Your Social Media Strategy Stinks
Social media is always a hot topic especially for authors. So why waste your time relentlessly tweeting or posting updates to the same fans and followers? Are they multiplying rapidly? If so keep doing what you're doing. If not, then you should keep reading about Social PR.
"How can I grow my following rapidly?" is the most common question.
Critical mass is required for social media to be truly effective and bring you a return. That's why when people ask about social media marketing we talk about Social PR. Essentially we apply the same principle to social media as we do to traditional print or digital media outlets. They already have large, engaged and targeted readerships. The same goes for social media accounts.
Let me use an example. We had the great honour to work with Atlantic Books and Robert Fabbri.(You can read what they said here.) We had been asked by Robert's publisher to augment his presence and increase sales. We had 6 months within which to do so. Results had to be produced rapidly.
We went out and found social media profiles with large followings that would appeal to his target audience. The Romans Facebook page catered to his demographic and had a very large following. After talking with them and introducing them to Robert's books we discussed content. They agreed the books would be of interest to their fans and happily shared a post about his latest book at the time which was 'Rome's Fallen Eagle'.
What followed was 135 likes, 4 shares and many comments. The post featured a direct link to the Amazon page where the book could be purchased and thus generated a substantial sales spike. This is Social PR. Leveraging existing, engaged and highly targeted social media accounts.
It doesn't just stop there. You need to engage with influential accounts. This is very relevant to Twitter. Have conversations with other users. These conversations must be insightful and focused. A "thanks for following" or a generic message isn't going to cut it. A good example is listed below. You can however be even more specific and reference a certain part of the article. A challenge with only 140 characters but it's enough.
In summary:
- Treat social media marketing like traditional PR.
- Engage with influential social media accounts.
- Create conversations but do so in an intelligent and non-spammy way.
- Growing your own following is important but securing promotion through other accounts will amplify this process.
- Don't focus on the number of fans or followers either. That is a vanity metric.
- Focus on how engaged your followers and fans are.
That has covered the basics of why if you're not focusing on Social PR your social media strategy stinks.
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