Writing a book is not an easy task, with the subject and ideas in your hand, it also consumes a lot of time and energy. There was a time when writers after having finished the book didn’t have to fret over how to market it, publishers would do the job for them. Times have changed, a writer’s job doesn’t end at finishing the book, this is true not only for indie writers, but also for agency published books. A book needs thorough and sustained marketing activities until it attains a wide enough reach and momentum. Social media is the modern platform for general communication and it has instant global reach, people like and share what they like in social media more than they talk in person. Hence social media is where you display your digital content, generate a chatter about it and engage with your audience.
Writing should never stop, create a blog page where you talk about your subject in the book that you have written and connect it with your book. Create a Facebook page about your book and promote it (it doesn’t cost much). The graphics incorporated in the page should be captivating and relay your message to the audience, let the cover image of the page be derived from your book.
Facebook is the ideal place for sharing your articles, write a captivating title and share it. You can create a group on the platform and invite people to it, starting with people known to you and asking them to invite their friends for you. Create hashtagged campaigns with catchy names, run contests and give free ebooks and ask them to write a review. Wisely enter a popular hashtag in your update and leverage on the trend. Remember that there is an excessive supply of digital content on the social media and your content should stand out and provide value to readers, that can be done through relevant and well timed updates, educating the audience how relevant the content is for them.
Twitter is an ideal place for a writer to start talking to the target audience. Start with following like minded people and fellow writers, Twitter will start suggesting which accounts to follow based on your choice. Grow your following and post frequent and meaningful tweets. Twitter is ideal for short text based communication, watch the replies and respond to them proactively. Users feel most connected to celebrities in Twitter than in other social media. Don’t litter the page or wear out your audience with continuous and trivial tweets. Analyse your tweets on twitter analytics and see what kind of updates, during what time of the day get most attention.
Create accounts on LinkedIn, and Instagram as well, Goodreads lets authors create their profile where they can promote their books. Sharing your digital content does not always equal to selling it, don’t push people to buy it but share it and make them part of the story. Follow some popular writers and take a leaf from their social media marketing strategies. Paulo Coelho regularly adds updates to his Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts and talks to his audience on daily basis, shares his life on social media. Paula Hawkins, the author of the book The Girl on the Train (the movie was released last year) has a huge presence on Goodreads and she even won an award there.
Social media allows real time interaction with audience through live videos. Paulo Coelho does this often and gets huge emotional response from across the globe. Writers can go live on Facebook, twitter or Instagram and engage the audience, answer their questions and share a beautiful day. It helps build trust and create a bonding.
Instagram is a nice image-based social media where people share their lives mostly through pictures. Bookstagram (basically a hashtag) is the community for book enthusiasts and writers in Instagram, it has over 11 million posts as of now, all related to the literary world. This platform helps elevate the aesthetic part of the appeal for your digital content. Post photos taken from a smartphone with catchy captions or handwriting based images with a quote from your book, get creative with your graphics in Instagram.
Social Media is becoming incrementally essential for any profession now, for sellers of digital content like ebooks these platforms provide free promotion, but the free promotion is utilised by thousand others and it makes the task challenging. Do not get obsessed around it, start the chatter about your book when you are still writing it, choose a platform that suits you to start with and things will start falling in place, keep the ball rolling.
Digital Publishing in 2018 – Through the Crystal Ball
