Promo Advice Tuesday: 5 Tips for Using Social Media Effectively

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With all the new social media out there, it's hard to know how to use it effectively if you're an author. Many authors just throw up their hands and give up in fact, or they post a lot of personal stuff but not much about their books, or they go the other way and overdo talking about their books. So what's the best way to effectively use Social Media if you're an author?

Here are five tips to get you started:

1. Post about a mix of personal and promotional. This means it's okay to share some personal things about yourself and your life that you're comfortable sharing, but then also share when you have a new release, or excerpts or links to them  for example too.

2. Share useful author information. If you're like me, you probably have followers who are either aspiring authors or newly minted authors. One way to share useful information is do like I'm doing here and posting promo tips weekly. You can also post links to other author's/blogger's articles, free software and anything else that new or aspiring authors might find useful.

3. Share useful reader information. We always have to balance what we share with our followers between the authors in the group and the readers in the group. One way to help fellow authors is to post about when their books are free, or when they've posted new freebies, or when they have an interesting blog post that contains a sneak peak to a new book. I don't personally consider other authors competition, I figure there are enough readers to go around, so I like to share the love so to speak. When you do this you build good will both with your fellow authors and readers alike.

4. Post regularly, but not too much! There's a fine line between overdoing it when it comes to posting to Social Media and posting enough to keep yourself in the reader's thoughts. Too much is posting forty or fifty times a day, and yes, I've seen people do this. Regularly is at least twice a day and not more than five times a day. If you do post more than five times make sure it's not all promo stuff and that you're engaging your readers by communicating with them.

5. Engage your readers. This means you post and then you check for comments and you respond to those comments. Hit and run posts will not get you new readers, instead, people will stop following you, stop responding to you and well you get the picture. This doesn't sell books, instead it turns readers off. So engage your readers, and followers, communicate with them often and you and your books will stay in the reader's eye.

That's it. If you follow these tips for using Social Media effectively, you'll never have to worry about losing readers! Good luck!


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