Creating a social media strategy for your author business doesn’t have to be hard or take up a lot of time. There are several things you can do to keep it simple, effective, and genuine to reach more readers.
1. Find Your Platforms
When deciding on which social media platforms you should build your following, there are a few things to consider.
First off, you don’t have to be everywhere at once.
Pick your favorite platforms – just one or two – and create a business account. (This will give you access to things like analytics, which will come in handy when trying to measure the ROI of your social media and acquire information about your audience.)
Consider where your audience hangs out online and start with the platform where you are the most comfortable.
2. Determine Type and Frequency
Once you decide on what platforms you want to establish your social media following, you’ll want to figure out what kinds of things you want to post.
Each platform has its own set of rules. What works really well on one platform may not work as well on another.
Do you want to post inspirational quotes? Links to your website? Tips for your audience? Inside scoop to your WIP? You will want to determine what combination of things suit your message and your audience the best.
After you figure out what you are going to post, you need to decide how often you will post to each platform. Again, what works on one platform, may not work as well on another. For instance, as of April 2019, most Instagram accounts do best with one post a day, where as you can post 3 to 5 times a day on Twitter.
3. Share Links
Social media is a great way to reach new readers, but you don’t want to base your entire author platform on social media. Ultimately, you want to direct your followers back to your website, where it will be easier to convert them into email subscribers and customers.
In order to do this, you will want to share links to your website on your social media. However, these links should not take up more than 20% of your total social posts. 80% of your content should be social.
Every time you write a blog post or add anything new to your website, you need to link to it on your social platforms.
- Post the link to your email list landing page once or twice a week on platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
- You should tweet a link to your new blog post 3-4 times during the week that it goes up.
- Share the links to your blog posts every 3-6 months after you originally hit publish.
4. Keep It Social
Part of your social media strategy should absolutely be to share links back to your own website, but there is a reason it is called social media. You need to be social on it as well.
I know this can sound terrifying since writers are often introverts. This doesn’t mean you need to share every aspect of your life. However, you should share a few things about yourself to which your audience can relate.
For example, you write fantasy fiction and you love coffee and being outdoors. A lot of people love coffee and the outdoors. On your social pages, you can share coffee memes or pictures from your hiking trips (these don’t even have to have you in them, it can just be the scenery).
5. Be Consistent
Consistency is the key to social media.
You want to make sure that if you commit to posting two or three times a day on each of your social media channels, that you actually post two or three times a day.
Not everyone sees every single one of your posts, thanks to social platforms’ algorithms. However, if you are consistent about posting, you have a higher chance of your audience seeing more of your posts. And the more people who see and interact with your post, the more other people will see it.
6. Plan your Content
One of the easiest things you can do to stay on track with your social media strategy is to plan your content.
Make a list of blog posts to write over the course of the next 12 months. From that list, you know each blog post will have at least one social post per platform, but you can also take tidbits of information, a quote, or photo from your post and share those as well.
Then, you want to include links to your email list landing page. You can also share links to other content in your industry or genre. (Feedly is a great source for compiling the news feeds of different brands).
Write all of this down in a spreadsheet or on paper with the copy text, links, and any photos you want to include in your posts.
7. Schedule Your Posts
Posting on social media on a consistent basis is hard.
Life happens.
Say you want to share the link to your newest blog post at 10 am on Tuesday because that is when most of your audience will see it. But then the daycare calls at 9:50 am to tell you that your kid has just spilled paint all over their clothes and they don’t have a spare outfit. In your rush to get to the daycare with the extra clothes, you completely forget to post your link.
Do you realize how many times this has happened to me? I’m sure something of the sort has happened to you as well.
When I discovered HootSuite, my social media presence skyrocketed. Now, I am able to create all of my social posts at the beginning of the week and schedule them to go out at optimal times.
I know what you are thinking. Shouldn’t social be genuine? Doesn’t scheduling your posts take away from the authenticity?
Here’s the thing.
Scheduling your posts just means you can share them at optimal times. You still write your own posts. They are still your words and images. You should still check in daily to engage and interact with your followers on your posts, but the pressure is off in trying to post at the right time.
CHECK OUT THE WRITER’S PLANNER BY QUILL AND TOME!
Get the planner and organize your life and your writing!
What you can find inside:
- Plenty of writing space in a vertical layout
- Undated weekly and monthly pages you can start using any day of the year
- Reading and Writing Trackers
- Writing Tips
- and so much more!
Over To You
Following these seven steps will help you create a social media strategy that rocks! You will be able to reach more readers, connect with others in your industry, send more people to your website, all while having more time to write.
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Do you have a social media strategy in place? Let me know in the comments!
