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Promotion, as an author, is a lot of hard work. Particularly as an indie writer, it can be very difficult to stand out on social media and grab potential readers’ attention. But, if you have a good tool to help you manage your social media, you can not only save a lot of valuable time that would be better spent writing, you will also be able to get better results. In this post, I’m going to share my top tips for how to use social media management tools to promote your book online.

Use an editorial calendar to plan your promotion

If you’re planning to release a new book, one of the most important aspects is that you need to start your promotion of it as soon as possible; ideally, months before your book is ready to be released.

With an editorial calendar, you can make your job easier and plan and schedule your promotions all in one go, from the same place.

Most social media management tools allow you to schedule out updates and more and more of them also have editorial calendars – for example, Agorapulse or Sprout Social.

Although much of your engagement will need to be live, there are still quite a few updates that you can schedule in order to save yourself some time that would be better spent working on your book. For example, you can schedule out any teasers from your upcoming book or links for your blog posts. This way, you can also schedule them so that they go out at the ideal times, when your audience is most active online, for maximum impact.

Planning out your content has a lot of benefits:

• it helps save you time,
• it helps you be more organized and,
• it helps improve the results you get from each of your updates.

Use influencer marketing to help promote your book

Influencer marketing has been growing quite a lot in recent years, and for good reason; influencers are more accessible than ever and they can be very effective promotional tools, including for authors.

First, you need to identify any relevant influencers in your niche. One of the ways you can do this is to check if there are any influencers already following you on social media. Although this is not a widespread feature among social media management tools, Agorapulse, for example, will automatically qualify the members of your audience and let you know if there are any social media influencers that are following you.

Otherwise, you can use a tool like Buzzsumo to search for influencers in your niche. Think of a few keywords that would be relevant to your search and then you’ll be able to find influencers based on the success of their content online.

Once you’ve finished identifying social media influencers, it’s time to connect with them on social media. Many social media dashboards now offer customer relationship management (CRM) tools that can be of huge help for an influencer marketing campaign.

With a CRM tool, you will be able to keep better track of all the influencers you want to connect with, as well as organize them with tags, for example. You will also be able to see all of your past conversations with them, and you can usually also leave notes, so that you’re never out of the loop when conversing with them.

Growing relationships with influencers can take a bit of time, not to mention you might need to try to connect with multiple influencers in order to get the best possible results for your book.

They can be of huge help though, particularly for when your book is ready to launch. They could help you promote your book by advertising your launch date on their website and/or social media, share your book teasers online, or even better, some might even write a book review that they publish on their website.

Getting an influencer to promote your book in any way can be of great help and make a big difference for your book’s success. They have bigger audiences, audiences that trust their opinions and recommendations. This means that even a few shares or retweets on social media from an influencer can make a positive impact on your success.

Engage and grow your network

In order to promote your book on social media, you need to grow your audience and keep them engaged and interested in what you have to offer.

One way to do that is to use your social media management tool to monitor conversations on social media with relevant keywords and hashtags and then join them as they happen. This will help grow your follower list, as well as your engagement – the more you engage with other users, the more they will engage with you in return, which can help you promote your book and make more sales once it’s released.

Use analytics to improve your results

Staying on top of your analytics can be of huge help with improving your overall social media strategy.

Check to see which updates are most successful and which don’t work – this way, you’ll be able to create better content and updates that drive more engagement on social media.

Another way of using analytics is to check which times your audience is most active and engaged. You can then share more updates during those times in order to maximise the engagement you get and make sure your updates get seen by as many people as possible.

You will also be able to identify which social networks work best for you. You can then focus more of your attention on those social networks, so that you don’t lose time on an ineffective channel, when you can use that time to work on your book, for example.

Create a contest

You can also improve your results, get more engagement and create a bigger buzz surrounding your book by creating a contest on social media, where you gift your book as a prize.

Some tools offer integrations with these types of apps, so you can create contests such as sweepstakes or instant wins. A good contest will help you get more engagement, while also helping you promote the book at the same time.

Conclusion

Promoting a book can be a daunting task, but a social media management tool can really help you organize yourself, while also getting you better results (you can use a tool to compare social media dashboards here).

How are you using social media for book promotion?

 

Lilach’s website:  www.lilachbullock.com, twitter, and facebook 

Highly regarded on the world speaker circuit, Lilach has graced Forbes and Number 10 Downing Street. She’s a hugely connected and highly influential entrepreneur. Listed in Forbes as one of the top 20 women social media power influencers and was crowned the Social Influencer of Europe by Oracle.  She is listed as the number one Influencer in the UK by Career Experts and is a recipient for a Global Women Champions Award for her outstanding contribution and leadership in business.

 

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