When choosing which social media platform to build your author business, you want to consider two things. Where are you the most comfortable? And where do your readers spend their time? By knowing this, you can leverage social media for your business by making it work for you.
Where are you the most comfortable?
Choose your first social media platform for your author business by where you already spend your time. You may even already have a following on that platform, so getting the initial engagement will be easy.
If you already spend your time on Facebook or Instagram, you are familiar with how the platform works, how to create a post, and what types of posts work well.
By starting on a platform you are already comfortable with, you will be less likely to get overwhelmed and more likely to create a consistent routine.
Where are your readers?
Even more important than starting where you are comfortable, is starting where your readers spend their time. You may have readers on every platform, but each platform has its own set of rules.
Billions of people use Facebook every single day, so it is a great place to start. With so many people on Facebook, you likely already have your own page. You can join Facebook Groups as your author business page. Some groups have thousands of members, some are for author promotions or newsletter swaps, some are more genre specific. There are people you can connect with on Facebook, no matter your audience.
Facebook has turned into a pay to play platform. Organic reach for a business page is near impossible, meaning you will have to pay for ads if you want your posts to actually reach your audience. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just something to consider when trying to determine where to put your efforts.
Instagram is owned by Facebook, and may eventually become a pay to play platform as well. However, right now, the organic reach on Instagram is still phenomenal. Without putting any money into it, you can easily reach hundreds of followers.
One of the best things about Instagram is it has a huge #bookstagram community. People actually have entire accounts just for their love of books. A lot of these people read hundreds of books a year and have thousands of people following them. As an author, this is a great place to start when trying to connect with your readers.
Lately, Twitter has not been doing as well as some of the other social media platforms. Many business coaches will tell you to stay far away from Twitter, that it is a waste of time. However, Twitter has something special for writers that the other platforms do not.
Since it is an open platform, anyone can see your posts. You can reach people organically at a pretty decent rate.
If your audience is other writers or you just want to connect with other writers, Twitter has an amazing #WritingCommunity. People will promote their own books, their friends’ books, post about their writing life, and their writing problems.
Even though the writing itself is a lonely task, the sense of community on Twitter really makes you feel like you are not alone.
LinkedIn remains a professional oriented platform. If you are writing nonfiction, and your audience includes business professionals, then LinkedIn would be a great place to start.
Organic reach is attainable on LinkedIn, much more so than Facebook, for instance.
If you are writing fiction, you may not find LinkedIn to be the best place for you. You just have to figure out where your audience spends their time.
You Don’t Have to be Everywhere at Once
When choosing a social media platform to build your author business, realize that you do not have to be everywhere all the time.
Start on one or two social platforms. Get comfortable with it, grow a following, and streamline your routine. Then, you can add another platform, if you want, but you don’t have to.
It is much better to consistently be on one or two platforms, than to sporadically be on ten.
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Final Thoughts
Decide where you want to build your social media platform. Take into consideration where you already have a presence and where your readers hang out. Remember you don’t need to be everywhere. Choose one and get really good at that one, then you can decide if you want to add another.
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After choosing a social media platform for your author business, you will want to develop a social media strategy. Check out the blog post 7 Steps to Rock Your Social Media Strategy here!
