Season 3 - Episode 6: I'm A Social Butterfly - How To Use Social Media Marketing

This little author went to market. Join us today in this short episode all about the basics of using social media to market yourself and your work as an author, based on Ken's personal experience with social media marketing! We promise you won't regret it!

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Social media won't help me as an author. My skills alone will bring me to the top.

(00:07):
My name is Ken Mears, and I'm Melissa Fales, and welcome to Writer's World.

(00:30):
Today we have a very special episode where I'll be asking Ken, a published author, some of his thoughts on social media marketing and how he does that and how he's successful with that. So Ken, why don't you go ahead and get started.

(00:51):
When it comes to being a modern day author, there are a lot of things that you need to know how to do. More and more various duties that used to be the responsibility of a publisher falls on the head of the author. One of the most important of those duties is the marketing of yourself and your work on social media.
Social media is a very powerful tool when it comes to marketing your work. Social media is used by about 3.8 billion people, which is about half the world. Which means using social media you can tap into roughly half the world as possible purchasers of your work.

(01:21):
Needless to say, social media also has very unique ways of reaching people through shares, suggestions, and mutual friends liking your posts. Okay then, Ken, why should I have social media as an author? How can I best use social media to help me grow?
There are several things that I think about when it comes to social media marketing as an author. First of all, I think about my audience. The thing about authors is most authors fall into a niche of one kind or another, whether it's high fantasy or macabre horror. So when you work on crafting your social media pages, you need to keep in mind who you are targeting.

(01:54):
Another important thing with social media marketing is consistency and frequency. For whatever reason, many of the algorithms on social media favor frequent posters. Many of the huge public figures post multiple times a day. Now, while it may seem ideal to try and post multiple times a day, it is quite difficult and is something that I personally have never been able to achieve.
However, consistency does a lot for growing your following on social media. Leading up to and right after the launch of my first book, The Castaway Hero, I had a very consistent schedule for posts. On Monday, I would post an inspirational or writer-y quote. On Wednesdays, I would post a blog article on writing.

(02:30):
On Friday, I would post generally random things. And then on Saturday, I would post a short story, poem, or some other form of work for the public to read. During that period, in which I was very consistent, I saw a very steady growth in followers. It wasn't anything dramatic, but it was a few a week on average.
And then, since October last year hit, I did an event which I called Writetober, where I created some form of writing based on a prompt every single day. During that time, I managed to gain even more followers. So you can pretty readily see the use in frequent posts.

(03:04):
When it comes to creating the actual posts themselves, there are a few things that I recommend keeping in mind. First of all, the visual appeal. Especially on social media networks like Instagram, images are generally required. So, you want to develop your abilities in making visually appealing images.
A tool that I highly recommend is a site called Canva. They have really easy tools for creating social media graphics, and I have used them for well over a year for my posts.

(03:28):
The other important thing is hashtags. For those that may not know about them, hashtags are a marker used on social media to make things more visible. All it is is a hash sign followed by the tag you want to use.
Overall, you want to use as many hashtags as you can that are related to your post and put them at the very end. The ones I most commonly use are ones like hashtag writing community and hashtag authors of Instagram.

(03:50):
Should I have many social media platforms or one?
I would definitely say if at all possible, have several social media platforms. At a bare minimum, you should have Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter as those three are some of the largest and easiest to connect with.
Also, I feel I should mention here a very useful tool I use for distributing my posts onto those networks. It's called Hootsuite, and it has a fairly comprehensive set of tools on their free version.

(04:15):
With the free edition, you can connect up to three different accounts and schedule up to 30 different social media posts ahead of time. I found it extremely helpful, especially when I have been going out of town for a week without Wi-Fi access and need to release posts over that time.
What if I can't keep up with my social media platforms?
Then you might have a slight problem. While people will still occasionally come across your posts and maybe even follow you, it happens way slower. If you create an author of social media, you should try your very best to keep it up.

(04:43):
Now, I know I haven't been the greatest example of this, and I know full well just how busy life can get as a writer, especially if you are a high school or college student.
What I recommend is if you know you will be getting quite busy soon, use a tool like Hootsuite to schedule several posts ahead of time so that it is off your plate and ready to go.
We hope today's episode was helpful. If you like our podcast, please share it with your friends and family.

(05:06):
For sources in the transcript, visit writersworldpodcast.weebly.com. Our Instagram and Facebook is at Writers World Podcast Official, and our Patreon is patreon.com slash Writers World Podcast.
And if you want your questions or concerns answered, our email is writersworldpodcast.gmail.com. Until next time, I've been Ken Mears, and I've been Melissa Fales with Writers World, and Keep on Writing!