167 How to Use Facebook to Promote Your Book
Jim: In this episode, we’re going to talk about the right way to use Facebook to sell and promote your books. Last week we talked about why Facebook is overrated for book marketing, but we did not say it’s completely useless.
Today we’re going to cover the ways Facebook can work for you.
Thomas: To recap that previous episode,Facebook is overrated because you don’t want to become a digital peasant farmer by sharecropping on somebody else’s land. It reaches people in the wrong state of mind.
Facebook hides your content from 96% of your fans, so could be doing something more valuable with your time. It’s not about comparing Facebook to doing nothing, it’s about comparing Facebook to the next best thing for you. You’re competing on Facebook with multi-million-dollar shadow organizations that will outspend you and out-optimize you.
What if you’re too introverted to market any other way?
Jim: One author in our community said, “I’m an introvert. I’d rather die than give talks in public.”
Thomas: Public speaking isn’t for every author. The key to good marketing is playing to your strengths. If you’re not a good public speaker and you’re not willing to learn, it may not work for you. But it’s one of the most effective tools, so you’re setting aside something powerful with that self-talk.
The best public speakers are often introverts. Extroverted people tend to have a lower ceiling because their comfort on stage causes them to get less education, less training, and to do less practice.
I’m introverted myself. A lot of authors use that as a badge and a get-out-of-jail-free card. “Oh, you don’t have to do anything uncomfortable as long as you’re an introvert.”
Sometimes to be successful in life, you have to do things that are uncomfortable. That doesn’t mean you have to do public speaking, but that self-talk is potentially dangerous. Just because you don’t get energy from crowds doesn’t mean you shouldn’t interact with other people.
Don’t podcasts and YouTube videos take just as much time?
Jim: The second question was whether podcasts and YouTube videos take a lot of time to produce. They do, but here’s the difference. When you post something on Facebook and, it goes down the marketing river, never to be seen again. By contrast, a high-quality podcast episode, YouTube video, or blog will be around forever.
To the introverts who won’t get on a microphone or behind a camera, I say, take your time to do a compelling blog post.
Thomas, your “Courtship in Crisis” blog post was years ago, but my guess is you’re still getting hits every single day.
Thomas: It still gets thousands of visitors. I still get comments and questions about it. It continues to affect the conversation.
How do you drive people to your blog without Facebook?
Thomas: The next question was, “How do you drive people to your blog if you don’t notify them on Facebook or Twitter?”
When I got started, there wasn’t really a way to use Facebook for book marketing. I was one of the only people advocating for it. Now for a lot of people, it’s the only thing they try. Once you take Facebook off the table, it forces you to be more creative and to discover the hundred other ways of getting traffic to your blog.
One of the best things you can do to promote your blog is emailing friends individually. With my “Courtship in Crisis” post, I emailed two dozen friends one-on-one saying, “Hey, that blog post I’ve been talking about is finally live. Here’s the link.” Those initial people caused it to spread to a million folks.
People hate change. When Facebook first came out, people were hostile to it because it was the new thing. Now the new thing is thinking outside the Facebook box and people are hostile to that. Change is inevitable, and it’s important to surf the wave of change rather than paddling behind it.
What if organic visibility on Amazon has dried up?
Thomas: Someone asked, “It’s harder to get organic visibility on Amazon than it was five years ago. How do people know you have a book unless you advertise?”
Advertising may be the answer. If you took half the time you’re spending on Facebook, worked a job, made some money, and spent it on advertising, especially on Amazon, you might get a better return than working for free for Facebook.
Overrated does not mean useless.
Four Ways Authors Can Use Facebook to Promote Their Books
Here are the ways Facebook can work, based on our experimentation as of December 2018.
Tip #1: Don’t Use Facebook to Promote Your Books.
Jim: That sounds like a contradiction, but here’s what we mean. When you’re using Facebook, have the mentality that it’s a party. If you walk into a party and say, “I’m so excited, I just won my fifth Christie Award,” that’s very different from saying, “Hey guys, buy my book! It just won the Christie Award!”
