounds to me like your list of bloggers is a gold-mine. You should think about selling it on your blog ;)Although I have a few hundred twitter followers, I have to admit I'm not interested in using twitter. It is the rare tweet that peaks my interest or that I find provocative. So I asked myself why? Why is everyone else into twitter and I'm not? Because I'm following the wrong people. My twitter looks like an endless stream of spam with the occasional pebble sticking through the surface. And its the pebble that causes the ripple effect. I need to learn how to be the pebble... and start following other pebbles.
For any techie's out there, Digital Book World is great for staying tuned into the digital market. Today I read this article: http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/...
S.M. I read the article and it was right on.I'm looking for the time somewhere in my day to learn how to actually do all the things I know I should do. I should have the time because I'm semi-retired but my DH is fully retired and bored because the doc said he can no longer do the woodworking he loves. So he hangs around me and he's a real time suck. Even though I love him dearly, I wish he'd find a hobby.
And Heidi, thanks for the hands-on info because it's invaluable to a tech-challenged idiot like me. I've been doing pretty much the same thing, listing the few book blogs I know about, but I don't do spread sheets so I'm doing it the hard way, but it works. I'm thinking about signing up with Hootsuite University except I doubt they are basic enough for people like me.
You bet. I'm working with another author who struggles with the same problem.
Mod
I can talk about this stuff for hours, so I really will try to be brief.
Triberr, Google+, twitter, facebook, Goodreads, and my blog are the lifeblood of my promotions. They are all overlapping, intertwined, and integral to one another.
Twitter is really where its at. I have twitter feeding to facebook, simply for convenience. I have Google+ feeding to twitter, which then feeds to facebook.
Triberr feeds to facebook and twitter, but twitter is where it seems to count most.
You must blog. You must have something to say that grabs the eye. You must have blog titles that grab the eye. You must network to share those blog posts.
You must learn to use imagery/video in your blogs and goodreads and facebook.
Why?
Because your blog has all your book links, and your mailing list, and if it doesn't it damn well should.
Its all tied together in this big convoluted jumble of incestuous social media relationships.
The only way I can tell you how to learn about the complex but highly rewarding relationships of social media and publishing is to just go out and do it.
Do it religiously.
Read articles about how to do it.
Read more articles of the same.
Keep doing it.
Eventually you will become a guru in your own right, not knowing precisely how you attained that status, but you have it nonetheless.
Be social.
Travis,I like what you said. I tried feeding my tweets to Facebook and my blog and it was too much. Too many tweets. So... do you feed all your tweets to Facebook, your blog, etc, or do you play with numbers so they seem right to each site? Or do you limit your tweets? I tweet several times a day and some are repetitious, which seems to work for twitter but not for any place else. Any thoughts?
Travis wrote: "OK, here we go:I can talk about this stuff for hours, so I really will try to be brief.
Triberr, Google+, twitter, facebook, Goodreads, and my blog are the lifeblood of my promotions. They are ..."
Thanks so much for all the good advice, Travis!
I have to agree with linking all your social media together, although my centre to the internet is my blog. When I blog, it goes out to twitter, facebook, google+, and LinkedIn. I also have to agree that twitter elicits the most response with respect to all social media combined. That said, I honestly don't get a lot of time for blogging or anything else. Most of my "spare" time is for writing.
I know I have much to learn about using social media. I'm single parenting right now while my husband is deployed in Afghanistan, so I tend to do a lot of research when I have time to myself. I experiment to see what works and what doesn't. For instance, I notice a lot of authors tend to link their reviews on twitter, so I decided to try this strategy for a week. It was pretty much a case of ablation; I lost a lot of followers, but gained a lot too. All of them authors. Sales increases were minimal (albeit they did increase).
Next on the marketing agenda is a blog tour...
Mod
I can talk about this stuff for hours, so I really will try to be brief.
Triberr, Google+, twitter, facebook, Goodreads, and my blog are the lifeblood of my promoti..."
The reviews people really care about are the ones that are blogged via some interesting book blogger, or if you can find a particularly choice quote to use from a review.
I am always looking for that little sound bite, that one-liner.
And then there's the gimmicks.
One of the most infamous gimmicks that I have seen produce results is the "What to read after ____"
Pick your favorite popular series in the genre of your books, and insert it into the blank.
Ex:
What to read after 50 shades
What to read after Harry Potter
What to read after Twilight
What to read after _______ (insert meme)
There are tons of other gimmicks out there, but why reinvent the wheel?
Mod
I like what you said. I tried feeding my tweets to Facebook and my blog and it was too much. Too many tweets. So... do you feed all your tweets to Facebook, your blog, etc, or do you play w..."
I have 2 facebook pages, and 1 account. I switch it up, my auto-twitter-sharing settings.
One month it might be one of the pages, the other month it will be my account.
I do notice when I have tons of content coming into a page, the stats jump significantly. A lot more "people talking about this"
Travis wrote: "S.M. wrote: "Travis wrote: "OK, here we go:I can talk about this stuff for hours, so I really will try to be brief.
Triberr, Google+, twitter, facebook, Goodreads, and my blog are the lifeblood ..."
I did try this strategy, although I didn't use the actual words "what to read after..." I have several reviews that compare me to THGs as being as good or better, however I didn't find they were any more successful than a regular 5 star review. Recently I've received a few reviews that rate me "7 out of 5 stars - better than THGs", so I will try using those next week and see how it goes. I'll report back here :)
Right now my goal is focused on increase circulation, not necessarily increased sales.
Travis,Thanks for the info. It helps. I'm learning to connect accounts and every bit of info helps.
