When it comes to marketing on social media, there are two things to consider: content creation and platform/distribution.
I’ll start with the content creation. Content can be useful when it comes to creating leads, or future potential readers. To do that, you want to make sure you create content that matches what people are searching for, and then have calls to action (CTA). It helps to come up with goals for your content, which can be videos, blog posts, or other types of content for social media platforms, and then measure your content to see which pieces are the most effective.
Some things to consider, according to Content Marketing Institute, include not relying heavily on word count or video length, not relying on a big budget, and focusing on building your audience, rather than merely selling to them. And if you are creating videos, Lisa Tener has a guide for making videos and doing video interviews, which has tips such as having a professional space, avoiding backlighting, wearing fitted clothes, and when on camera, being playful, demonstrating when possible, and having clear messaging.
As a side note, once you’ve established a relationship with your audience, you can promote your books, and there are lots of book mockup tools you can use to create images for different platforms.
Now for the distribution aspect. It helps to figure out what the community on a specific platform is talking about or what topics they’re searching for. According to Content Marketing Institute:
The best content distribution approach is often community management or social media strategy in disguise. Content simply becomes the fuel to help you engage with an audience where they’re most active.
It all starts by finding your content-channel fit. Find where your audience is most active and embed yourself to engage with them. Provide value by running alongside them and you’ll build a more robust and engaged audience.
This blog has a lot of posts about social media platforms. But here’s a few more resources:
- 55 examples of what to tweet on Social Media Just For Writers, such as inspirational quotes, developments in your genre, or quotes of positive reviews of your book
- Examples of inspiring Facebook author pages on miblart, which have posts showing character family trees, shouting out to other authors, and sharing book trailers
Last, the New York Times recently wrote an interesting piece about a trend on #BookTok (on TikTok), where young women make book recommendations. Some of the most popular ones show them crying when they finished a particular book.
