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Social Media for Authors: Week 4 of 4

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

This is the final of a four-part series of class notes from the Social Media Bootcamp course, whose lessons I’ve adapted for authors. Whether self-published or traditionally so, you will be responsible for your own promotion, and this course has been an invaluable resource on how to use the Internet’s no-cost social media networks wisely–in other words, (1) without mindless cruising, (2) without resenting the Internet for eating your writing time, and (3) without the frustration of posting stuff that people ignore.

Week 4 was all about tying together the first three weeks’ lessons on how to find your audience, discover what they care about, enter the conversation, gauge your success, and correct course. The big takeaway should be a Plan-with-a-capital-P, in other words, a simple but specific schedule of what you’ll post, when, and where. So, you can put a checkmark by (1)–no mindless cruising. At the end of this post, I include Exhibit A, the schedule that I developed for myself so that you can work on one of your own.

In adapting the course for authors, as an author, I will be the first to confess my initial view of social media marketing as a hybrid monster-cross of bleak duty and embarrassing self-exhibition. Therefore, I am now a vehement advocate for Goodreads as the most under-appreciated social network for writers. Facebook and Twitter have their place, but as a network that actually gives me energy, Goodreads is my home base. My self-promotion there is limited to occasional book giveaways and a portal to some of my free resources (like YouTube tutorials and this blog). I spend the rest of my time enjoying its smart and active forums (such as the one on Middle Eastern and North African literature), and taking book recommendations.

That’s to say, Goodreads makes me strike a balance between social media participation and quiet hours offline. So, you can put a checkmark by (2)–no resenting the Internet for eating your writing time.

Finally, one of the most annoying and dispiriting aspects of social media marketing are the crickets. You know, the ones that you hear chirping after you update your status, post to Twitter, or write something on your blog. By building an intelligent plan for social media engagement, you can eliminate some of this silence. Not everything I’m trying right now is working, but my consistent attempts to improve has almost inadvertently increased my Twitter followers and blog traffic. The byproduct of an imperfect plan is information, and ultimately, more success.

Here are the three lessons I will live by for the rest of my social media life:

1. ALWAYS LISTEN FIRST!

2. The operational definition of social media is “a conversation about what my audience wants, on networks they go to anyway.”

3. Be creative!

For my detailed breakdown of what I learned and how I made my plan, see below. Note, too, that I scheduled time to take a three-day break from the Internet every month. I’ll leave you with this parting thought from the course planner, Penelope Trunk, whose advice I paraphrase here with apologies:

Blog on the border between your expertise and your curiosity. Don’t write about what you already know. You’ll come across as condescending rather than vulnerable.

+++++++++++

EXHIBIT A: SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY AND SCHEDULE

October 1, 2011

Networks, purpose, metrics

Blog (SC.com), to create a thoughtful and entertaining corner of the public forum that welcomes fellow web-savvy readers and writers. Measure success by hit count, comments, and invites to guest blog.
Blog (3PE), to provide a warm and understanding resource for unpublished writers, and promote EdLex. Measure success by hit count, Editor’s Lexicon sales, RFIs, client successes, and new clients with really great manuscripts.
Blogs (others’) via Google Reader, to connect with like-minded readers, writers, athletes, MENA thought-leaders, and queer women. Measure success by response to my comments, hit count on SC.com, subscriptions to my blog, and number of real connections through blog visits.
Goodreads, to share the passion of reading, to offer giveaways, interviews, and exclusive content. Measure success by growth of friend numbers, SC.com traffic, comments on my reviews and forum thoughts, and my own continuing desire to participate.
YouTube, to share knowledge in short tutorials, promote Editor’s Lexicon and 3PE. Measure success by number of views and shares.
Google+, to post the most interesting material from my other networks. Measure success by circle adds, engagement.
Twitter via Hootsuite, to stay part of the book industry conversation, share resources, find new blogs, and promote material in other networks. Measure success by followers, Klout score, engagement, share of blog and YouTube hit count.

