This week's Guest is an outstanding writer of Sci-fi novels. She also knows her way around one of the biggest issues for many writers - social media marketing and is going to share some very practical tips today. Ladies and Gentlemen...
Ronel Van Tonder
Accelerate your Social Media
Unless you're earning 5 figures or more with your
writing, every writer has to have a day job to keep the lights on. This makes
finding the time to write difficult, and we often have to give up luxuries like
watching television, playing with our kids, or sleeping to put out a novel in
any decent time span.
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And, since we're 100% responsible for our own
marketing, we still have to find the time to nurture a social media presence.
This becomes increasingly difficult, and even if you do manage to find a few hours
on a weekend to tweet or troll Facebook, all that happens is that you end up
looking like a spammer and people quickly unfriend/unfollow you.
If you do find a more regular social media
schedule, keeping track of those people that do reach out to you becomes near
impossible, and you quickly lose important contacts or chances to interact with
potential readers. I've discovered a few ways to keep sane during this constant
struggle, and have grown my social media following steadily over the past two
years. Here are some of the tips and techniques I use, and hopefully some of
them will work for you too.
1: Be
Picky
Times have changed. It is no longer feasible or
even possible to be on every social network all the time. I tried this and,
even with a system in place that made the task of posting to all these places
possible, I found that only a few of the networks produced any results.
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So, when starting out (an especially when you have
limited time), try and stick with 2-3 networks that you feel comfortable using,
that you might have been using before you became a writer, and where you find
people are responding well to your posts. If you're brand new to the social
media scene I recommend that you only use Twitter and Facebook until you've
found your footing.
Limiting your social media presence to only a few
networks initially also makes it easier to find an audience, and to engage with
your potential readers. Also, use the tools at your disposal to save time when
trying to connect on social media, without appearing phony or autonomous. There
are tons of great apps out there, but there are five tools which I recommend
you use to ease the burden of social media.
2:
Curation made Easy
One of the things I really struggled with when I
first started out on my social media adventure was finding stuff to share. I
mean, I'm not an expert in anything. I could talk someone's ears off about
computer games, but then the conversation would dwindle out and I'd have to
make up some excuse to go home before I embarrass myself.
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To overcome this, you need to find valuable content
for your target audience, and share this religiously until people start paying
attention to what you have to say. But roaming around on the internet, getting
sidetracked by stuff I really don't have any interest in but that's been
created specifically just to detour me, is frustrating. And it steals away time
I could be spending working on my latest novel.
Instead, I use two apps in conjunction – Feedly
(http://feedly.com) and Pocket (https://getpocket.com).
Feedly can find and aggregate content for you from
any blog that has an RSS feed - and most blogs do, even if they don't advertise
it. To start, sign up for a free account and simply start typing in topics that
your target audience would be interested in. For instance, if you're a science
fiction author:
- Technology
- Computer
Games
- Anything
happening in space
Once you start getting some articles in, it's a
simple process to share the most valuable, and get rid of the rest.
Also, if you happen to be browsing and find a good
article but you don't have time to read and share it straight away, use the
Pocket app it to store it for later consumption. This app also has a browser
extension, which means it's just a click away whenever you're browsing the
internet. And, with its handy mobile app, you can even add stuff to your pocket
when browsing on your phone.
3: Work
Smarter, not Harder
If your idea of using social media is logging into
Facebook every day for an hour or two and randomly scrolling through your
timeline to share relevant stuff... well, this might work if you have time at
your disposal. I don't. So this doesn't.
Instead, I use the productivity technique of
bulking to save tons of time, while providing invaluable content to my social
media followers, all in one fell swoop. Firstly, I don't post from Facebook or
Twitter - I use a third party app to do that. It's called Hootsuite
(http://hootsuite.com), and it's changed my life.
Using Hootsuite (which is free for up to 3 social
networks), you can add a post to all your social networks at once, and schedule
them automatically so that all your content doesn't appear within a 2 hour
period every Saturday.
What does this mean for you?
- Get
tons of engagement by posting when your followers are most active, not
when you manage to find five minutes to tweet
- Less
unfollows because you're no longer spamming people by adding all your
content in a short period of time
- Provide
a more natural social media presence while providing top-notch content
- By
using a broader schedule, you can reach people from across the world, not
just those that are active when you are
4: Keep
Track
Don't go blindly into a social network - use a link
tracker to see what works and doesn't. You can do this by setting up a free
Bit.ly (https://bitly.com) account that you can use to keep track of how many
times your links are clicked. Remember, people retweeting a tweet doesn't mean
much unless they're clicking on that link too.
