Social Media for Authors

Transcript

Introduction (Various voices) 00:03

Welcome to the Empowered Author podcast.

Discussion, tips, insights and advice from those who’ve been there, done that, helping you write, publish and market your nonfiction book. 

Being an author is something that you’ve got to take seriously.

I’m proud I’ve written a book.

What does the reader need, first? What does the reader need, second?

What happens if you start writing your book before you identify your “why”? What’s the problem with that?

If you’re an indie author, you take the risk, you reap the rewards; you are in charge of the decisions; you’re the head of that business.

Know that every emotion you’re feeling when you’re writing is felt by every other writer.

The Empowered Author podcast. Your podcast hosts are Boni and John Wagner-Stafford of Ingenium Books. 

John Wagner-Stafford 00:53

Today is why should we as authors be seen on social media? And how do we make that happen?

Boni Wagner-Stafford 01:00

Yeah, so if you are an author or a wannabe author, you’ve probably seen the advice – and this applies to anybody; not just authors, but we’re going to address specifically the mindset of what’s going on for authors, as well as talk about some strategies and what you can actually share – so you’ve heard the advice: you have to be on social media. It’s like however many years ago – twenty, I want to say, but you know – “Oh, you have to have a website.” You know, you couldn’t really be in business if you didn’t have a website. Well, social media, the advice is pretty much the same. If you’re going to be an author and you want people to know about the book that you either are writing or have written, you pretty much need to be on social media. Why? That’s where your readers are. That’s where the people who are going to buy your book and benefit from your message are.

John Wagner-Stafford 01:54

Yeah. And there’s lots of different social media platforms. But you know, to begin, we can talk a little bit about building a strategy and having some objectives about why and how do we get on social media.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 02:05

Yeah. So there are three main strategies to talk about in terms of – so what is it that, you know, other than connecting to your readers and being available and making sure people know about your book, but you want to be on social media, specifically to build awareness. Yeah, so that is making sure people are aware. And the next reason is to build engagement. So it’s awareness is the first step. Then engagement, which is a conversation, is the next step.

John Wagner-Stafford 02:42

The beginning of building trust.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 02:43

Right. And so speaking of conversation: if you have questions or comments, we’d love it, if you would put a comment into the comment box. Whether you’re watching this live or on one of the replays, we’ll be watching the comments. So if there’s something that we say that you want to have clarity on or you have another idea or another question, please let us know and we’ll get back to it. So …

John Wagner-Stafford 03:07

Building engagement. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 03:08

Yeah, building engagement. So we’ve got build awareness as a strategy, build engagement as a strategy and then the other thing: you know, it’s like a, like an ascension, really, and that is to grow a fan base. And you know, that is true. And that applies. We work specifically with nonfiction but that ascension model, in terms of the strategies for why you want to be on social media, applies across all genres. And specifically with nonfiction, whether you’ve written a memoir or a self-help book, or, you know, a journalistic exposé on whatever it is: those three things apply.

John Wagner-Stafford 03:50

Yep. I don’t know if you want to mention a little bit about more building awareness. If you haven’t, okay.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 03:56

Yeah. So, when we think about those three strategies and, you know, everybody says, “Oh, get onto social media,” – and if you are on social media, great; maybe you are on social media in your personal capacity but you’re not really out there with respect to your book; or some of the authors that we work with aren’t really comfortable on social media, haven’t been using social media, at least for the promotion of a book before and so they’re a little bit uncomfortable. So to kind of figure out how you get started, you take a look at what your book is about: the genre; what are the key themes? You know, what’s your unique selling point? Who are the influencers in the space – and what we mean by that is, if you know your target reader, who the ideal person is reading your book, then you can say who are the influencers that your reader is paying attention to – and you want to be in the same space as those influencers that are already speaking to your target reader. And you know, are there bestsellers in the in the space – bestselling authors in the space – and what are they doing and you follow them and you chat with them, kind of thing.

