The Social part of Social Media – Part 1 Growing Your Facebook

Learning the ins and outs of social media can be a challenge. I must admit having a very tech savvy daughter helps quite a bit.  You read somewhere that you should have a Facebook page to help market your book or your blog, so you went onto Facebook and made your page.  (if you want to check out an example visit https://www.facebook.com/LaurieWJN and hey, please feel free to like my page and leave a comment or two).  That was actually pretty stress-free. 

You followed the basic directions and realized, hey I can do this.  But you are not done yet.  Now you need to invite your friends and family (the ones who actually might care about your writing) to like you page.  I did read about a fun strategy about making an event to ‘launch’ your new page and inviting friends and family as a way to increase your following.  So far so good.  You keep checking and you can see the likes adding up, which feels great. 

Unfortunately, you are just getting started.  You will want to be strategic in adding posts, you want to post fairly regularly, but not too much so that it annoys your followers.  You will also want to play around and get used to using your new page, once you sign in as your new writer/author/blogger page make sure you post links to your blog and/or website. 

It is also a good idea to link your Facebook page to other social media accounts.  Do you have a twitter account?  Are you on Pinterest? (If not please see my earlier post about Pinterest http://lookingonthesunnyside.blogspot.com/2014/02/have-you-discovered-pinterest-yet.html )  Are you on Google+? Are you on Instagram?  There are so many social media outlets, don’t feel frantic, but do your best to identify where else followers can find you.  This was a bit of a learning curve for me, so don’t worry, you will get there too.  

A quick word of caution here – make sure to set time limits or decide to work on only one goal per day i.e. add my twitter address to my Facebook today, or you could wind up spending way too much time on your social media – and while promotion is important, you need to have a product to promote. 

Now you have your Facebook page, it is linked to your other accounts, you are posting at least 2-3 times per week, but you are still not quite done.  Here is the social part of social media; connecting with other authors is an important way to grow your following and use your Facebook page effectively.  To connect with other authors, log in to Facebook and make sure you are posting as your author/writer page (click the gear shaped icon at the top right hand corner of the page and click on ‘use Facebook as’ your page).  Now use the search feature to search some authors that you know and like, and make sure to click like on their page.  Once you have searched authors you know, you can see who they like and like those pages also.

Liking a page is not actually befriending someone the way your personal Facebook profile does, it is simply following that page on your news feed.  Again, still ensuring you are logged in as your author/writer page go check out the news feed and feel free to like or comment on what you see.  This will increase your visibility and the likelihood that other authors will reciprocate and Like your page in return.  Congratulations, now you are connecting and being ‘social’ with an audience of literary peers and not just your aunt and neighbor.  This takes time, it will not happen overnight, but the more social connections you can make on your Facebook page, the more useful it will be when you want to attract more attention to your blog or when you are ready to release a new book and you want to get the word out to your potential audience. 

Did I mention - Please “like” me on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/LaurieWJN