Goals

Sell Editor’s Lexicon copies: (5-7 per week)
Improve engagement across the board
Get great clients: (1-2 RFIs per week, projects I love, client successes)
Establish a consistent, smart presence: (3-4 guest blog invites per year, steady increase in engagement everywhere)
Enjoy my reading and writing life: (Manage my time well, 1-2 hours of reading per day after writing and work)

The Schedule (8 hours 40 min per week)

MONDAY (1h 50)

Blog (mine): Resource or relevant thoughts, 1.5 hours
Twitter: 20 minute cruise and sharing, scheduled blog mention if applicable

TUESDAY (1h 40)

YouTube: Record 1-2 lessons, 1 hour
Blog (3PE): Share video and/or Monday’s resource, 20 min.
Twitter: 20 minute cruise and sharing, scheduled random weekend finds if applicable

WEDNESDAY (1h 00)

Blog (mine): Book review from Goodreads, 10 minutes
Goodreads: Write book review, post YouTube video, cruise forums, 30 min
Google+: Share cross-posts, 10 min
Twitter: 10 minute cruise and sharing

THURSDAY (0h 40)

Blogs via Google Reader: 40 minutes

FRIDAY (1h 40)

Blog (mine): Literary or thoughts, 1.5 hours
Twitter: 10 minute cruise and sharing

WEEKEND (1h 50)

Goodreads: Fun participation, 1 hour
Blogs via GoogleReader: Find, read, comment, 30 minutes
Twitter: Find and schedule for Mon. and Tues., 20 minutes

MONTHLY

Guest blog post or interview on SC.com
Three-day social media blackout, stay offline for sanity’s sake (Wed. through Fri.)

Random Observations:

- Twitter: posting interviews with popular novelists is almost always successful.

- Goodreads giveaways give a book a HUGE exposure advantage over any other tactic.

- SC.com blog visits on Saturdays lowest of week; don’t waste my time blogging. Go outside and have fun.

Tags: conferences, editor's lexicon, promotion, tools
Posted in Blog | 3 Comments »

Social Media for Authors: Week 3 of 4

Monday, September 26th, 2011

If you spend a lot of time on social networking sites, are you wasting your time or getting results? Last week in Brazen Careerist’s Social Media Bootcamp course, the focus was on how to answer this question. So far we learned:

Week 1′s lesson was to listen to your audience and figure out what they care about.

Week 2′s lesson was on how to create a social media strategy that connects your audience to your efforts on sites such as Twitter, Goodreads, blogs, and YouTube. In other words, how to pick your goals and make a plan that gets you there.

Week 3′s lesson was on how to calculate your return on investment (ROI) and use numbers to decide whether your efforts are paying off. The lessons required a lot of translation to make sense in the author’s world, because–well, most likely, you’re working solo. You don’t have to justify your time to a boss. You’re probably not famous, so you have to milk a lot of meaning from relatively smaller numbers. How? Forget the dollars-and-cents ROI calculations and just look at the numbers in relation to one another. To get your numbers, use these measuring tools:

Access Twitter through Hootsuite so that you can easily share links through ow.ly. Hootsuite allows you to create free reports that show not only your number of followers, but how many people click on your links. Note that Twitter is a great place to meet people and participate in conversations; in my case, though, the numbers revealed that I spend too much time here for the small level of engagement in return. I also learned that my followers are more likely to click on either how-to articles like this one, or on my book reviews.
Check your Klout score to watch for changes in the effectiveness of your tweets. Don’t get addicted to the score. Instead, look for trends (is the graph going up or staying flat?), compare them to the efforts you’ve been making, and also learn from its matrix of participation styles. Hover your mouse over each square to read about it, and decide whether to change your sharing/tweeting style to suit your goals.
Participation style matrix
Connect your blog to Google Analytics.It provides information on your number of new and repeat visitors, where they come from, what pages they’re interested in, and how long they hang around your site. It also gives you valuable SEO insights, such as the keyword searches that led people to your blog. This was my wakeup call: Most of my site visitors find me through Google searches; also, though I have only 40 friends on Goodreads but almost 1,000 Twitter followers, I get more visitors from Goodreads than from Twitter. Therefore, I should focus even more time on SEO optimization and on my interactions on Goodreads.
Screenshot of my Analytics page
Use the Author Dashboard in Goodreads to find out how many people added your book to their “to read” list, how many people clicked on your blog posts, how many “liked” your posts, and how many new friends and fans you have. Remember, though, that Goodreads is not a place to actively promote yourself. Pay the most attention to what people are reading, sharing your own reviews, and of course, reading books offline. You’re a writer. Read. A lot.

Bottom line, THESE ARE ALL NUMBERS. You measure them over time to find out what ideas, tone of voice, and participation style works in your social media world. Don’t get addicted to them for their own sake. Your social media world is a tiny bubble of your life at large, in which the true focus is still on staying healthy, exposing your mind to a 360-degree horizon of ideas, and writing well. When you do step out into the world to sell books, find a publisher, or establish a credible presence as a writer, the numbers will tell you how you’re doing and how to make the best use of your time.