John Wagner-Stafford 05:11

Then you got to address and identify your target audience.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 05:16

Right. And so when we talk about your reader – and this is something that we deal with at the front end, when we start working with an author: to make sure that at least at the beginning – and if we refine it as we work on the project – but knowing who you’re writing the book for and who is going to be interested in the book. Sometimes you’re writing the book for yourself but – and fair enough and we’re always writing, writing for ourselves – but identifying who that audience is. So you know, that’s age, gender, characteristics, why they should or will want to read your book.

John Wagner-Stafford 05:52

What are they going to get out of it? 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 05:53

What are they going to get out of it? So thinking of those things will help you if you’re kind of struggling with, “Oh, what do I say?” Or, “Who do I say it to?” Or that kind of thing. And then the other question that we hear is, “Where should I be on social media? Am I on Facebook? Or should I be on Twitter? Or, you know, should I be LinkedIn or Pinterest or Instagram or Snapchat or …? And again, it depends on where your audience is.

John Wagner-Stafford 06:20

Where your audience is: are they are they businesspeople on LinkedIn? Are they …? 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 06:25

Yeah. Yeah. And so, if you’re not sure, there’s a really easy way – it all ties back to knowing who your reader is – but there’s a really easy way: you just google “demographics of social media platform”, in brackets, “user demographics of Facebook users”, plug it into Google. “Demographics of Twitter users”: plug that into Google. “Demographics of Instagram”, “demographics of LinkedIn”, “demographic …”. So that information is easily obtainable. And you’ll find that, you know, so Facebook, for example, is much more popular with people over – I don’t know what the age is: sliding, but 35 or 40; anybody in their, you know, 20s and younger is probably not as often on Facebook. Why? Because their parents are there. Let’s pause for a moment for a message from our sponsor.

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Boni Wagner-Stafford 07:45

But so once you get all that kind of figured out and make a decision about which platform you’re on or you’re going to be on, then it’s like, “Oh, my God, what do I say?”

John Wagner-Stafford 07:56

What do I say and when do I say it? 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 07:57

Right. 

John Wagner-Stafford 07:58

So there’s a timeline of, you know, what do I say and when do I say it and, you know, one of the first, first thing – not one of first things – but an example would be like a signing. When you sign with a publisher, when you sign with yourself to self-publish your book, you make that announcement: “I’ve committed to writing this book,” at whatever, for whatever date or, “I just signed with Ingenium Books.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 08:22

Right. And so the rationale behind this is that it’s really, it’s never too soon to be beginning your social media journey.It takes a while to cultivate and build an audience. You can, you know, do things like pay for ads that can promote you and get you likes and build your audience. But organic is by far the best way to build a quality audience of relevant people who are interested in the same things that you’re interested in or interested in your – the subject of your book. But so starting earliest, you know, “I’m thinking about writing a book; I’ve decided I’m going to write a book; I’ve signed with a publisher; I’ve – you know, I’m …”

John Wagner-Stafford 09:03

I’ve committed to …

Boni Wagner-Stafford 09:04

Yeah, and then as you – and vulnerability is a good thing: it, people can relate to it. Everybody has those feelings. If you’re feeling something that’s making you feel vulnerable, you can bet that there are other people that also feel vulnerable. And so that’s a good place to push through, I would say, and not let that hold you back. 

John Wagner-Stafford 09:31

Yeah. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 09:32

And so, you know, phases of your manuscript development: “I’ve just finished another chapter.” “I just wrote 1,000 words today.” So there are the messages that you’re putting out through each of those phases, then you know, if you have an author page or a, you know, your book page – whether it’s with a publisher or on your own – you’ve got a web page or a website – that’s a great thing to talk about – your

cover reveals …

John Wagner-Stafford 09:56

Your cover’s done and maybe you’re even sharing that with some people. There’s some pros and cons about that but ... 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 10:00

Yeah, and with respect to the cover reveal, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. The feedback that you might get from a social media share: if you’re saying, “Hey, do you like this cover option? Cover option A or cover option B?”, you can get feedback that you might think is actually helping you decide what your book cover is – which is possible – but you want to remember that these are not people that understand the publishing space and they may not be exactly your target reader. And so they’re – they might say, “I hate yellow,” but if your, you know, maybe your target reader, you know their favorite color is yellow. And so you have to take the feedback that you get in any kind of a social media share experience around your final cover design – unless it is a, you know, a Facebook group of published authors – that the feedback that you would get in that space will be more likely to drive your decision about choice than a more broad feedback exercise. And the exercise is designed to engage. If that makes sense.