It’s a subtle difference, but it’s major. If your attitude is, “I’m at a party seeing my friends and talking about what’s going on in my life,” that’s very different from signing people up for your Amway downline.
When you post on Facebook, think about how you’d interact at a cocktail party or a summer barbecue. How would you talk about your books in that context?
Tip #2: Use Facebook as an Advertising Platform
Thomas: The power of Facebook advertising is that you can find a very specific, narrow kind of person and advertise just to them. Using the Power Editor, you can target 35-year-old women who like this author and that author, who live in a certain part of the country and are married. Once you know who your ideal reader is, you can target just those people.
If you’re the kind of person who says, “My book is for women between the ages of 25 and 85,” it’s not going to work. You’ll be paying too much. This technique is only for indie authors. If you’re traditionally published, the margins don’t work. Paying for advertising needs to be done by the publisher.
You can learn more about Facebook advertising in the following episode:
Facebook Advertising for Authors
Tip #3: Use Facebook Ads for Cheap Market Testing
Thomas: This is probably my favorite hack. Use Facebook to do market testing. When I launched the Creative Funding Show, I created several logos I liked. My friend Mary DeMuth made different ones, and I didn’t like hers because they weren’t the ones I made.
To find out which logos were most effective, I bought Facebook ads sending people to the show’s website. The purpose was to see which logo got the most clicks.
Mary’s logos outperformed mine, and I had that information because I used science and data from testing. Hers got 35% more clicks based on 10,000 people who saw the images.
Doing a market test of a book cover or title is very cheap. You can often show a cover or title to tens of thousands of people for $25 to $50.
The most famous example of split testing is The 4-Hour Workweek. Timothy Ferriss had four or five titles, bought ads on Google for all of them, and picked the title that got the most clicks.
This is a very inexpensive way to improve all of your marketing. A good title and a good cover make everything easier, and with Facebook you can test your cover on just your target readers.
Learn more about market testing in our episode called How To Split Test Your Book Title Ideas With Facebook Ads.
Tip #4: Don’t Use Facebook Polls to Choose Your Cover
Jim: I see this often on Facebook where someone puts up two covers and asks friends to vote. You can get some feedback from that, but there are problems. Your sample size won’t be 10,000 people. It probably won’t even be 300. For $25 to $50, you get far better data. If this book is going to sell for 10 or 20 years, it’s worth the money. You also don’t know the demographics of the people voting, whether they’d actually read your book or are just giving an opinion.
Thomas: The other challenge is that people voting in a poll pay far more attention than they would in a buying mode. You’re hearing from their conscious mind rather than their unconscious mind, so you can get bad data. The tiny details in a book cover that someone glancing at a page wouldn’t notice, someone voting in a poll might.
When you do a market test using Facebook ads, you’re reaching their subconscious mind because your cover is competing with all the other noise on Facebook. That reproduces the experience of browsing through a pile of books on Amazon. Market testing is very powerful, and it’s one of the most cost-effective tools.
Learn more about book covers in the following episodes:
- Effective Book Cover Design
- How to Create a Design Brief for Your Book Cover
- 10 Things Every Book Cover Needs
- Book Cover Mistakes That Sabotage Sales
Move Readers Off Facebook and Onto Your Email List
Thomas: Ask readers to or join your newsletter, by offering a reader magnet.
Jim: You can do something as simple as, “Hey, don’t know if you knew this, but I’ve got a newsletter to keep up on what’s going on with me.” If somebody mentions one of my books and there’s a lot of comments on it, I might say, “Hey, to keep in touch, here’s a link to my newsletter.” Don’t go overboard with it.
You don’t want to call out Facebook’s algorithms. You can just say, “There’s a lot of activity on Facebook and it’s easy to miss updates. If you want to make sure you get updated on my latest book, here’s a simple way to do it.”
Thomas: What’s sad is that when you post a link to your newsletter or blog, almost no one will see it. It’s almost better to mention that it exists rather than telling people how to get there. It’s a catch-22.
You might as well post a link. Not many people will see it, but some will, and some is better than none.
Announce Your Book Launches
Thomas: Announce your book launches on your personal page and your author page. It won’t do much, but every sale counts and something is better than nothing.