Of course, the more times your tweet is retweeted,
the more chance you have of someone clicking on it, but you'll have no idea of
how successful your social media posts are until you start using a link tracker
like Bit.ly.
You can also use apps like Statusbrew
(https://app.statusbrew.com) or Crowdfire (https://www.crowdfireapp.com) to get
detailed reports of your Twitter activity, and Facebook's "Insights"
for details on how your page is performing. This is another reason why it's
always better to set up a Facebook page rather than just using your normal
Facebook profile.
If you don't have Google Analytics (https://www.google.com/analytics/)
or a similar tracking service on your website yet... well, it's time you bite
the bullet and set it up. It's not difficult at all, and if you're running a
self-hosted Wordpress website then it's as easy as installing Yoast's Google
Analytics plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/)
and signing into Google Analytics with your Gmail email account.
5:
Schedule, Schedule, Schedule
The sad thing about social media is that the minute
you stop posting, people stop caring. So make sure that you're always feeding
that voracious beast of a reader by scheduling interesting articles or links a
week or two in advance. This way, when the apocalypse happens, you'll still
have your tweets and Facebook posts going out, even if only the zombies are
going to read them. Do #zombies retweet?
I usually browse Feed.ly 2-3 times a week, adding
interesting articles to my Pocket. Then, for about an hour on a weekend, I will
go into Pocket and schedule out these posts using Hootsuite and adding in
promotional posts as I go.
You can also use Hootsuite to keep track of
mentions and responses, so that even if someone mentions you in a tweet in a
different time zone, you can be sure you'll know about it and can respond.
Bonus:
Social Media Tips
Here are a few tips that I've discovered on the way
that have really helped beef up my social engagement:
- Always
install browser extensions for easier use of your apps (Pocket, Hootsuite,
Tailwind, etc)
- The
perfect amount of hashtags to use on Twitter is three
- Always
add an image to your tweet or facebook post
- Facebook-hosted
videos receive much more engagement than any other post
- Try
pinning a promotional tweet to your Twitter timeline for new followers to
easily spot and share
- Mention
other Twitter followers in relevant posts as a way to start conversations
- Instagram
loves hashtags: the more the merrier! I've seen dozens of hashtags on most
posts.
- Use
Canva or similar apps to create stunning instagram-style quotes or images
- Use
Pinterest to create inspiration boards for your books as a way to gain new
followers while promoting in a non-sleazy way
- Pinterest
also accepts hashtags, so use up to three to increase your pin's relevancy
I hope you'll find some of the apps and techniques
I listed here helpful in accelerating your social media. As writers, finding
our audience is vitally important, but not at the risk of eating away at our
precious writing time. If you use some of the apps available to save time and
become a better social media presence all-round, your new fans will thank
you.
Let me know which of these methods worked for you,
or if you're using another tool or app that's garnered success.
Bio:
Ronel van Tonder is a science fiction author from South
Africa, currently residing in Johannesburg. Her works include a dark, dystopian
sci-fi trilogy, 'The Corrupted SUN Script', and a standalone cyberpunk novel, 'The
Seventh Glitch'. When she's not writing, Ronel spends her free time slaying
rendered baddies in the form of robots, gangsters and aliens - with any weapon
that happens to be at hand. She also runs her own website design company, and
loves dabbling in graphic design, 3D modelling and animation.
Ronel can also be found here:
Website: http://ronelvantonder.co.za
Goodreads Author Page: https://www.goodreads.com/ronelvantonder
Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/Ronel-van-Tonder/e/B00O8XAJVU
Social Media:
http://www.pinterest.com/ronel1014/
https://instagram.com/ronelvantonder/
Check out this amazing book trailer too:
https://instagram.com/ronelvantonder/
Check out this amazing book trailer too:
Thank you, Ronel, for a great article that demystifies the Social Media Marketing jungle. I'm sure many authors will be bookmarking this post for future reference.
If you like original, quality sci-fi novels, check out 'The Seventh Glitch'. I was privileged to read an Advanced Reader Copy and it's awesome!
Check out Ronel's Rafflecopter Competition too before it's too late!!!
Eric @ www.ericjgates.com
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