John Wagner-Stafford 11:17

Yeah. You know, another  – maybe next in line – which is super, super important and it’s not only a social media messaging that this is important for but also part of your overall book marketing campaign, is reviews or reaching out to getting reviews or reviewers to look at your book, read your book and give you some reviews so that they can get on to Amazon and everywhere else. So …

Boni Wagner-Stafford 11:42

Yeah. So you can talk about reviews; you can promote reviews; you can ask for reviews. You can share news that you’re going to be publishing soon or you’re going to be, you know, whatever your publish date is and, you know, all your launch activities, you can be sharing that. And you can ask questions. You can, you know, solicit feedback. And the other thing – and I can’t remember where in the lineup we had thought to talk about this – but so those are the things that you can push out in terms of what can you share. There are a couple of other important things: and that is to engage in conversation with other people. So look for posts – you know, do the search for the hashtag or the keywords – and look for posts that are kind of in your relevant space: make sure that you’re commenting and liking and engaging with other people. People see you engaging, they’re going to say, “Oh, I’m going to pay attention to what that author is saying.” So, and it’s helping other people. So the engagement part. You can also curate other people’s content and share it to your audiences. What do we mean by curate? We mean if you see somebody has written a post – and we had this example the other day with one of our followers: we follow them, they follow us on our Twitter account and she said something and I don’t remember the exact details but she said, “Hey, I just did this survey. And X percent of the authors I surveyed said this.” I forget exactly what it was but it was like, “Oh, that’s great.” So that is a curated piece of content that I then went – or we then went – “Great, we’re going to share that because we think that’s relevant for our audience.” So curating, engaging on other people’s space, pushing your own information out. And kind of understanding where that is going.

John Wagner-Stafford 13:36

And maybe joining Facebook groups or groups and participating there and the relevant topic of your book, whether it’s memoir or whatever, or business.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 13:48

And then when you’re looking at the others, in terms of the social platforms – and there’s a fair bit of this to consider as you’re crafting and engaging and creating your content – but there are different kind of conversational tones that work for different platforms. When you’re doing your research about the demographics, pay attention to what and as you’re looking and engaging with other people on those platforms, just pay attention to what the conversational tone is. And, you know, Twitter is a little chatty and conversational, Facebook is warm and engaging, for example. So look at that. And obviously, LinkedIn is professional. Instagram and Pinterest are very heavily image driven. But this kind of speaks to a larger perspective, which is that – we mentioned daring to be vulnerable earlier. And so there’s a little bit of tension where mainly in social media, it’s almost like you want to be vulnerable and authentic: as authentic and vulnerable as you would be sitting with a friend in your living room. However, you as an author – which is a different space than just a personal account and a personal page – yes, it is you as a real person but as an author, you are looking to cultivate an audience that knows you professionally as an author. And so while you want to be authentic and vulnerable, as if you were sitting in the living room with a friend, you also need to consider that it’s like you’re standing on a stage in front of 5,000 people. So there’s that tension between, “Oh, you know, I really want to say, you know, so and so is an idiot.” But that, you know – and maybe if that’s your author persona: that’s one thing – but to be to be really cognizant that what you’re saying and how you’re saying it has implications for how the audience that you’re trying to build sees you.

John Wagner-Stafford 16:00

Yeah. And you know, a couple of other examples, or some prime examples might be your political views or your religious views and how, you know, readily you might be voicing them in your living room scenario versus how readily you would be voicing them in front of 5,000 people. And is that how you want to be perceived by your audience? 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 16:18

And if it is: great. 