Facebook can still be used. The winds of change are ever blowing, and the things that worked last year don’t work as well this year. The more people do something, the less useful that thing becomes.
Jim: What we’re saying overall is that if you’re doing A, you’re not doing B, and B might be the better thing to do today. Evaluate all your opportunities. It comes down to ROI. What is going to be the best investment of your time?
Because of how Facebook has changed over the years, the following tips and tactics mentioned in the podcast are no longer recommended.
Use Facebook Groups for Launch Teams
Jim: Facebook groups work really well for organizing a launch team. You can reach out to people, ask if they want to be part of your launch team, and then create a private group to encourage and interact with them. You’re at the party saying, “I’ve got this book coming out, anybody want to help?” People go, “That sounds fun, what’s involved?” You get to interact with them on an ongoing basis, and your superstars will emerge. Facebook makes it easy to attract people for your launch team and keep them engaged during the launch.
Thomas: Facebook groups are nice because everyone already has an account. If you use a third-party service and require a separate username and password, people forget their login, they can’t get in on their phone, and it becomes a hassle. All of that is eliminated with Facebook. You can do launch teams through email, but email isn’t the right tool. Facebook groups are currently the go-to for organizing launch teams.
Try Facebook Live
Thomas: Facebook Live doesn’t work as well as it used to. When Facebook first launched it, they gave it a big boost in the EdgeRank algorithm, and Facebook Lives did very well. That boost has faded, and they’ve changed the technology on how it works from your phone, but it still works and can be fun and interactive.
I’ve done maybe 100 hours of Facebook Live in my lifetime. My radio show was on Facebook Live. As something to do from a page, it’s one of the more effective options, but the best way to tell somebody about your Facebook Live is still to email them about it. When we do Facebook Lives for Novel Marketing, we have to email our list because our actual Facebook fans won’t see the post.
If you’re targeting a younger audience, YouTube Live may be better because younger people tend to be more YouTube-oriented. If you’re targeting an older audience, probably older than 25 or 30, Facebook Live is probably better.
Create a Private Group for Your Hardcore Readers
Thomas: Of all the things we’re recommending, this is the one we do the most regularly. We have a Novel Marketing group linked from our fan page. It’s a private group, so you have to apply, but we let everybody in unless they look like a spammer. It’s a great way to connect with hardcore fans and a great place for listeners to discuss episodes.
We haven’t had too much trouble with trolls, but since it’s a private group, we can block and ban people for bad behavior. Facebook groups are currently favored in the algorithm over pages, especially if you keep them small. The downside is that it doesn’t scale well. The bigger the group gets, the less likely people are to be notified about activity. Anytime you start to succeed on Facebook, the highest blade of grass gets clipped.
Jim: You might experiment with having a Facebook group for each of your books, for people who really love that specific book, and then a group for people who love you as an author. That keeps things smaller. Word of mouth is always going to be the best form of advertising, and you can do some cool things with these small groups. Facebook is always changing, and we as marketers always have to be adapting and experimenting.
Join Groups in Your Genre
Jim: If you write science fiction, there are so many groups on Facebook for people who love to read science fiction. Join that group. One of the groups I’m part of is Avid Readers of Christian Fiction. I go in there, comment, and engage. When my book comes up, I can comment about it and thank people for reading it. A lot of times they’ve done the work for you.
That leads into the next point. Set up alerts so that when somebody mentions you or your novels, you can go in and interact with them. It’s the party analogy. You overheard someone talking about your book, and you walk up and say, “Hey, it’s really nice to meet you. Thank you so much. I’m thrilled that you like my book.” That creates more interaction. If there’s a lot of activity on something on Facebook, it goes to the top of the feed.
Readers are thrilled when the author comments. They’re more likely to mention your book if they know you, if they’ve been to the same parties a number of times.
Thomas: Be careful not to overdo this. You don’t want to drown out the little flame by blowing on it too hard. This can become very exhausting. Big-time authors don’t do this. It’s typically done by beginning authors just getting started. Find the healthy balance and pay attention to when you’re doing it too much.
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