Blogs

Building a social media network takes time, patience, and perseverance. The sooner you start social media activities, the better. Don’t wait for your book launch to begin to build a following! Successful social media campaigns happen 365 days a year; you never know when your outreach will lead to book sales, consulting offers, speaking opportunities, or new business endeavors.

Social media can be overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. You are not required to participate on every social network available, nor do you have to spend your entire day promoting through social media. All you need to do is:

• Pick the social media outlets that are most relevant to your platform and that you are comfortable using.
• Determine what amount of time you have available, whether it’s once a day or once a week, and devote that time consistently.
• High-quality, relevant posts are more important than volume.
• The key to social media is engagement—be willing and able to interact with others and pay it forward when it comes to sharing other people’s activities and information.
• Be yourself—authenticity is the key to drawing people in and sharing your message.

Twitter
Here are some free tools to get more Twitter followers, join a Twitter group, establish yourself as a Twitter expert, or run a Twitter contest.

Increasing Twitter Followers

• Mr. Tweet—a free service—analyzes your existing followers and the subject matter of your tweets and makes recommendations of other Twitterers and Twitter groups you should follow.
• Twibes allows users to join an existing group of people sharing a common interest or start their own group.
• Listorious helps you establish yourself as an expert on Twitter and answer questions from around the Twittersphere.

Twtawa is a free online tool that lets you schedule a giveaway. The service will randomly select a winner at the end of your contest, and it also searches for all tweets with a specific hashtag and makes them relevant to your contest. Your followers can join the contest by simply tweeting a link to it.

Making Your Tweets Interesting
Make liberal use of hashtags within tweet content. Use a hashtag already in use, or create a new one. A hashtag is a keyword or phrase prefixed by a hash symbol (#), such as #books or #authormarketing. Hashtags enable people to search for and follow all tweets that include a particular keyword; the tagged word will appear in search results for that term.

Sites to monitor trending topics and hashtags:

• Use WhattheTrend and Wthashtag to learn about trending hashtags and try to incorporate them into tweets when possible.
• Use Twubs collects Twitter groups built around content aggregated from hashtags. You can register an original hashtag and encourage other tweeters to adopt it in their tweets.

Tools to enhance tweets:

• Share documents on Twitter
• Share photos on Twitter
• Another way to share photos on Twitter
• Share videos on Twitter
• Another way to share videos on Twitter
• Create polls, ask questions and get feedback from followers on Twitter
• Create surveys to better understand your followers
• Create coupons online and reward your followers

Facebook
To kick-start your network on Facebook, it’s preferable in most cases to start a fan page rather than a Facebook group page. There are fundamental differences between the two types of pages.

Facebook Fan Pages
Purpose: Helps you promote your personal brand, build a network, and raise visibility and public community interaction.

PROS:
Allows you to post a new discussion, post to existing discussion walls and forums, send a message to all members via fan updates, gain visitor statistics, create events, and invite fans to upcoming events.

SEARCH ENGINE BENEFITS:
Any links you post on a fan page are “do-follow” (meaning they are indexed by search engines). Also, since fan pages are visible publicly, they are likely to show up in a Google search for your book or topic. Also, after you gain 25 fans, you have the option of creating a branded URL for the page.

WHERE MESSAGES TO YOUR FANS APPEAR:
In the notification bar, on the right-hand side of their profile.

Facebook Groups
Purpose: Allows you to have an online discussion about similar interests or to establish yourself as subject-matter authority among peers.

PROS:
You can host a discussion, post to discussion walls and forums, send messages to all members of the group, and participate in a public video or photo exchange. Additionally, any group member can send bulk invites to his or her network for group events

CONS:
You cannot get visitor statistics.

SEARCH ENGINE BENEFITS:
None, since groups are private. Your group URL is a mixture of random letters and numbers, which makes it difficult to share with others.

WHERE MESSAGES TO MEMBERS IN THE GROUP APPEAR:
In the member’s Facebook inbox.

Linkedin

1. Leverage your LinkedIn profile headline or summary to prominently announce your book title. Example: John Smith, Business Consultant and Author of “Book Title”
2. Use LinkedIn’s Amazon Reading List application to enhance your profile. Add your own book as well as other books you’re planning to read. Click here to learn more about LinkedIn’s Amazon Reading List application.
3. To establish yourself as an expert, monitor LinkedIn Answers for questions related to your book’s topic. Post answers with a link back to your profile.

SlideShare
Business and nonfiction authors and those looking to establish themselves as subject-matter experts should consider SlideShare, which enables authors to easily upload and share PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, videos, and webinars online. With over 25 million monthly visitors, it’s the world’s largest online presentation-sharing community. It’s also a great opportunity to share ideas and connect with others seeking your expertise.

Online Book Communities

Goodreads
Goodreads is the leading social network for book lovers and one of the fastest-growing sites on the web, with 3.3 million registered users. Goodreads allows authors to create a page containing an author bio and list of published books for free!

Additional author features allow you to:

• Publicize upcoming events, such as book signings and speaking engagements.
• Tap influencers and get books in the hands of fans by listing a book giveaway.
• Gather reader feedback by creating custom trivia questions and online polls.
• Interact with readers by participating in an online Q&A session.

LibraryThing
With over 19 million books cataloged and nearly 300,000 members, LibraryThing claims to be the world’s largest book club. This popular online book cataloging and social networking site will help you put your book in the hands of fellow book lovers.  

If a LibraryThing member has already added your book title to their online library, it’s quite possible that your author page has already been created. Once your free author page is set up, you are allowed to add a photo as well as other links to your website, blog, or fan sites. With a free account you can add as many as 200 favorite or comparable titles to your profile, which allows readers to find you through similar books.

FiledBy
FiledBy is a community in which readers can discover and connect with authors online. Authors can create a free profile with photo, links, and more. Every time an author edits or updates his or her profile with something new (e.g., a photo, biography, or news item), the activity is posted across the FiledBy website, including on the homepage and on appropriate Category pages. There are 50 category pages and thousands of subcategory pages. Authors can sign up here.

Rochelle Carter is the President/CEO of Ellechor Publishing House. Ellechor is a publisher of Inspirational Christian books, including Adventure and Romantic fiction, and non-fiction/devotionals dealing with Relationships, Suicide Prevention and General Self-Help.

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