Google + and its many uses. Help?
Twitter: I speak and promote but what benefit does it have?
FB page: what are its benefits?
My author page is informative but I have noticed a difference between those that like my blogs and those who like/read my books. How should I mesh these in together?
I see many an author do video’s. What are the points to this? Does it have to be that high tech? I’m trying to get to the next gen without feeling like a dinosaur. Input. I see over 100 fans, I’d like more than just a few responses please.
J.S. Riddle 
Papi Z
/ September 25, 2013Reblogged this on The Literary Syndicate and commented:
JS Riddle has some questions for all of you. What answers might you have my friends?
Papi Z
/ September 25, 2013Google + I haven’t spent much time on yet. Twitter seems to be mostly spamming links and advertising. Facebook can be a huge benefit if you can figure out how to get people to “like” your page. Also what content needs to be on the page. I wish I had the answers. If you find out, let me know!
sknicholls
/ September 25, 2013I recently bought a $5.00 book that came highly recommended by people who have seen a significant increase in sells. I haven’t read it yet but it may interest you too. It’s called “The Literary Midwife: Effective Promotions”, and is available here on smashwords. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/358866
My audience is older than the computer generation X. I sell best to the 50 yo baby boomers who are just now reaching retirement age and are just beginning to get into eversions, so I took some advice to have a paperback done. It isn’t out yet, but we shall see. It is due out around mid-October.
The book is supposed to tell you how to spend less time on marketing and get better results. The author is also supposed to be quite entertaining, so if it doesn’t work, it will not be a total loss. I am willing to give it a try because I am spending 50% of my available time marketing, 25% on my blog (which is also marketing much of the time), and 25% on my WIP and my online Scrivener course. I would love to spend less time marketing and more time on my writing, and still sell books. My reviews are great. The greatest challenge for me is to get seen.
Kev
/ September 25, 2013Let me know when you find out. 🙂
Charles Yallowitz
/ September 25, 2013Don’t know much about Google+, but I use Facebook and Twitter for daily marketing. If you go to a ‘Tiny URL’ generator, you can get a small URL of your book’s Amazon page. This gives you more character to write a catchy tweet with. For example, ‘Luke is about to discover the dark side of adventuring.’ is one that I use on Twitter. I make a tweet every 2-3 hours. I’m still trying to figure out the use of hashtags, but people assure me they help. You can also tweet your book directly from its Amazon page, which connects it to Amazon.
For Facebook, I connected my blog to my author page, but I don’t get much use out of it beyond that. I do get a good amount of help from a few indie author promotion pages. You post an excerpt from a review or a catchy synopsis along with the link to your book’s sales page. I do one of these in the morning and another in the evening with an occasional midday one for my other book. I do see a few sales and people wandering through these pages (I think one of them has 50,000+ followers) may stumble onto your book.
Green Embers
/ September 25, 2013I use Twitter more as a means of seeing what other people are up to and keep up with news. Facebook Pages it seems you have to be more on the active side. Mark Crilley (comic book artist/writer) is one of my favorite facebook pages I follow. He’ll usually have an update on something that he is working on then ask a related question to his audience. This is good as it helps provide contact between fans and creator imo.
I have no idea on Google+ I don’t get it either, lol.
Sahm King
/ September 25, 2013This is my take on Google+, Twitter and Facebook.
The key is interaction. Often, people forget this part. It’s not about getting people to “like” your page. It’s about posting content that’s meaningful to people.
This is the We Drink Because We’re Poets Facebook Community Page – https://www.facebook.com/wedrinkbecausewerepoets
My lady, Blu, who effectively runs the page, posts things that she knows would be appealing to people. It’s content that…inspires engagement, interactivity. She puts a great deal of time into choosing what to post, so it’s by no means random or guess work. She’s proven, over the last several months, that you can build a page, a healthy community and drive engagement.
Each of these services work pretty much the same. What it boils down to is sincere and honest interactivity/engagement and how much work you’re willing to put into it. My Twitter and my Google+ are both suffering because I don’t really concentrate on those. I employ Facebook, for the most part, but if you’re willing to put in the effort – to do the leg work yourself – there’s no end to what you can accomplish. I think one of our greatest attributes is that we keep the focus on other people, not ourselves. Surely, I promote my own stuff, but I prefer to have the spotlight cast away from me, onto other people. I think people appreciate this, and that allows them to trust us and what we’re doing. We’re looking at potentially getting into merchandise – merch that we’re creating ourselves – and we’ve taken this to the community and asked them directly what they would think about this. The response was positive. Not a single negative response. Why? Because we’re trusted. Why are we trusted? Because we do for others, for the most part. Because of that, our community is willing to do for us.
Google+ has the benefit of having many communities associated with it. How can this help you? Exposure. Take advantage of those. There are many author communities that will allow you to promote your work, but there is a catch to many of them: people don’t just like seeing promotion. In fact, I think you’ll get more with less promoting and more engagement.
You said your Facebook is informational. One thing we’ve discovered at We Drink is that people don’t like links. They’re boring. If you’re going to post a link, add some meaningful information to the link. Add a photograph or a work of art. But concentrate less on links and more on creating an environment for interaction.
I’m not going to ask you to like our page, but I will ask you to take a look at it. Note the differences between my page and yours. What do you notice when you go to the We Drink Facebook page?
You asked what benefit there is to Twitter. If you’re engaging – by which I mean communicating with people versus advertising to people – you will see the benefit. As a Project Manager, in my training, I learned a principle that’s fairly effective on Twitter. I don’t use Twitter much these days (time issues), but at my peak, it garnered great results. In effect, I hardly ever had to advertise myself because other people were more than willing to advertise for me. Why? It’s because of how I interacted and engaged with them.
The benefits of Facebook lay in its power to drive traffic. But, once again, you have to engage with your followers, not simply post information or links. Give them something to think about, to talk about. Like I said, you can look at my page as an example. There’s an even better example than my page here:
https://www.facebook.com/IFeakingLoveScience
I’ve actually watched these guys grow over the last couple of years. They post information, too, but look at how they’re posting the information. They’re doing the same thing you’re essentially doing, but with a twist. Can you see what it is?
This comment is getting a little long and I haven’t even touched on doing videos yet. If you’d like to know more, feel free to email me at becausewerepoets@gmail.com and I’ll be happy to answer any question you have if I can. If I cannot, I can at least point you in the right direction.