Tags: conferences, promotion, tools
Posted in Blog | 1 Comment »

Social Media for Authors: Week 2 of 4

Monday, September 19th, 2011

Caveat: This is the week my imagination ran a little wild, dragging me along in a gadarene frenzy behind it. How I got here has more to do with my cart-first nature than with the Social Media Bootcamp course; and how I got back on the horse has everything to do with the quality of the week’s lessons.

The first lesson was to choose your tools for carrying out the social media strategy we talked about in Week 1. YouTube? Facebook? Flikr? Twitter?

To put it a better way, figure out which online conversations you care about, and establish a presence wherever those conversations happen. I got ahead of the course last week, because not only did I obsessively compel those conversations into a diagram (see right), I picked out Goodreads for its connection to passionate readers; Twitter for its wide reach and popularity among savvy writers and publishing industry pros; and blogs (both reading others’ and writing more here), using Google Reader to follow them.

In Week 2, we watched a helpful, barely-five-minutes-long video. Its lesson was to pick your goals, and create a strategy for talking to your audience that invites them to talk, too. Building on last week’s lesson that social media does not equal automatic promotion, it said to fit a social media component into a larger campaign. The implied lesson was, “Do something exciting! Something people will talk about!”

About then, the horse got loose.

I’ve been quasi-planning a solo trip to Beirut for a few months now, and not long ago narrowed down my list of how and when and why. But suddenly I had, possibly, a reason and a way to convert my interesting vacation into a SOCIAL MEDIA EVENT and look for a new angle and blog and what about a project and need a camcorder for YouTube and if I got the kids to write about what they think about immigration and newsworthy… Whoa.

Reel it in, Sarah.

I’m not good at this yet. Three nights passed without sleep–every time I was about to drift off, crash! new idea!–and then I went back to my notebook and started a fresh page. I came up with three simple, clear goals that were directly related to the work I am already doing as a writer and editor, and did not require either a travel itinerary or shipwreck diving experience. (Not exaggerating.)

From there, I reviewed my notes and realized that like writing, social media strategy is about learning to notice the obvious strengths and weaknesses in your own ideas. From there, as writers, we can be creative about how to reach people with what we want to say. And we do need something to say. Otherwise, social media is just a very public way of looking like this.

P.S. I continue to fall in love with Goodreads. Its recommendation feature gets along with e-books better than I realized, and honestly, I just like the people. We talk about books we love. And committing to my presence there doesn’t detract from doing things I love: rather, it holds me accountable to sitting down with a for-pleasure, non-work-related, good book every day.

Tags: promotion, tools
Posted in Blog | 3 Comments »

Social Media for Authors: Week 1 of 4

Friday, September 9th, 2011

Get on your facebook, tweetbag, and gimme ten!

"Get on your facebook, tweetbag, and give me ten!"

One week down, three to go in the monthlong Social Media Bootcamp*. After weeding out some corporate-speak and translating the course into author-speak, three themes are emerging.

I’m getting interested in GoodReads as a forum to connect with readers, even though it will take some time to build up that presence, if I choose to do so. It’s kind of like Ravelry for readers, with some very nice-seeming options for authors to promote online.

Social media is important, but you have to have a strategy for when and how to use it. Social media does not equal promotion. It’s mainly a way to keep your ear to the ground for opportunities, and mingle. Self-promo is a no-no. Besides using social media networks to look for ideas and opportunities, use it respond to criticism, chime in on topics that interest you, and/or be helpful to others. Once you have your strategy, schedule 40 minutes every 1-2 days to check your channels, but otherwise, don’t exhaust yourself.

For writers, I think blogging is where it’s at. Rather than dump too much time into Twitter, spend the time on 1-2 quality blog posts per week. It’s normal for a good post to take anywhere from three to seven hours of work. Read and comment on other’s blogs. Obsess over not being boring.

I’m still looking for ways to tie these threads into the e-book explosion. Today’s stat that adult paperback sales are down 64% is a good reminder that e-books must be part of any promotion strategy for your books.

* = Overstatement. The class is run by nice people and requires attending a few online sessions a week from the comfort of your favorite pajamas. However, if you find yourself running six miles on the beach in Cape May, NJ, you may have signed up for the wrong bootcamp.

Tags: promotion, tools, workshops
Posted in Blog | 8 Comments »

Social media training for authors

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011

What: Executive Social Media Boot Camp
Where: Online at Brazen Careerist U
When: September 6-30

Details: The organizers say, “Brazen U’s premier Executive Social Media Bootcampis a rigorous 4-week online course that will help you develop and implement a winning social media strategy–whether social media is 10 percent or 100 percent of your job.” I’m hoping social media can be 95 percent of the work I do to promote writing and writers. As they say, it’s better to learn to fish than to pay a publicist $10K to catch the fish for you.