January 17 Book Marketing Tip: Be consistent with your social media!

 

Woo-hoo! I’m delighted to share the news that the Write | Market | Design Facebook page has reached 500 Likes! Sure, there are pages with Likes in the thousands, but every one of them started somewhere. Thanks to all who’ve liked our page and shared the link. If you haven’t checked us out yet, come on down!

 

Here’s a bit of chronology:

 

Thanks to the best social media teacher in the world (Scott White, of PersonalPowerTraining.net), I was a very early adopter and jumped on Facebook back in late 2006. Back then, there were no Pages. The only option you had was to use your personal profile for business marketing, too. I did that, and have steadily built my “friends” to 2,565, with 109 subscribers to my personal page. The challenge has been bringing those friends over to my business page.

 

We were hanging out at 474 Likes for the l-o-n-g-e-s-t time. Then I started doing a few things differently.

 

ONE. I used to duplicate a lot of content between the my personal page and business page — but I do that less frequently lately. I’m very selective about what I post in both places, and I always post it on my business page first, and “share” it to my personal page. There’s a strategic reason for this: people on my personal page can see where the post originated, perhaps clicking over to my business page to see what other goodies I’m posting there.

 

TWO. I invited/reinvited a bunch of friends to like my page. They may have been people I never invited in the first place, or people who just never accepted an original invitation. At any rate, I had 7 additional likes from my own personal page once I sent these invites.

 

THREE. I changed the kinds of things I post. As you can tell from the title and content of this blog, I’m all about book marketing. My Facebook page is more representative of all aspects of self-publishing — although my posts did, for a long time, lean more to marketing tips. Lately, I’ve been posting a combination of humorous literary posts (see below), self-publishing/book marketing tips, and the occasional promo piece for my business. In short, I made the page more interesting.

 

 

FOUR. I started posting much more consistently — not just more often, but more consistently.

 

FIVE. In order to post more consistently, I started using Facebook’s scheduling feature to time my posts to go out at regular intervals throughout the day. To do so, go to your page and find the status box.

 

Type your text or upload your image, as you normally would.
Then click on the clock icon in the bottom left-hand corner of the status box.

Doing so will bring up a calendar. Choose the date on which you wish to publish your post.

If you plan to stagger your posts, add the time you wish to publish your post.
Be sure to check that you have the a.m./p.m. correct.

Click the SCHEDULE button.

That’s it! Your screen will gray out and you’ll see a confirmation window
telling you that your post has been scheduled.

Of course, this is an inexact science. But I know I added nearly 30 people in little more than a week once I started changing the way I post and doing it more consistently. If Facebook isn’t your thing, I believe these strategies will work for you on many different social platforms. Next up, more interactivity!

Here’s to more consistency in your social networking!

Laura

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