While working with authors who have joined our free Facebook page to promote good health, helping people and sharing great books during November, I found some authors are still having trouble with Facebook
That’s because Facebook is NOT a place to sell book directly.. it’s a HUGE RESOUCE for building a network that will help you sell more books than you ever thought possible.
The key to Facebook, social media, and ALL future book marketing and promotion: Today RELATIONSHIPS are more important than transactions.
Think about this.. you go into a bookstore and see a bargain bin. Do you expect to find the best ideas and help there? NO. Those are the losers. The books that aren’t worth full price.
While some of the old rules of retailing apply to books and information products (i.e., having a sale).. for the most part, the more direct selling an author does, the lower the value of his expertise.
What you want is readers BEGGING FOR HELP and ANXIOUS TO ENGAGE. Social media is perfect for this.. and Facebook is the hands down leader.
So what do you do?
You stop saying “come buy my book” and start building relationships.. it’s as simple as that.
Here’s the action plan:
Start by finding like minded authors. I’ve talked to thousands for non-fiction expert authors over the past decade. Nearly every author I meet understands that their book is like a business card… just the start of relationship.
Finding authors in your niche, or related topics is easy today. Many of them already have a Facebook Page.
For an example.. I’ll use Brandi Funk’s “Cut Your Health Care Costs Now”
You’ll want to join us on this one.. It’s current, it’s gaining momentum fast, and (BIG HINT) It’s the one Warren is working on right now, so you know you’ll get more promotional oomph immediately 
Go to Our FACEBOOK PAGE and LIKE the page
Make Sure You Use the Facebook LIKE ButtonThe button below is very important to our networking. It’s active and link to the page we’re talking about. If you see a thumbs up and the word “Like” then you need to click it to “like” the page (used to be called “be a fan”) If you see an unlike link, you know you have already “liked” When you “like” using this system, you aren’t really making much of a commitment.. just networking and letting others know you are interested. I suggest you LIKE the page of any author you know or want to network with. If there ever is a reason to disconnect, you simply click again (the owner of the page does not get notice) No big deal how many pages you like/unlike with this.. VERY |
Now you are ready to cross promote with our network.
Our partners are posting on blogs, their Facebook pages, their newsletters, Twitter and more about others in the promotion. These tell people about Brandi’s book, and the idea of getting healthy information out this month. So here’s what you do:
- Post on your blog that you are one of the authors supporting this promotion. You’ll want to mention Brandi’s book and link to the Brandi’s Facebook page.
It can be a review of the book, a description of the promotion, or short narrative of why you are joining us to promote good health and healthy helpful authors. Anything BUT an ad for your book (we’ll get to that) - Tell Facebook and Twitter. Tell your readers, Tell your network.. Tell the world.
- We will do the same. The traffic you get will be to that post.. and the world will see you are a giver
- More people come to this page, some buy the featured book and some go back to your gift announcement.
This publicity is permanent because the links on the web will be left up, indexed by search engines, and found by readers again and again.
Brandi will continue to post health tips here and network with the partners in the program. Soon there will be thousands of LIKEs (fans of the page) and high authority link juice (that’s SEO talk for “Google will like you more”)
When you start promoting like this… Shining the light on others besides yourself, you’ll find plenty of other pages and others to help out. They will be happy to tweet and talk about you AFTER you have done it for them. Simply LIKE their page, comment on their blog, share a link, blog about them or whatever else you can think of to promote their good work (for free and in just a few minutes of your time) and they will LOVE YOU.
Remember. You can get anything you want out of life if you help enough other people get what they want. While it’s normal for you to include your web site with your signature, mention your book or blog in a post, or share a resource that will lead to making you money.. more and more, people are attracted to those who HOLD OFF selling and help others first.
As all of your partners work to build the network. You can create your own Facebook page, cross promote new products, all that marketing stuff… but READERS want to see conversation. Makes sure you start with conversation!
Build the network and you will build your own brand. The next step is ON FACEBOOK
HI Warren,
the link in this post, Post on your blog that you are one of the authors supporting this promotion. You’ll want to mention Brandi’s book and link to the Brandi’s Facebook page. sent me to a page that only had a like button, no text or anything.
Welcome to the peculiar world of Facebook pages. You need to “LIKE” a page to get to the content.
If for any reason you don’t like that page you can “unLIKE” it. (2 different meanings for “like”)
I never think much of clicking on LIKE as it’s so easily revoked.. but YES, it’s a bit illogical
Warren, the post was hard for me to read, lots of grammatical errors.
Sorry to hear you weren’t able to get through it.
Took some work to embed the Facebook frame.. some of the edits destroyed the links and had to be fixed.. so looks like I used a very rough draft.
I just tried to fix some of them.. it killed the form 🙂 .. but I think you should be able to struggle through it now.
Hope you can join us on the Facebook page and network with other authors.
Good work here.
JL
I hope you find some helpful resources through the blog