With more than 1 billion daily users, Facebook offers the potential to reach a substantial readership and remains one of the best all-purpose tools that authors and publishers have at their disposal. You can find communities of like-minded authors to provide critical support, join writing groups for your genre, use it to set up a fan page, and even organize live events through it. With an active Facebook following, your organic posts and videos can go a long way just by having your fans like and share them to increase their visibility. And it’s free.
I’m sure you’ve heard by now that social media can help you sell more books. But it’s not as simple as posting a message to your followers. What you may not realize is that not everyone who follows you will see what you have posted. If you have, for instance, 20,000 followers and post something on your page, only a small percentage of them will actually see the message. And while many of you may question why you should spend time on a social network when you could potentially go unnoticed, just keep in mind Facebook’s overwhelming number of users and realize that to walk away is to ignore one of the most powerful publicity channels out there.
Facebook reaches over one billion people, but that’s not your audience. You aren’t trying to capture one billion potential new readers—you aren’t even trying to get 1% of that! Think much, much smaller to target the actual audience of your book. Never post anything randomly. Before posting anything, ask yourself: who is my audience and will this post reach them? Your initial audience should be people who already know you, so make sure you promote your Facebook page to your readers in all of your books, emails, and on your author website.
Teenagers don’t use Facebook as much as older demographics statistically, so if you write books targeting YA or a New Adult audience who may not be on Facebook as much, a “pinned post” that points fans to a platform where you and they are active may be a good idea. This enables you to have a profile even if your target demographic isn’t big on Facebook.
Once you start building your audience, Facebook has lots of detailed analytics to help you know who they are, what they like, and if your message is effective. It's easy to use. Just go to your fan page, and click on "Insights". Immediately you'll see an overview of your page; the left menu gives you over a dozen options to see even deeper insights (such as your reach, page views, and exactly who your audience is). Selecting “People” will tell you where your fans live, how old they are, and if they're male or female. Don’t assume you know your audience; use Facebook’s analytics to make sure you know them.
Amongst other things, these kinds of statistics can help you as you think about where you should do readings and what publications you should target for reviews; if you have a lot of readers in Alabama, for example, then you’ll want to pitch your book for reviews and interviews to regional publications in that area, explaining your popularity with local readers based on your Facebook statistics.
Here are a few tips to help you get the best results from your Facebook presence.
1. Create Both a Personal Page and a Fan Page
Facebook sorts pages into different categories: personal pages, business pages, virtual events, etc. You cannot create a business (fan) page without first signing up for a personal Facebook page. Make the page your author name, not your book title because you don’t want to manage one Facebook page per book. You should manage all of your books as one author (assuming you write them all under the same name).
2. Link Facebook to Your Website.
Place a Facebook “like” widget or button on your author website for readers to “like” your Facebook page and see posts in their newsfeeds.
3. Be Responsive
Your fans don’t just want to hear from you, they want to talk to you! When they comment on a post, make sure you are commenting back. Talking to your fans will keep them engaged and returning for more. When possible, don’t be generic, be personal. Show an interest in who your readers are, beyond your book promotion.
4. Post Often. Post Consistently.
There’s no secret formula for exactly how many times each week you should post on Facebook, but most say 3 to 5 times per week is about right. There are several tools that will post on a schedule, so if you have a hard time remembering to post each day, then once a week write all your posts and then schedule them. You don’t even have to log on to post them! But even if your posts are scheduled, be sure you’re still logging in to engage with people who comment on and share your posts.
Many writers also have themed days to help their message stay consistent. Fridays, for example, are good days to post something on the lighter side—a funny meme, perhaps. Creating a hashtag for that day (such as #fridayfunnies) helps your fans see the theme and navigate back to other posts; think of original hashtags that no one else is using.
Whenever you post something on your personal Facebook page, there’s a little message in the text box that says, “What’s on your mind?” It’s a call to action for everyone to post whatever they happen to be thinking at the time. Switch to your fan page and the message is a little different; it simply says, “Write something.” It’s pretty vague, but the first thing to remember is this isn’t what’s on your mind…it’s about your author brand—you as the author and your books.
While your Facebook fan page may look the same and even function the same as your personal Facebook page, the content and mission is completely different. You aren’t talking to your close friends and family, you are talking to over one billion potential viewers, because unlike your personal Facebook page, your fan page is public and a vehicle of book promotion.
Facebook is good for longer format posts. It doesn’t have the same character restrictions as other platforms, and people on Facebook are normally looking to engage deeper than they are on some other social media channels.
Using images with Facebook posts is highly recommended, as posts with images are proven to receive more engagement than text-only posts. You don’t have to worry about taking a professional photo; you can always use an image from an article you may be sharing, your own photo, or your book cover as the picture that goes along with your post.
