So your publisher says you need to grow your platform. You need to be able to communicate with and listen to more people in order to promote your book.
Here are 7 great ways that Facebook can help you do that.
1) Add Your Blog to Facebook
Connecting your blog to Facebook is a great way to boost traffic to your blog. I have more than doubled my blog traffic through effective Facebook integration.
2) Create a Page for Your Book
You want to start building your Fanpage as soon as possible. Fan pages allow you to send out location specific messages. Are you giving a talk in Dallas? Send an invitation only to your Dallas fans.
Check out our guide: How to Create a Facebook Page in 3 Easy Steps
3) Get a Facebook Shortname
Facebook usernames make it much easier for people to find you on Facebook. It also makes it easier to link to your Facebook profile or page. For instance our shortname is www.facebook.com/AuthorTechTips simple, easy to remember. No random numbers.
You want to get a short name for both you and your page.
To get a shortname visit facebook.com/username
4) Sync Twitter & Facebook’s Status Updates
Connecting Twitter to Facebook can be a big time saver. It will allow you to either post to Facebook or Twitter and your update will automatically go to the other site. This can double your platform with little extra work for you.
Check out our guide for how to connect Twitter to Facebook.
5) Share on Facebook
You want to get into the habit of sharing cool links and videos on Facebook. This will help you build a reputation for sharing cool stuff so that people pay attention when you share links to your own stuff.
Check out our guide on how to share something on Facebook in one click.
6) Add a Link to Your Facebook Page to Your Website
You want to add links to your Facebook pages/profile to your sites around the web.
Here is how to do it:
- Grab a Facebook icon.
- Add that icon to your website. (ask your webmaster if you need help)
- Turn that icon into a link to your Facebook username Facebook.com/YourName
7) Learn to Listen (Most Important!)
Being effective on Facebook, or any online social network, is more about listening than talking. Listening effectively is the key to success. Below are some related posts we have to help you.
This is great info that really has come in handy! Thanks!
But… Facebook experts are quoting stats that say cross-posting to Facebook from another platform (Twitter, WordPress, Buffer, RSS Grafitti, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, etc.) will reduce your engagement by as much as 70%. There’s a huge number of FB users who don’t even know what a hashtag is! Facebook hides the posts with the least Edgerank when several posts from those platforms happen to be posted at the same time – so this strategy works if you have a large following with high engagement. Otherwise Edgerank works against you – doesn’t it?
Besides – doesn’t that inherently signal to people that you’re not even there? If I see a post that’s been generated from another platform I don’t bother clicking or commenting.
Are you saying we should be creating a Facebook page for each book? Not an author page? How many pages can one author reasonably be expected to manage, and create a growing viable community/tribe on?
Lisa, You are right. This post is three years old and a lot has happened with EdgeRank since then. I no longer recommend that people link Facebook and Twitter.
I do think you need a Facebook page for each book if only to prevent a community page from forming for your book that you do not control.
Awesome article. I have a dilemma. As a website owner, how long
did it take for your blog to be productive? Likewise what do you like most about
running a blog?