Alright, we’ve been walking through the topic of Social Media and the Self-Publisher. This is what we’ve been looking at:
1. Twitter and the Self-Publisher
2. Facebook and the Self-Publisher
3. Goodreads and the Self-Publisher
4. Other Social Media and the Self-Publisher
So, today we’re going to cover “Other Social Media.”
I felt lumping the following social medias together would be helpful. They are important, but at the same time, they are easier to talk through than Twitter, Facebook or Goodreads.
Instagram is basically a photo app. It allows you to share photos with all your followers. Again, the word “followers” seems cultish to me.
Anyway, with Instagram, you can’t put in links, nor can you really directly promote your book, which may bother you as an author, but Instagram has its place. It is for sharing photos.
As an author, here’s what you can do with it:
First, you can put your blog or website in your description. This is, I believe, the only place you can put a link into Instagram.
This will encourage your “followers” (doesn’t that word sound cultish to you? Is it just me?) to check out your site, learn some stuff about you and to learn about your book.
Second, you can post pictures of yourself as a writer. For example, you can post a picture of you in your favorite writing location. Maybe it’s writing on the front porch of your house while drinking coffee as the sun comes up in the morning. If so, get a shot of that. This allows those who know you to see the location where you flesh out your ideas. I do a lot of my writing in a chair in my living room. It’s not overly special, but it shows people where it is I do my writing. It helps to connect your readers to you and your work.
With each photo, you can include a short description of the photo to help draw in the connection with the picture and your writing!
You can also show pictures of yourself at book signings, speaking engagements and more!
To sum up: people choose to follow you and they may see the photos you post (depending on how much time they spend on Instagram). You can use this to get word out about your book and your experiences as a writer in order to build relationships. Building relationships is key!
Amazon Author Central
Once your book is published on Amazon (I’m assuming you will publish with Amazon at some point), you will want to set up an Author Page with Amazon Author Central. The Author Page will allow you to tell people a little bit about you as an author as well as track your book sales. What’s really cool about the sales section of this page is that it tells you where you have sold the books. For reasons beyond my understanding, I’ve sold more books in the Cincinnati area of the US than any other area by far! I don’t think I know anyone in that area, but that’s my big sales area. Strange.
For more information on Amazon Author Central, check out my blog on Setting up an Amazon Author Page.
To keep learning about this, here’s a great blog on Amazon Author Pages:
kindlepreneur.com/amazon-author-central-page/
I have had a LinkedIn account for years and have repeatedly said, “I still don’t understand what the point of LinkedIn is!” It’s a bit of a strange one to me. Here’s what LinkedIn is primarly about: it’s a business networking site.
While Facebook is generally a social site where you connect with friends and acquaintances, LinkedIn is more business focused so you connect with people in your line of work as well as others you want to connect with.
With LinkedIn, you can list yourself as an author and you can set up your blog to automatically post to LinkedIn. While Facebook is often a lot more personal, LinkedIn is based around the idea of connecting with people you don’t know–connecting around your line of work (being an author).
Pinterest is simply a site where you post pictures and posters, but a good chunk of what you find posted will have words and pictures and funny memes. There are a lot of funny Pinterest posters as well as a lot of meaningful and feel good ones. There are also a lot of ideas such as how to decorate or how to fix something or how to do something really important or not so important.
Pinterest is a great way to get information out there and share ideas. The way you make use of Pinterest, as an author, is to set up an account and share Pinterests pointing to your blog posts or promoting your book.
You can do this by direct Pinterest posts (pointing directly to your blog or books) or indirectly by posting Pinterest quotes, insights, writing tips, etc. These are ways to establish yourself as an expert in your field and will encourage others to check you out!
Pinterest is one of many ways to get word out there.
Snapchat
Let me offend a lot of people now. I can’t imagine using Snapchat.
Snapchat is a way to send a photo out to people which will disappear in a matter of seconds. Wait… it’s not the people who disappear in a matter of seconds, but the photo. Wow… send a photo to someone and then they disappear… that’s a great idea for a novel. If someone wants to run with that one, it’s yours!
Anyway, Snapchat’s goal was for the photo itself to only show for a matter of seconds and then disappear. To me… that is just a recipe for disaster. What do you have that you only want to show for 10 seconds? And why????
Just a little word of caution to those who do use it (I know I’m offending a lot of people who love it)… what you share on Snapchat doesn’t disappear after 10 seconds… regardless of what you tell yourself. If you share something private, people remember it and people can do screen captures and keep it forever. If you share something cruel toward another person, that doesn’t disappear out of the minds of those who saw it in 10 seconds. The damage it can do can last a lifetime.
On top of that, Snapchat has added features for saving the photos and videos. That means that once people are used to sending photos and videos that they think will disappear… they can now easily be saved… so… be careful.
Okay, I’ll let that one go… Suffice it to say, I can’t see why I would use Snapchat… either as an author or for any reason. 🙂
Wattpad
Wattpad is huge. At the time of this blog, Wattpad is boasting around 65 million readers! Haven’t heard of Wattpad? I hadn’t either, till just earlier this year. Maybe I was living under a rock.
Because Wattpad is so huge, I’m going to leave this discussion for its own blog. It’s like a social media for free books. Keep your eye out for more on this!
So, there you have it. There are countless other avenues for social media and the Self-Publisher and I would encourage you to explore them (and share about them in the comments below). However, remember this: you only have so much time and energy. Well… I only have so much time and energy. Maybe you have all the time in the world to spend on social media. If you have all the time in the world, and it helps you sell books, go for it! But remember, there is a world outside of the digital world so choose wisely where you put your energy in Social Media!
Have a great time with social media, but don’t make it your life!
NOTE: in the coming weeks, I hope to post an early copy of the official SPoaB Guide (Self-Publishing on a Budget Guide). It’ll be a bit of a walkthrough on how to Self-Publish from start to finish. Keep your eye out. My hope is that it’ll go up in its unfinished form by mid-August!
Comment below with your thoughts about how to use Social Media to get the word out about your books!
Shawn
One response to “Social Media and the Self-Publisher: All the Rest”
[…] 1. Twitter and the Self-Publisher 2. Facebook and the Self-Publisher 3. Goodreads and the Self-Publisher 4. Other Social Media and the Self-Publisher […]