One of the best tools you can use is Facebook. It gets likelier every day that you already have a Facebook account; there are over a billion users, but most don’t take full advantage of the features that allow people or organizations to market themselves.
If you have a Facebook page, please ensure that it is included in your Profile, there is a box provided for this link, please include the http://. This will then link to your author page on our website and readers will be able to link to your Facebook page from there.
By sharing one of our posts that concerns your book or another that is of interest to you, then this helps widen the possible audience. Facebook algorithms dictate how many people see your updates. There are few things that you can do to increase the number of people that see a post.
Copy and paste a link into a Facebook status update, and Facebook automatically generates a link preview. So if you have an article or interview online, use the URL (website address for the page where the item is). Once the link is previewed below your status update, you can delete the link in the status and replace it with your own text. Use the @ sign to link to named sources on your text, we do this for author names that then ensures that our status about their book will appear automatically on their feed.
Visual posts get more views (a lot more views) than text posts or linked articles.
Here is a list of Facebook groups you can join that welcome all book-related posts. Share your book links, interviews, podcasts, blogs, videos with these groups and reach new readers.
Authors, artists, books and art promotion (118,000 members)
Writers and authors promotions (78,000 members)
The bloggers and authors group
Bloggers and authors connect 🙂
<Kindle Book Promotion> Authors, Writers & Bloggers
Advertise books and get reviews
Author/Publisher/Editor/Book Readers
Kindle Krazy! Authors Actively Seeking Readers
Everything Book Related-Authors/Readers/
Profile vs. page
The single most important part of marketing yourself on Facebook is maintaining your author page (also known as a fan page).
- You must have a Facebook account and a personal profile set up in order to create a Facebook page, as every page needs to have an admin in order to log in and manage the page, or have a role on the page. This article explains more: https://www.facebook.com/help/217671661585622/?ref=u2u
- Your author page is a public part of Facebook on which you can talk to your readers, post updates, make big announcements and upload videos of your readings.
- Click on www.facebook.com/pages/create/ to see the area on Facebook with the various options you can choose when making an author page. Most likely you’ll want to choose the “Artist, Band or Public Figure” option, and then “Writer”—but if you are best known as a chef and your book is a recipe book, choosing “Chef” might not be a bad idea. Try to pick the option that best captures what you want to be known for in the long term.
Engagement
We have invested much in growing our own publishing fan pages to give our authors another platform for showcasing new releases. It’s tough. Facebook evolves at a lightning speed, and what works today may well not work tomorrow. Nevertheless, what follows is our most up-to-the-minute advice on building an audience on Facecbook.
Social media is an art, not a science. So always remember to be creative, experiment, be authentic and play with differnt ideas.
Facebook is social media, so it is social. If you met someone at a party and the first thing you said to them was “Buy my book!” they will likely be put off. If you interact authentically, and imbue your communciation with your personality, then people are far more likely to respond. The hard sell all the time puts people off. So while you may want to use your page simply to convey news about you and your writing, this alone may not be enough. You have to communicate in a way which aligns with your personality but bear in mind people like to argue, be provoked, inspired, and to laugh, and always aim to engage not just to tell.
Facebook artificially constrains who sees posts – if 1,000 people like your page, then a very small percentage of them will see your posts. If you make posts which see a high level of engagement, then this number will rise. Alternatively you can do what Facebook want you to do which is to pay them to guarantee people who like your page to see your posts. However you need to do this intelligently otherwise it could get expensive quickly.
It will take time to build an audience on your author page. Don’t expect to be a smash hit instantly and be prepared to practice patience.
When you create a new page, you can invite everyone you are friends with to like that page. Advise them to set your page to to “see first” – which means people are guaranteed to see your posts.
When boosting posts, you should be looking to boost posts that have already received good traction. Boosting posts that have no likes or comments will cost you more in the boosted post and will see less interaction. Look at your page insights, find the best-performing posts and boost one or two of those per month. It’s also best to use the Facebook ads manager as opposed to hitting ‘boost’ under a post. Boosted posts aren’t always the best return on investment as they may not be optimized for what you truly want. You can dive into the Ads Manager and get a little bit more advantage.
Hashtags only work on IG or Twitter; forget it for Facebook or any other platform.
- Daily use of Facebook’s page function is not for everyone, but you should build a habit of logging on and updating your page at least once a week.
- If you don’t have anything to say for stretches of time, or you are just working on other things, you can share a quote you find inspiring, comment on something that’s happening in your field of expertise, or upload a picture. It doesn’t need to be a long and boring process – the best Facebook updates are usually short and to the point.