Florence wrote: "Heidi, that's a lot of time. How do you find time for writing? If I spent that much time at a computer I'd have to see a divorce lawyer, though DH is fairly tolerant. I'm trying to figure out Hoots..."Hi Florence. I use Wordpress as well and linking your blog posts to FB and Twitter etc is [relatively] easy.
1. Click on My Blogs
2. Click on Blog Admin. This takes you to your Dashboard.
3. Look down the left side where the menu is and click on Settings.
4. Under Settings are your Publicize options. [i.e. the linking of your blog posts to other social media].
5. To turn Publicize on scroll down to Available Services. There you should see a list of buttons for FB, Twitter etc.
6. Drag and drop each service you want to link to the Enable Services area.
7. Last but not least, scroll down to the end and click SAVE CHANGES.
It's been a while since I set mine up so I can't quite remember whether you'll have to log in to each social media site to authorize WP to post on your behalf. It's pretty straight forward though.
Once you're done, every post you write on Wordpress will automatically be published to your other social media sites as well.
Hope this helps.
Phoenix wrote: "While I have studied social media and am proficient with it, I have to say I absolutely hate most of it (indeed, I just finished a blog post on how it affects my depression). It's pretty much my le..."I feel the same Phoenix. I just don't get the fascination with FB and Twitter. I have tried to get interested but I just can't. My stance now is that I concentrate on my blog [because I love it and the friends of made there]. I try to post about 3 times a week about anything and everything that interests me, not just writing stuff. I've set my Wordpress blog up to automatically publish each post to FB and Twitter so I do keep some kind of presence going. Other than that, I've really started to enjoy Goodreads [which also gets my posts].
Sadly I'm not the darling of social media, and that is reflected in my sales, but I figure I'm in this for the long haul so eventually I'll establish some kind of a name for myself. My advice - do what you're comfortable doing, but please be very cautious about who you pay to promote for you.
A.C. wrote: I just don't get the fascination with FB and Twitter. I have tried to get interested but I just can't. A.C., I think your sentiments are the same as mine when I said in an earlier post, I have to admit I'm not interested in using twitter. It is the rare tweet that peaks my interest or that I find provocative. Think about that. If I don't think my posts are interesting, and I'm not interested in the posts I'm reading, something is not working. I"m going to go with audience - the people I'm connected with.
There is a TON of info on twitter, including breaking news, real life stories, and updates about issues in life I'm interested in. Ultimately, twitter is a vehicle to introduce like-minded people in the world. Once I figured that out, I've been spending more time on this social outlet. But it's like a game of double-dutch... I'm looking for where I should jump in.
I guess it all depends on my end-goal. In the meantime, I'm connecting with people who peak my curiosity, who share stories I"m interested in, and get my creative juices flowing. To twist the words of a very famous, charismatic man, "Ask not what twitter can do for you, but what you can do for twitter." ;)
Great tips!For those still thinking about starting in social media: one thing I've learnt is that social media takes a lot of consistency and time. A lot of hard work goes into doing it well, and sometimes, it won't always be free.
I think this article is quite apt to many of our feelings about social media, that it is a necessary evil! http://goodmenproject.com/featured-co...
S.M. wrote: "A.C. wrote: I just don't get the fascination with FB and Twitter. I have tried to get interested but I just can't. A.C., I think your sentiments are the same as mine when I said in an earlier p..."
lmao - I take your point, but even with Hootsuite I feel as if I'm shouting my thoughts into the wind, and nothing comes back. At least on my blog and the blogs of my friends, we get some really interesting discussions happening. Maybe I'm just too verbose for Twitter. :)
Heidi wrote: "I think this article is quite apt to many of our feelings about social media, that it is a necessary evil! http://goodmenproject.com/featured-co..."Oh I read that just the other day on the Passive Guy blog. I truly feel for him, although I do kind of think his spamming technique is not the best. Sadly most of the pundits still maintain that yelling about your book on Twitter is the way to go. I'm pretty sure it doesn't work but I can understand how and why he would think that's what he's meant to be doing.
When I first started learning about online marketing I read an article about relationships - i.e. that you should be genuine and meet people as potential friends. Then, if your 'product' is any good, your relationships will help spread the word.
I really like that advice in principle, but I'm not particularly gregarious by nature, so connecting with thousands of people [?] just doesn't work for me. On the other hand, having in depth conversations like this one make me happy. -shrug- We can only be who we are.
True, you have to find the way to make social media work for you and with your strengths.
Read the blog about self-promotion. Everything is right on, especially the part where he says that today's writer must promote and sell his or her own work. I'm glad I've been in other family businesses. Once I got past the surprise of the fact that books require marketing, I am willing to accept that the marketing part of writing is similar to that of any other product or skill. It has to be done if you want sales.
The trick is finding out what ways work for you because, like every business, yours is unique. I'm just happy that I'm finally, finally figuring out a few elementary techniques. I think.
And yes, it all starts with Twitter and that makes a great deal of sense if you've ever done marketing for any other business. Because Twitter, with it's brief flashes of info repeated many, many times, is similar to the 30 second ads on TV. They don't sell anything themselves but the sheer repetition of info creates recognition later on when you segue into other, more personal, places.
Mod
Christopher wrote: "This topic has been moved, appropriately, to the Author Zone--Chris"My apologies, Chris.
I'm not starting this thread to give advice; I'm starting it to draw out all the expert social media users on Modern Goodreads to share their skills. Here are some of the questions raised in the previously mentioned thread:
1. How to use hashtags
2. How to use tags on Wordpress
3. How to link all your social media outlets to your blog
4. Anything else that could in any way help a novice
Marketing is such a huge part of publishing and using social media effectively could save us all a lot of time. And let's face it - wouldn't we rather be writing than marketing? Hope to hear from all the social media experts out there!