Writers and Social Media

How to amplify your profile

Why do you need social media?

A web profile will lift search results in Google/Facebook rankings (Facebook is actually

more important for searches now)

Readers like to know more about the author

An opportunity to release extracts before book launch and build an audience

Easy access for journalists, bloggers and other media outlets to contact you for interviews

and promotion

Twitter Profilesedia?

Compare the

profiles on the

following two

slides.

Who has the

more interesting

profile?

This profile

contains a lot

more

information

and uses the

header

space to

contain more

facts about

the writer.

It is a much

better

indication of

who the

author is than

the previous

profile.

You don’t have time for all the social media

out there so narrow it down to 3 or 4

• Know your audience/market.

Where are they?

Who are they?

What platform do they use?

• Facebook is essential

• YouTube for video

Who uses what

Journalists, writers and media personalities love Twitter and Instagram (Insta) Think Donald

Trumps Presidential campaign Kim Kardashian, Charlie Sheen, Major Newspapers etc…..

Pinterest - Lots of women on Pinterest, particularly good for arts, fashion, crafts and cook

books

Instagram popular for photo sharing by artists, foodies, fashionistas, travellers, animal lovers

especially dogs, selfies (over 50% of users are under 25)

Snapchat if you want a younger audience – 75% of users are under 35

Creating multiple profiles

Create several versions of your social media bios (3 versions in one document)

Have a long version, 2,000 character bio – long form bio taken over from cv or resume for

LinkedIn

Shorter version, for Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest

Broadcast: 75 to 100 word bio introduction before speech or media interview

What do I write in the profile?

Be specific – not general (show not tell)

Books, articles, speeches, radio interviews, degrees, length of time in business, name

recognition clients, talents, skills, abilities

Provide details (instead of I’m a writer) say author of The Jam Factory and How Deep is the

Learning Curve, freelance journalist for the Huffington Post, MamaMia blogger, podcaster

and regular guest on the ABC and SBS networks – specific examples, facts and figures and

quantity

Brag but don’t exaggerate – be bold but don’t lie, or mislead

Creating a Twitter Profile

An effective Twitter background generates instant credibility for your profile, book, or

product, You can show a series of book covers written over the years

Your next step on the path to Twitter greatness is to write a short 160-character profile. This

is your book-at-a-glance opportunity on Twitter. Five of the key items to consider in writing

your profile include:

Who are you professionally?

Who are you personally?

What keywords describe you?

Use your real name so you can be found, and list your primary website. You'll notice at the

beginning of the profile some of Chuck’s professional accomplishments using keywords.

Try jotting down a Twitter profile now

Promotion

A few elements to consider when composing your customized background include:

your name,

website address,

A headshot, different than your profile picture,

photos of any books you have written,

a favorite quote by you or someone else,

A personal logo, colors consistent with your logo and or website

Using different profile picture to inset

Use Social Media for Cross Promotion

You can cross-promote your other media sites

and content, including webinars, video casts,

podcasts, Ebooks, blog posts and more.

Because of its popularity, roughly 86% of small

businesses have a Twitter account set up. But

only 25% tweet once a day.

TRANSLATION: most entrepreneurs and

businesses don't know how to use Twitter in a

way that's going to produce the best results

for their brand.

Trump’s Twitter Rants

• Trump’s tweeted more than 34,000 times and is

followed by 15 million people;

• Twitter was his outlet for reaching constituents directly,

and he took advantage of that with a tweetstorm

• He’s insulted nearly 300 people, places, and things

Avoid Celebrity Spats

Writers on Twitter

Poets and Puns on Twitter

What should I tweet?

Bear this in mind when you're composing your tweets.

When appropriate, put in keywords that you know reflect your book or brand and that

your audience is likely to be searching for.

Sparingly use hashtags to highlight your keywords. Use the #hashtag, or pound symbol,

before a relevant keyword or phrase with no spaces in between. This will categorize those

tweets and help them show up more easily in a Twitter search for that particular keyword

or phrase.

Use the 90-10 rule of content. 90% of your tweets should be content-driven and only 10%

promotional. This means that nine out of 10 of your tweets should provide valuable

information, content, opinions, and ideas to your audience and only one out of 10 should

be asking them to buy something.

Hashtags and links

Mix up your tweets

You should mix up your tweets. A healthy, robust combination of tips, questions,

comments, opinions, as well as links to other websites, blogs, articles, audio and video

make for a healthy, happy Twitter account.

