If you’ve been playing around on social media for a while and you tend to follow a lot of writers like I do, you’ll probably notice your feed filling up with book advertising.
Some of it will be blatant, some less so, but it’s still advertising, and few people want to see it.
So what’s the solution?
Consider this. My favourite social media playground is Google Plus where I run a community called Fantasy Writers. It has almost 8000 members, and it’s growing rapidly.
When I started Fantasy Writers I was trying to build a helpful and supportive community, not an advertising forum, so I banned self-promotion.
Unfortunately, the issue wasn’t so simple. People ignored the rule or found ways around it, and I spent far more time moderating the community than I wanted to.
In response I created a category and called it ‘Self-Promo Saturday’ for members to get their advertising out of their system, usable on Saturdays only.
It worked a charm. The list is clear of promotional stuff most days, while Saturdays see a deluge of it.
But guess what? The self-promotional stuff gets ignored anyway.
Why? Nobody wants to see advertising.
Even the people who advertise don’t bother to look at what everyone else is advertising and support each other.
And there’s the key.
Nobody cares about your book except you, but people do care about their friends, and friends help each other out.
So here’s the secret to promoting your book on social media:
- comment on other people’s posts
- interact with people on social media as you would your real life friends
- share their stuff if you think it’s appropriate
- crow about your book victories and achievements on occasion, but only if it’s newsworthy (like a new cover or contract).
With a little bit of luck people will care enough about you to promote your book when they see something newsworthy.
In short, show you care about others and they’ll respond in kind.
And like Forest Gump, ‘that’s all I’ve got to say about that’.
Now get on your butt and write something people will want to share because you’re so awesome!