- Have a clear target audience: twenty-somethings, YA, sci-fi, MBS, pagan, fans of fantasy and so forth, to build your reputation in your own subject/knowledge area. Do not put up dozens of updates in one go – they will reach fewer and fewer of your fans.
- Seek out other Pages in your interest area and “like” them, and if you can engage in non-promotional, relevant and meaningful interaction on their Pages, you will build credibility.
- There are LOADS of Facebook groups out there for promoting books.
- CAVEAT! A large group is no indication of quality of group. Do your research. A busy group may mean your post is soon swamped. Smaller groups offer more chance to forge more “real” relationships and get into discussions. You must respect the group and give back as much as you take. You cannot go in and self-promote and then swan off again. You will need to get involved in “sharing” and “liking” other authors’ books. It is not a competition, and together we can all rise. If you are a “real” person, talking with others, offering feedback, helping out, then people will remember you and will be more likely to help you when you come to promote something.
Advertising
You may wish to boost and promote your Page or certain posts. It is worth ensuring you have plenty of quality content (as described above) before advertising your Page, so that when people visit it, there is enough featured to tempt them to stay. You can boost a post or promote a page. Facebook allows you to select a targeted audience, choosing demographics, interests, you can even choose people who “like” a similar author. You can promote on a limited budget, currently starting at £1/$1 per day.
Upkeep
You may wish to share admin roles with others, so they may post on your behalf. You will be able to see who posts what, but the general public cannot; it will all appear as your Page. Ensure that your other admins are aware of Facebook’s visibility issues, and consider a schedule, so that you don’t end up with 10 posts on one day which smothers the most important post you were planning to make.
Linking to other social media
There are various applications that will make simultaneous or timed and scheduled posts to all your social-media streams.
- Scheduled posts, via something like Hootsuite or SocialOomph, are very useful to give you the power to update while you are travelling but it is rare these days to be without a smartphone in a Wi-Fi area if social media is your “thing.”
- It can be tempting to push Twitter feeds automatically to Facebook and vice versa but the point of both platforms is SOCIAL—interactivity—and you can’t do that by just shouting about your own stuff. Simply copying “buy my book” from Facebook to Twitter and back won’t do much, and it’s recommended to concentrate on just one platform to get the best from it.
How to Boost a Post on Facebook by Gavin Davies.
It is important that the post you choose to boost is well constructed so that you get the most engagement and reach. Reach is the number of people that have seen the advert. Engagement is the amount of people who interacted with (liked, commented or shared) the post. If you have a post which is already getting a lot of likes and comments and you haven’t boosted it yet, then you should seriously consider doing so!
Here a few tips for creating a great social media post to promote your book:
- Start your post with a question or a bold opening statement. You want something that the user answers in their mind or that stops them in their tracks. This is the key to effective advertising.
- If you use an image, make sure the picture doesn’t contain a lot of text. Facebook tends to either refuse these posts or limit their reach.
- Use a review, endorsement or testimonial so readers know that your book has been critically acclaimed and has value and worth. Don’t be afraid add more than one – a large percentage of users have a herd mentality and if they think the book is good there is a higher chance they will interact.
- Include short details about what the book is about.
- Include an Amazon link. This will bring the user direct to Amazon to purchase should they make the decision to buy now or find out more.
Here’s an example of advertising copy for my book, Haunted, Horror of Haverfordwest
Dare you read? Reviewers are calling Haunted: Horror of Haverfordwest one of the most frightening true accounts ever written.
Compelling and disturbing chronicle of what happens when ordinary people are subjected to extraordinary events ~ Fortean Times
One of the spookiest writers around, G.L Davies dares you to enter his latest haunted house. A couple are pushed to breaking point as an entity possesses their home. Terrifyingly real, this is a must-read for horror fans. Sequel to the bestselling A Most Haunted House (Bonus: Included as a new edit) Dare you step inside… https://amzn.to/2BImG1X
This chilling read will certainly start to worry the reader and will certainly have them looking behind them at some stage – Fred Batt, Most Haunted.
This is a modern paranormal masterpiece, complete with the original A Most Haunted House and a must-read section on explanations, this is possibly the most important paranormal account of the 21st Century – K-Town, Mysterious Radio
How to Boost Your Post Effectively
Once you have created the post, post it. You are now ready to boost it (please note, sometimes it takes several boosts to refine your audience). When you come to the boost page Facebook will ask you what your objective is:
- Send people to your website.
- Get more people to interact with this post.
As you want to sell the book and for people to go to Amazon we recommend you choose the former. Now, refine your ad – select People who you choose through targeting for your audience.
- Audience: Give your audience a name. You can reuse this audience in the future if you wish.