John Wagner-Stafford 16:19

Great. Yeah, it’s almost like identifying what you’re – you know, you’re a brand; it’s business; we’re all in business and you as an author are in business. Here’s your brand: what does your brand say you should be doing or you shouldn’t say? And just keeping that in the back of your mind and trying to stay on …

Boni Wagner-Stafford 16:36

And what your – you know, the religion and the politics: those are great, great examples of areas in Canada – we’re Canadian but we work with authors all over the world, really, including North America – and in the US, everybody knows that politics is highly, highly polarized and religion is much more open. In the Canadian society, it’s much more – well, we’re not much more but it’s very secular. So it’s not as normal to have someone publicly sharing unless it is in a specific, you know, group or private space on social media, about their religious views. In the US, it’s different. And so you just need to be aware of that. And if you’ve written a book where you know that your audience – let’s take the political side and we’re, you know, coming up to a US election: maybe – I’m sure they exist but I’ve never met an American citizen who wasn’t either on one side or the other. Firmly, like there is no middle ground. And so, you know, what is the book that you’ve written? Who is the …? Knowing your audience and maybe knowing what their political views are will help drive, you know, if you do want to make political commentary. How is that going to land on your audience? So it’s not, “Don’t do it;” it’s just, you know, “Do it with a conscious heart,” kind of thing. Yeah.

John Wagner-Stafford 18:01

Yeah. Cool. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 18:02

Um, what else?

John Wagner-Stafford 18:04

Well, that’s a little – that’s almost all that we have for the social media as a structured, you know, talk. I just mentioned – and it’s kind of a reminder; nothing to do with social media right now – but I just mentioned, you know, when you’re thinking about what you say and how you say it, you think of you as a brand or a business. I wanted to kind of underline the fact that when you’re an author – self-publishing or even in, you know, in with a hybrid publisher – you are running a business. And like it or not, you’re an entrepreneur in that realm. And so the more you learn about this kind of thing – you know, the marketing, business practices – and get excited about them, I think, the better off you’re going to be and the better off your book is going to sell and the more you’ll be better poised for writing, you know, more books and selling more books.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 18:59

Yeah. And back to social media, the … You know, there’s … We all – I would say most people are familiar with the magnetism of social media. And I’m not referring to that in a positive way: I’m actually, I’m thinking, you know, it’s a vortex that can suck you in. Oh, my goodness, if you let yourself, you can be, you know – pop onto Facebook and before you know it, three hours has passed by and your plans for getting your next 2,000 words written is out the window and … So it does have that pole: that’s the magnetic field I’m talking about. So there is, you know, it’s a struggle for everybody. We need to be there but we can’t be there all the time. And we can’t be there only because we have other things that we have to attend to. So there are tools. So you know, it might be the kind of thing where you schedule time to prepare the content. You know, maybe it may be on Monday or Friday afternoon, you’re saying, “Okay, I’m going to sit down; I’m going to plan through what I’m going to publish on social media next week. And so Monday, I’m going to talk about what I’ve got in Chapter One. And Tuesday, I’m going to talk about my work in progress. And Wednesday, I’m going to spend my hour engaging and sharing and following and liking and commenting on other people. And Thursday is going to be my, you know, whatever day.” So you can kind of plan it and make it manageable and then stick the time in your calendar: “Ten o’clock to eleven o’clock every day is when I’m going to handle my social media,” or whatever the time is that works for you. And that way, it helps you to do it on a regular basis. And that is one of the most challenging things that I find is – and everybody says, “Oh, it’s most important to be consistent,” and, you know, I know that and I struggle with that myself: like, “Okay, we’re going to …” You know, this Wednesday thing that we’ve been doing: we’ve been able to do that. But I tell you, anything else is very, very challenging, especially when you’re an entrepreneur or you’re an author and you got business and family and you got to write the book. And it’s like, all these things that compete for your time and focus. But it really is one of those things of so many that deliver back what you invest. Yeah. So there are tools to help you curate and you know, there’s everything, depending on your budget. And you know, there’s CoSchedule and there’s Hootsuite and there’s, you know, all kinds of – HubSpot and all kinds of tools like that. For images – because images are very powerful on social media – there are, you know, free places like Canva, which we love: I love Canva – to help you create, you know, professional looking images that match the message that you’re saying and let you share pictures: pictures of yourself. Don’t be shy. People want to see who you are.

