Social marketing is especially effective for marketing books, because people naturally love to talk about books they enjoy, and there are plenty of different avenues available for promotion.
If you’re marketing something else, such as socks or DVDs, there aren’t as many avenues open for promotion through social media. There aren’t fan pages devoted to them, and if there are, they don’t allow blatant promotion.
With books, it’s greatly different. There are many different groups and pages on Facebook alone that allow promotion of your books as long as you follow their rules, and not only do they allow promotion, they often encourage it!
Even if you can’t find any Facebook fan pages that are devoted to your genre, you can create one! Creating and maintaining a fan page is quick and easy, and it can be used for more than just promoting your book. You can also use it to promote affiliate products and other products you produce, as well.
Facebook is perhaps the single most powerful social website for authors. You should have a fan page specifically for you, as an author. You may also want to have one for your book or book series.
To take advantage of other fan pages, search for groups and fan pages devoted to your niche or genre, especially those that focus specifically on books. Check their rules, and if they allow self-promotion, do so!
If they don’t allow self-promotion, contact the page’s owner privately and ask if there is a way to promote your book on their page. They may be open to paid promotion, or they may even offer to promote your book for free, especially if you give them a free copy or allow them to do a giveaway on their page.
Additionally, many official bookseller fan pages allow promotion. Amazon’s Kindle page allows authors to self-promote once each week, so take advantage of all those Kindle owners!
Twitter is another great tool for authors if you use it properly. You can’t just tweet your books over and over an expect people to pay attention. Instead, use it to interact with fans. They can become your “book ambassadors”, promoting the books for you!
If you become personal friends with some of your fans, all you’ll have to do is post a tweet and ask people to “re-tweet” it for you and you’ll potentially reach thousands of people very quickly!
Pinterest is a growing social platform which mostly focuses on sharing images. You create “pin boards” on which you “pin” various images. You can create lists of books in your genre and pin your own book to it. You can also ask other people to “re-pin” your book. If you re-pin some of their things, they’ll be more willing to re- pin yours.
In addition to making lists of books, you can also create pin boards that feature things people who might read your book would like. For example, if your book is about weight loss, you could have pin boards such as:
You could link to your book in the description of every pin board, getting you a lot more exposure than you would otherwise get.
Don’t forget to share your pins and pin boards on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere in order to get as much exposure as possible to all of them.
YouTube is a great platform for promotion. You’ll need to have a “book trailer” created for your book. This doesn’t have to be extremely complex. A simple video with some music, a synopsis of your book, and some images that go along with it will work fine.
Don’t forget to share your book trailer video on Facebook, Twitter and other social sites for more exposure!
GoodReads.com and LibraryThing.com are two social networks that focus specifically on books. These sites are great for promotion. In addition to holding giveaways there, you can visit the various groups and participate. Just be sure to read the rules in each individual group to find out what their rules are regarding author participation. Since groups are individually managed, each one has specific rules.