- Gender: Would you like to target men, women, or both?
- Age: The ages begin at 13 all the way to 65+. Who do you think would want to read your book? How old is your intended audience? Facebook gives you the analytics on Sex and Age when you boost posts, so it becomes easier to create effectivel future boosts.
- Location: You can then choose your location so you can get people in a particular area to see your post. This is a great tool. If you have a book signing or talk or if your book is set in a particular area then you can choose that specific local area. Have a play with this feature. You may be surprised how detailed it is. You can choose a whole city, county, country or countries! With towns and cities, you can change the radius of your post from 10 miles to 50 miles, if you wanted to include outskirts, villages or suburbs.
- Demographics: What is your book about? Does it have a particular theme? Is it based on something specific? Who would read your book? What genre is it? Is there a certain sort of person who would enjoy your book? You will notice an audience swingometer below this section which points to specific, defined or broad. Defined is good and is the most effective. Play around with various keywords to get the demographics you want.
- Automatic Placements: Gives you the option for your post to appear on other platforms such as Instagram or Messenger. If you believe your audience/readership engage on these platforms that use them. If in doubt try it and see how effective the boost was and decide for the next campaign.
- Duration: One day boosting is only effective if you are using a large budget to reach a huge amount of people. A campaign stretching over a month(s) is more effective. As with any advertising, the longer you advertise the more chance your intended core audience will see the advert. I have found 5-day boostings incredibly effective.
Once you have created and saved your audience, location, and interests, set duration and budget you will then be given an Estimated People Reached number. This is how many people Facebook believe will see your post per day.
You will then have to set up payment details – credit card or PayPal. You can limit your spending in your payment settings as well as setting payment dates. Please note, if you fail to pay your Facebook bill you may find that Facebook severely limits your user status and engagement with other Facebook users.
Before your post is boosted, Facebook will check that It lies within their community and advertising standards. So avoid inappropriate language and images in your post. Even images of horror, partial nudity, people suffering distress or extreme paranormal events can be flagged as inappropriate and the boost rejected. Facebook will notify you if an image has too much text on it and often refuse to use it. Our text ad example with an Amazon link works perfectly and effectively.
How I Boost My Posts
I try and capture the weekend reader. I start my boost on a Thursday and end it on a Monday. I budget $25 ($5 per day). I let it run into Monday as I hope that people who commute or have the day off or a holiday planned will make the decision to buy my book at the start of the week (or ready for the next weekend).
On summer holidays (semester), bank holidays and key days (Halloween, Christmas) I will increase my budget to $50 ($10 per day) or run over 14 days.
I always try and boost towards the end of the month and into a new month as many people are paid at the end of the month and are more likely to make a purchase decision.
My last 5-day campaign (my 12th since book release), on a $25 budget, generated a 12.3K reach for 296 click-throughs which put my book at #1 in several Amazon categories for the duration of the boost plus several days after as those readers promoted the book through word of mouth.
Other Top TIps
If you wish to promote to two countries, then run two different posts for maximum effect unless you are planning a huge campaign spanning several weeks and several hundred dollar budget.
Experiment with boosts, note the results and build up a profile of your readers. You can experiment with trying to engage other age groups, interests and behaviors and within two to three boosts you should see trends appear on who is interested in your book.
Start on a modest budget ($25 to $50) and build from there. As you see the results coming in you can reinvest back into advertising your books. Always remember to note down the statistics from each post to what works.
You can stop or pause a boost at any time but please note that it can take up to 24 hours for the boost to effectively increase engagement and reach. Happy boosting!
Case Study – Raising Faith
Here is an example of Facebook boosting for Raising Faith: A true story of raising a child psychic
The author and I had noticed a trend from a previous boost – a certain sort of person was engaging. We targeted them specifically for this post.
- Gender: Female
- Age: 30 to 65+
- Location: UK
- Duration: 5 days (Thursday to Monday)
- Budget: $25 ($5 per day)
- Interests: parenthood, motherhood, family, spirituality, mediumship, afterlife, clairvoyance, paranormal, eBook, kindle.
The post reached 2400 people and 71 people clicked through and by Sunday the book was #1 in its Amazon category.
As a comparison, I ran the same post using different parameters.
- Gender: Both
- Age: 13 – 65 +
- Location: UK and USA
- Duration: 10 days
- Budget $25 ($2.50 per day)
- Interests: paranormal, parenthood, mediumship, psychic abilities, eBook, kindle, clairvoyance.
This post reached 1400 users and had 31 engagements.
When I checked the analytics for my post the main engagement came from UK woman aged 30-65.
This confirmed our judgement that boosting to a female-only audience was currently the most effective tactic.