How To Promote your Book on Social Media

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Introduction

As I said before, marketing is such a powerful tool for writers. Even if you are an author and have someone who does marketing for you, you should know the basics. After all, no one knows your book better than you, it is your interpretation put into words, so make sure you have some knowledge of marketing and promotion before putting your content out there.

Marketing is my jam, so I always get excited talking about it! For this post, I selected some of the most basic things you should know about promotion, even if you have no previous knowledge about it. There are for sure (many) more things I could talk about, but for now, let’s focus on the most basic principles.

Where You Should Be

Let’s start with one of the most important questions for authors: Where do I promote my book?

There is no doubt that social media is crucial when it comes to promotion. It doesn’t matter if you are in the book industry, the food industry, the clothing industry, or any industry at all for that matter, you will need to use social media. And this is not to say other types of media will not help you achieve your goals, but nowadays it is just impossible to ignore social media as a whole.

Some of the most popular social media for promotion are: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Each one has particularities, a specific target audience, algorithms, and overall a specific “style.” Within them, you also have other resources for posting content, especially when it comes to short videos (such as Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, and YouTube Shorts).

The important thing here is to determine which social media you will be present on, and what type of content you will focus on posting. Let’s just say that the “It is better than post something than not to post at all” mentality some people have is simply not true. You should always have an objective in mind when posting. If you don’t have it at the moment, don’t post it.

You do not have to be on every social media platform, and you do not have to post every single day or multiple times a day. The golden rule here is to be relevant, so if social media is not for you or if you have not thought about a specific type of content, just don’t do it. If any of these change in the future, then you can work towards establishing yourself in one more platform.

How To Get Ideas

You would be surprised with how many times I use Google or Pinterest before creating a marketing campaign, writing copy for a product or just before creating a graphic to go along. A hint: every single time. Even the ideas I get for these blog posts are backed up by research, examples, and a lot of brainstorming.

It is pretty much impossible to run out of ideas when you do research. You just have to keep an eye on anything that seems promising and keep an open mind about all types of content. Sometimes, you will find a good concept but a promotion style that has nothing to do with your own. When that happens, you have to ask yourself “What do I like about this?” and “How can I adapt this to fit my audience?”

Other times, you will find a promotion that works perfectly for a social media platform, but you are not in there. When this happens, you have to ask yourself “How can I translate this idea into the platform I am on?” As I ALWAYS say, what works for other people may not work for you and vice-versa, so be aware of that.

Promotion, and marketing in general, is about adapting, testing, doing research, and especially listening to your clients/audience/followers. If you believe your audience would like a specific type of content, go for it! Much like a book, you will need to do some editing and refining, but you already have experience with it, right?

What You Could Be Posting

There are many ways you could be relevant in social media. If you have not absorbed anything I said, please remember this: Inspire, Educate, Guide, Engage, Entertain, and Sell. Why do I say this? Because you can indirectly promote your book on social media if you post content that inspires, educates, guides, engages, entertains, or sells to people.

No matter the type of content you bet on, just make sure it brings something valuable to your followers. No one wants to be bluntly asked (again and again) to purchase a product, so make sure before directly asking people to buy something from you, you give them something valuable, that you establish some type of connection.