Advertising used to cost a small fortune and require you to hire an ad agency, but social media has helped to change that. Paid Facebook ads are a relatively inexpensive and DIY-friendly way to increase the reach of your message and better understand your audience.
Facebook allows you to pay a little bit of money to promote your Facebook posts or ads to Facebook’s large user-base, helping you reach more than the percentage of your followers who will see your posts organically.
You can set a marketing budget on Facebook for less than a cup of coffee, but even though you may only be spending a few dollars, that’s no reason not to spend it the right way. Because the cost and access aren’t prohibitive, it’s easy to fall into the temptation of trying it out with no goals in mind, but don’t fall into that trap. Use the low cost to your advantage and experiment with your message, ad creative, or audience to achieve a specific goal. Here are a few ideas of what’s Facebook ad-worthy.
1. Who Are You Trying to Reach?
You can reach fans only, fans and their friends, or an audience you select through targeting. If you’re posting something perfect for current fans, then boosting it to your followers and their friends may be your best strategy. If you’re trying to get new fans, then targeting is a good option for you.
You can target prospective readers based on interests, location, and any other demographic category you can think of, targeting your ads toward "people interested in x, y, or z” or even as specific as “only men between the age of 21 and 27 living in London who like Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.” This type of targeting will help you reach your desired audience for less money than other forms of advertising.
2. What’s Your Purpose?
Boosted Facebook posts should have a clear purpose. A post about what you fed your cats for breakfast might put a smile on the face of a fan who happened to see your post, but it’s not going to sell more books. What post would? Let’s say you have a book signing coming up and you write a post about it—that’s a post worth boosting, but make sure it’s only to fans within a certain mile radius of the signing.
3. What’s Your Calling?
Ideally you want your fans to do something with any Facebook advertisement. With that in mind, make sure you have a call to action. Do you want them to tag a friend? Visit your author website? Join your mailing list? Buy your book? Provide feedback? There should be a clear path that you want the fan to follow, which you can also use to measure the success of your ad campaign.
For example, you could run a Facebook ad in order to A/B test (or split test) something you’d like to know more about to inform your future marketing efforts and book success. In this case you would produce two versions of the same ad but with one difference to see the impact of that change. The smaller the change, the more useful your learning will be.
If you wanted to A/B test between two book cover concepts, for example, you could simply pit them against each other by running two identical Facebook ads for a relatively low spend. You’d create two Facebook ads with identical copy that targeted the same audience (gender, age, location, interests) for the same amount of time and the same budget. The only difference would be the cover image displayed in the ad. By tracking how many users clicked the ad, you could determine the cover that was more effective as a marketing asset.
The point of an A/B test is that there is no right answer. The point is to see how your target audience responds. Many things about publishing a book (such as the cover) are subjective—what works for one reader might not work for another—however, tests like this can give you insight into what works for most people—and offer you a data-driven method for a small fee to learn valuable information about your audience and help your book live up to its potential.
4. Does it Stand Out?
Only promote content on Facebook that stands out. Use eye-catching photos and limit the amount of text you post—a very concise but well-written sentence will work. Humor is often important, but not essential. Just make the content count and don’t pay to promote anything that puts you on display for the wrong reasons, like a poorly taken photo or grammatically incorrect copy.
5. Limit What You Boost
Boosting too much content can make fans skim right over you. Everyone has that friend who posts way too many messages—they’re the friend you just scroll through when you see they’ve posted something. Advertising too often puts you in danger of being that friend. You’ll essentially pay to be ignored.
If you are serious about growing your author platform as a writer, then you should look for organic growth opportunities on Facebook, but paid Facebook campaigns should be something you consider as well to increase your visibility. Whether a paid social strategy is right for you is a decision you'll need to make for yourself. You may find your money could be better spent elsewhere, so consider your options and make the choice that best suits your time, your author goals, and your budget.
When you spend the time to map out an actual Facebook strategy, then you will find that your book promotion goes further and your fans start becoming much more loyal—not only buying one of your books, but buying all of them—and telling all of their friends to do the same. A well-orchestrated organic and paid Facebook campaign will grow your social presence and help you sell more books.
This chapter was compiled from the following posts on the IngramSpark blog:
Social Media: Choose It and Use It, Self-Publishers! by Carla King, Founder of Author Friendly
What Social Media Should Authors Use? by Sara Wigal, Senior Manager at JKS Communications
How to Use Facebook Ads to Test Your Book Cover Design by Martin Cavannagh, Content Marketer for Reedsy
Facebook Tips for Indie Authors by Scott La Counte, CEO of BuzzTrace
Boosting Posts on Facebook: When, What, and How to Promote by Scott La Counte
How the Latest Facebook Changes Affect Authors by Scott La Counte
Using Social Media to Find Your Book’s Audience by Scott La Counte
