Social Media For Writers

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by CJ McDaniel // March 21  

Have you written a book and are planning on promoting it within the next few months? If so, you could benefit from understanding the key social media platforms strategies successful writers use to drive sales.

Social media has proven its worth its weight in gold when it comes to driving traffic to websites, propelling campaigns forward, and increasing ROI. If you’re not using social media for writers to support your eBook selling efforts and flaunting your writing skills, you’re missing out.

Social Media For Writers – Strategies For Success

The publishing industry is huge right now. For example, the US publishing industry saw a revenue of $28 billion in a recent year. However, it’s fiercely competitive out there, and if you want your book to stand out from the rest, you will need to get great social media platforms strategies in place.

Take a look at our top five tips below for creating a winning social media platforms strategies for writers. Let’s get into it!

Search Engine Optimization

One of the best ways to get more people to your website and buying your book is to optimize your keywords. Search engine optimization, or SEO as it is also known, involves using specific keywords in your blogs and website pages in a manner that will mean your page gets displayed when people search online using those terms.

Effective SEO is a great marketing strategy and can help you to get organic traffic to your sales pages and compete more effectively in the large publishing industry. You will find that your particular topic and book will be displayed higher up the search engines’ results pages if you use the right keywords and tags.

If you are writing a blog article about your book and its upcoming release, be sure to add a relevant keyword in the title, the introduction, and several times throughout the piece.

You might also want to link your keywords to other websites that are relevant to those keywords or a previous blog post you wrote. Using SEO will be great for your upcoming book release.

Social Media For Writers Needs Twitter and Facebook

Marketing your work on Twitter is important in today’s publishing industry. After all, there are at least 328 million monthly active Twitter users around the globe.

Social Media for Writers - Tips on How to succeed in the business

You will need to be creative on Twitter since you are only given 140 characters for each tweet. You will need to figure out who to tag and the right hashtags to use. Above all else, you need to target the right audience for your book.

When deciding what hashtags to use, figure out if they’ve been used in the last month and how popular they are overall. You should also make a call as to whether you should write more formally or in a relaxed manner. This will largely depend on the kind of audience you are reaching out to.

For a successful tweet, use two hashtags, no more, no less. Twitter will play an important role in promoting your books to your potential audience. Before you know it, your books will be flying off the shelves! It’s that easy!

When you are trying to come up with a strategy for Facebook that could sell more books, you might want to start with a short call to action on your Facebook page. This helps a lot to drive traffic to your account.

You could also write something funny that will get people talking or pose a question to promote more engagement. Facebook users tend to share great posts so try to make your information exciting and shareable.

Try to hook your readers so that they click on your article. This will increase the chance that they’ll go on to make a purchase. Be sure to add images and photos on Facebook to get more engagement from your audience.

The Benefits of LinkedIn

When looking at social media for writers, you might find yourself drawn to LinkedIn. This social media platform is meant specifically for professionals and businesses.

If your book is targeted at a professional audience, LinkedIn may be the right choice for you.

Any posts that you share on LinkedIn should really show the value your book can offer to a business or a career. You don’t necessarily need to find a large following on LinkedIn since many of your posts will likely get viewers solely based on keywords and topics.

Top tip: If it’s relevant to your book, add thought leadership content as this type of writing gets more viewers on LinkedIn.

Management Tools for Social Media

Social Media for Writers - Tips on How to succeed in the business

Hootsuite and Buffer are great for managing your social media posts. Social media management tools like these are essential for a strong and vibrant social media strategy.

If you have a large community vying for your publications, you’ll need these tools to manage all of your posts.

These dashboards will also show you what other people in your community are posting.  This makes it much easier for you to share and retweet posts.

Hootsuite allows you to schedule posts ahead of time and manages all of your social media accounts in one place. Social media management tools will be essential for your brand marketing activities and selling your book.

Target The Right Audience And Build a Community

You will need to know the target market for your book. You can figure this out by learning about the demographics of your audience.

Social media sites will allow you to get feedback on your book almost instantaneously. Use this feedback to learn more about your audience and figure out how to meet their needs or address their requirements in future publications.

Reading reviews and gathering information from your readers can help you expand upon your future publications and change some key ingredients in your writing style. For example, if you see a lot of photos of people reading your book on the beach, you can market it as a great holiday read.

These five tips on social media for writers should help you become more well-known and sell more books. You’ll get a great fan base before you know it!

Lindsay Cummings shared her video about Social Media Marketing Tips for Writers & Authors. Watch it for more helpful information.

Conclusion

When trying to build a community through your social media platforms, be sure to discuss other authors and other novels out there. You’ll find that the individuals you promote will be keen to return the favor.

Find the right people to connect with through your online platforms. Reach out to readers who are following authors in your publishing topic or niche. It may take time for the fruits to bear; however, in the long run, you’ll see how effective social media is. Just be patient and make sure you have some baseline data against which to compare your progress. 

Do you have any other tips for improving the presence of social media for writers? If so, let us know in the comments below! And if you have any questions, contact us here.

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About the Author

CJ grew up admiring books. His family owned a small bookstore throughout his early childhood, and he would spend weekends flipping through book after book, always sure to read the ones that looked the most interesting. Not much has changed since then, except now some of those interesting books he picks off the shelf were designed by his company!