By Kristen Eckstein
If you’re an author and you are not taking advantage of the publicity Facebook can give you, you’re missing out on some serious promo! It isn’t just a playground for teens and college kids anymore. It is full of adults and businesses, and is a great place to market your book. In fact, the demographics of Facebook are mostly college graduates and their parents—a well-educated crowd always seeking to learn. This is a crowd of book buyers!
The best way to promote your book on Facebook is with an author fan page. Yes, you will have to ask others to become your "fan," but the truth is you probably have a few fans already, so why not use it to your advantage and get the word out about your book at the same time?
Here are 3 easy steps and reasons to create your author fan page on Facebook:
Step 1: Sign In or Sign Up! If you’re already a member of Facebook and have a personal profile, all you have to do is sign in to your account and begin the fan page building process. If not, you’ll have to first go to http://www.facebook.com and sign up for your Facebook account. (FREE!) They make it super simple, so don’t be scared.
*Reason #1 to have a Facebook fan page: It’s FREE promotion! (Who doesn’t like free?)
Step 2: Build it so they can come! Next, you’re simply going to build your fan page. Once signed in or signed up on Facebook, you need to go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php to set up your page. You will want to be sure to include a professional picture of yourself and links to your official website, and of course info about your book. Note: when choosing the primary "profile" picture to use, avoid using your logo or book cover. People want to know you, the author, not just your book. If you have more than one book, it’s an even better reason to use your personal photo.
*Reason #2 to have a Facebook fan page: People want to get to know YOU, and this makes it easy!
Step 3: Promote, promote, promote! After you’ve built the page, you’ll want to put it to work for you. Promote it, share it, tell everyone about it. As you get connected to "friends," invite them to become fans. Share it on your blog, put a link to it in your sidebar, share it on message boards, Twitter, and even offline. You can always put the URL to it on your business cards or any fliers or bookmarks you make to promote your book. And Facebook makes that easy with their "vanity" URLs. Once you have your fan page set up and 100 fans, go to http://www.facebook.com/username and create a custom URL that is easy to advertise. And while you’re at it, check out http://www.facebook.com/writingfan and become an official fan of writing! (See how that works?)
*Reason #3 to have a Facebook fan page: It gives you more places to share your book.
Studies show that it takes a person eight times of seeing something before they take action on what they have seen. That means a person may have to see you and/or your book eight times before they’ll decide to buy it! You want to help contribute to those eight times and a Facebook fan page can help. It will give you yet another place to communicate with those interested in your topic, allowing you to send them updates and information. It will also drive traffic to your website or any other social media site you are on. And it’s an excellent way to promote book signings, workshops, or other events you may have planned. So what are you waiting for? Go sign up, build, and promote, promote, promote!
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Kristen Eckstein has been coaching writers through writing and publishing their books for almost 8 years. She is honored that authors have trusted her with their most valuable resource—their knowledge. Kristen’s biggest thrill comes when she sees YOU graduate one of her programs and hug your book for the very first time! Learn more at http://www.ultimatebookcoach.com |
So are you recommending promoting your book through a facebook fanpage over that of a blog? Would you create a blog for the book as well if you really wanted to promote it and share stories and interviews and speeches and such? Blogs have a much greater ability to create a dialog than a fan page – curious to how you use both of them because they are completely different tools. Thanks.
Blaine
http://www.wom10.com
NO NO NO!!!!
Don't stop using your blog. Only use Facebook if you want to reach the 400,000,000 people there
I have facebook fan pages for the webshow I write and for the theatre review site I edit, but never thought to have on for our book! D'oh! Thanks! I will get that up forthwith.
The title is slightly misleading, as you don't really explain how to create a fan page, you simply say, “Goto Facebook, and create a fan page….”
Did you try going to the link?
It's really that simple.. you just click on create a page and type the title you want to give it.
Was looking for something a bit more in depth.
You can find a video that walks you through it.. or just set one up in about five minutes.
I'll be adding some expert help on using the fan page, but do this and it's set up.. and that's the step we're suggesting here.
Very good content. I like the step-by-step instructions for creating a fanpage on Facebook. Giving the reasons why to perform each step is an added bonus.
My book was published in late March of this year. I'm discovering that marketing of a book is almost as difficult as writing the book. I wrote about a difficult subject, Biblical financial principles. The subject is difficult to explain because we are conditioned to be consumers.
Title of book: Prosperity Renewal: 14 Biblical Principles for True Financial Freedom.
Thank you for your helpful tips of creating a fanpage on Facebook.
Good to see this topic being raised here. I set up a Facebook Page for my book shortly after setting up the website and intend to ramp up the usage as the book nears launch.
One note about your Step 3 – the number of fans to get a vanity URL *was* 100, but was changed some time ago to only be 25. Getting http://www.facebook.com/7ducattacks was a HUGE improvement over the long hideous URL that Facebook gives by default.
Two examples of book Facebook pages I like are:
http://www.facebook.com/getseen (Steve Garfield's book about video – he does a nice job linking to content about his book and providing resources)
http://www.facebook.com/trustagents (Chris Brogan and Julien Smith – look at the level of interaction they get)
Regards,
Dan
thanks for the examples. I was surprised we haven't seen more good examples shared here. (there are some)
Random Access Radio…randomaccessradio.com
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/pages/Rando…
Thanks for the advice. Here's my page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Joey-Clarkes-book…
Thanks for this tips, Kristen!
Technically I have over 300+ (that I've built for clients)
But here's my main Page http://www.facebook.com/MikeMuellerConsulting