There’s no refuting it, social media is a necessary evil when it comes to promotion and marketing. Even big-name and successful authors maintain Facebook and Twitter accounts and the like. Unfortunately if you spend all of your time updating your status, retweeting, pinning and more, then you won’t have very much time to write and do the things you really need to do to be a writer.
While there are ways of tying in your tweets, Google+, web-site postings, Facebook posts and LinkedIn, you need to consider if the effort it saves is worth having consistently repeated information on all of your sites – if a potential reader or fan sees the same thing posted everywhere, then why should they want to see more of it. It gets boring and sometimes even a little pushy. I’m a big fan of “mixing it up” – and setting a timer to prevent my getting lost on a social network.
You need to monitor your results so that you know where your time is best spent. Many blogs and websites have available site statistics which will tell you not only how many viewers have stopped by, but also leave clues as to where those viewers came from. For instance my Wordpress website (http://ChelleCordero.com) has a dashboard which allows me to see my “stats”; under stats I see how many visitors I had in a specific time period, my “referrers” (a referrer is a click from another site that links to yours), my most popular posts and topics (by tags), and my frequent commenters. My blog (http://chellecordero.blogspot.com/) also lets me see where in the world my viewers are coming from.
Facebook has “insights” available on Pages that have a minimum (about 30) followers. The insights will tell you how each post is performing including views, likes and click-thru, the demographics of your audience (age and gender), and even the time your page is viewed the most. Using these insights you can easily see what types of posts appeal to your viewers, what time to set your posts to show for maximum impact and also if you need to cater your posts to speak to a specific type of viewer. One way to use this information would be if you have multiple books with different topics that might appeal to men more than women or vice-versa, or if you are linking helpful or interesting articles, you might decide “9pm on a Wednesday” will let you reach more of your target audience. LinkedIn has just added “audience interest reports” that will help you see interests and lifestyles of other uses this allowing you to hone your reports and posts to garner more interest.
Research the internet for current reports on the usual users of each social media site to help find your ideal target audience. As recently as 2012, Facebook followed by Twitter and then Google+ were the most popular sites; Google+ and Facebook received a majority of male subscribers, while Pinterest and Twitter appealed to more females; the majority of LinkedIn users were 26-to-44-years old while Facebook had a majority of 18-to-34 year old users. (http://bit.ly/1mLdKHX).
Knowing the demographics of the site you are on and knowing which of your posts have more appeal will help you eliminate the clutter and let you spend time where there is more payback for your efforts. Keep track of fluctuations in sales and blog views and immediately correlate those with where you have posted and what you’ve done most recently so that you can repeat the things that work best for you. Remember that the same formula may not work for you as it does for someone else, so notice how your hard work is paying off.
Writing Exercise: Decide what ONE message you want to get out there today – Write it for Twitter (140 characters or less); Write it for Facebook, do you have an accompanying graphic? How would you post it to Pinterest? Choose at least one more social media site that might cater to your target audience and write your message in the best style for that media site.
Writing Prompt: List 10 items that appeal to you in advertisements for clothing, books, cars or foods – not the specific products but what appeals to you in the ad’s style or message (ie: Does it make you think of an active lifestyle? Does it relax you? Etc.)
Challenge Assignment: Write a three-sentence promo about your work (book blurb, blog theme, author bio) that will appeal to women ages 18-30, ages 31-45, and ages 46-and-up; now rewrite the promo targeted towards a male audience 18-30, 31-45, and 46-and-up.