Try adding images. As with most social media today, images generate engagement.

Tweets with images result in a 36% increase in clicks, a 41% increase in retweets, and a 55%

increase in leads.

Tweet this

There was once a competition on who could write the shortest science fiction story.

"The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door....“ by Frederick

Brown

Think of a tweet as a short, punchy narrative.

Rewrite the following tweets using 140 characters. Use # (where appropriate):

1. Telling readers your new book ‘The Spy who said no,’ is on Amazon

2. Tweet that Stephanie Myers latest book is full of recipes and color photos,

3. Tweet this profile: I used to be a nurse and now I write romance novels about doctors,

patients, nurses and a thing called love.

Avoid tweets

like these. It

looks like an

obituary,

particular the

one on the far

right. Why does

she need a

white drop

shadow

around the

book and her

image?

Virtual Book Launch on

Hosting a virtual event on Facebook is a fairly simple, three-step process.

Before the event, you should fill out the new event form. This is where you put the relevant

information about your event, including Date, Time, Location, Description, et cetera.

acebook

Create a Facebook

event page to host your

Virtual book launch.

Giveaways

Build buzz for the event

with your email

list, promote the event on

other social media. place

event info on your email

signature line, and offer a

prize to share the event

URL. Amazon allows you to

offer prizes

Should you pay for promotion?

HOT TIP, write up a series of posts

about your event and pay a nominal

amount to make it a Promoted

Post. Only 16% of your fans see a

given update from your page so you

may want to expand your reach

through a Promoted Post. You also

have the option of paying a small fee

to boost your page. This is an

excellent way to get newcomers to

your event.

During the Event

Make sure you do the following things:

Keep people engaged by posting useful information every three to five minutes on your

Twitter Feed, Instagram or Google+, Snapchat

Give away free services and products in exchange for viewer's emails,

Do a Q&A session as part of the event.

Post Event

After the event, you'll want to do the following.

Create a list of tweets attendees can post after the event, follow up with additional

content, such as a

webinar,

ebook, teleclass, et cetera,

and finally, reach out on social media to follow up post-event.

More on posts

Finally, to get the most out of building your personal brand on Facebook, let your personal

brand story unfold update-by-update. Posting consistent, high-quality content that is on-

brand will help strengthen your relationship with your existing audience and expand your

reach to new connections.

Some posts you might consider placing include: quotes, questions, tips, images with

captions, an opinion on a timely topic, and a URL connection to relevant article or blog

posts, videos, surveys and polls, a story, albeit a short one, or a call to action. Just

remember that variety is the spice of life, online and off.

Super Fan group

Create a Super Fan group on Facebook. This isn’t a place for giveaways or special deals,

this is where you can dive into the writing of your books, giving avid readers a behind the

scenes look at her creative process.

Start a mailing list—something authors do better than any publisher—to send semi-regular

newsletters with alerts about deals and upcoming projects. Install a widget on your

website with a writing ticker/progress meter, which shows the status of works in progress.

interest

People pin images to create boards

You can pin your book covers, images from inside the book, short extracts, quotes, recipes,

hyperlinks to articles, your website, fan pages, topics related to your book

Brush up on Photoshop or similar photo imaging software to create unique image that stand

out from the stock photos seen on many websites

Join online communities

Pinterest great for those people who use a lot of visual imagery. Also good for inspiration.

Surprisingly does direct a couple of people to your website most days.

http://www.yourwriterplatform.com/use-pinterest-to-market-book-and-author-brand/

Instagram

Can be useful for short

pieces of poetry, stories or

accompanying images.

Videos increase SEO – Search Engine

Optimisation

Having an author video improves your ranking in search engines.

You can place your video on Youtube or Vimeo and link to your social media sites

Creating a video has become a lot easier with cheaper software, microphones and

cameras

Talk about your book, but don’t give away all of the plot.

Author Videos

Amazon

The amazon author page is another way you can promote your books and direct people

to your social media brand

Use your author profile that I mentioned earlier, upload an image and cross reference all

your other books

Amazon has promotional deals including: giving people a gift voucher for your book, think

about offering Beat Street as a giveaway, buy 2 get one free deals, or have limited 7 day

deals

Remember, the trick is to stand out from the millions of other self-publishing authors.

Summary

Social Media is about maximising your online presence to create new followers and

engage readers.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the key to landing on the first page of

Google/Facebook searches.

Social media is a free marketing opportunity so start posting today.

#Have Fun