John Wagner-Stafford 21:56

Yeah, a lot of people – just in the picture realm, a lot of people use Pixlr as well, which is P, I, X, L, R. Another easy system to use if you don’t like Canva.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 22:07

Yeah. So those are some ideas. And I guess the main takeaway message is whether you have written a book and it’s published or you are writing a book, it is not too late to be engaging on social media and starting to let people know. And it’s actually, you know, making the declaration you’re in progress: making the declaration can be a nice catalyst to finishing it. And there’s, you know, it’s never too soon. And it’s never too late. Yeah, never too soon, and it’s never too late. So let’s see: we talked about …

John Wagner-Stafford 22:46

Sorry, I was just going to … Done is better than perfect. It’s like, we think about this and we work on this every day: get it done, don’t make it perfect. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Get things done. So when you’re, you know, approaching your social media challenge, start somewhere: start with Facebook; open up your Facebook account if you haven’t already had it. Just get it done. Don’t worry about it not being perfect, because you’re just going to get better as you learn more or as you bring people on to help you to get things done.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 23:14

Yeah. And continuing on from that – from that notion of done is better than perfect – is, you know, we hear people and you’ve probably either said it or I have heard somebody else say it, which is, you know, “Why is anybody going to want to care about what I have to say? And what. You know, there’s so many other people out there that have way more experience, expertise, education, money,” you know, whatever: there’s always the, you know, the comparison thing of, you know, “I’m not – my message is not good enough; what I’ve say is not good enough.” And so what I would say about that is that there really are no unique ideas left. And there are no … We all learn. We get to where we are in life because of what we have learned from other people. And just because – you know, even just our coach we were on with this morning, Dan was saying to us, “You know, I thought about writing a book but you know, everything I would talk about I’ve learned from other people.” So your experience is unique. Nobody can duplicate or take away from you the experiences that you’ve had. Everybody learns from somebody else: from many somebody elses. But nobody translates that learning and those experiences that have come in from other people. Nobody translates them to their experiences the same as you and nobody has your viewpoint. You might share similarities of viewpoint with other people but nobody has your viewpoint. Your viewpoint is unique: nobody can take it from you. Your experiences are unique: nobody can take it from you. How you process information: nobody can take that from you. Your experience inside events – you know, 400,000 people were at the same concert or whatever but your experience is unique: who you interacted with, your perception of those events. So don’t let that little voice stop you from saying what is uniquely yours and valid. 

John Wagner-Stafford 25:29

The story: you have to tell the story of your life that preceded this, this writing the book. It’s all unique to you. And it’s an interesting. People are going to be able to relate to something in your story for sure, so … We’re coaching our coach, “Dan, no, you’ve got a unique story. You’ve got something that’s very different. The way that your method is different. The way you talk to us or talk to people is different. And your story is different. Go ahead.”

Boni Wagner-Stafford 25:58

So I think that’s that on the social media front. And yeah, we’ll be back next week. 

John Wagner-Stafford 26:03

Excellent. Thanks, everyone. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 26:05

Bye.

John Wagner-Stafford 26:06

Bye bye. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 26:10

If you enjoyed this episode of the Empowered Author podcast, please feel free to share it on social media. We’d also be very grateful if you could rate, review and subscribe to the Empowered Author on iTunes, Stitcher or wherever you access your podcasts. That’s helpful for us but, more importantly, it’s helpful for other indie authors who are looking for resources to help them on their continuous learning journey. Thanks for listening.