Social Media Marketing for Authors & Creators

Lauren: Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Lauren's gonna get up on her soapbox for, I mean, Publish & Prosper. 

Matt: I'm glad I'm here to witness this one. 

Lauren: It's going to be a good one. Today we are talking about a subject that is very near and dear to my career here at Lulu. 

Matt: Your shriveled up little black heart, you mean? 

Lauren: Yes, that. It may have been a contributing factor to my shriveled up little black heart in some capacity or another. And that is social media marketing 

Matt: Yay.

Lauren: I'm just gonna warn everyone right up here at the top. Obviously, this is something that I could talk about for days. I spent the last four years at Lulu talking about social media marketing. We're gonna try to keep this as contained as possible, but I've already given Matt the heads up that he needs to give me a signal if I need to wrap it up and stop rambling. Also, because social media is such a just massive, massive beast, this is definitely gonna be like a high level episode. If there's anything we talk about that we get really excited about or that our listeners wanna learn more about, we can definitely do more episodes in the future on it. But for today, we're gonna try to keep it pretty high level, social media marketing for authors and content creators. And I'm gonna put in a bet right now at about 57 minutes. That's my bet. If we can keep it under an hour, I'll be really proud of myself.

Matt: So my job today is to look out for our listeners to make sure we're keeping you on track. And so 57 minutes is your over under. Um, I'm going to shoot for the under. 

Lauren:  Okay. 

Matt: So to all our listeners out there, I got your back. Don't worry.

Lauren: Interesting role reversal. 

Matt: Yeah, for sure. Not sure I like it yet, but I'll let you know. 

Lauren: Well, there's only one way for us to find out. So without further ado, you want to dive right in? 

Matt: Yeah, I guess I don't really have a choice. Do I?

Lauren: No, you don't. I'm really excited to talk about this 

Matt: I know, I know. 

Lauren: And I want to just get right into it. 

Matt: Alright, let's do it. Let's talk about social media. 

Lauren: Alright. I feel like social media needs no introduction. We are all very familiar with the just like, absolute behemoth that is social media and the impact that it has on everything from like, cultural influence, to ecommerce, to the success and failure of your business. So in case you are at a place right now where you have not considered using social media marketing for growing your brand, selling your books. I don't know what to tell you. Like if you haven't, like I'm not going to try to convince you that you need to be using social media. 

Matt: Not where I thought you were going with that, but okay. 

Lauren: Where did you think I was going with that? 

Matt: I didn't think you were going to end it with I don't know what to tell you.

Lauren: I feel like the last few episodes we've done, we started by convincing or trying to convince people like this is why this is valuable, this is why this is important. The email marketing one, if you don't think email marketing is still relevant in 2024, here's why you're wrong. I'm not going to try to sell you on social media because if you're not already convinced that social media is an essential part of your business strategy, then I don't know what to tell you. I don't know how to convince you otherwise. 
But what I do think is important to talk about is where social media falls in the hierarchy. You know, Matt and I were just talking about this actually when we were working on that last episode on email marketing, and even just today a little bit, where social media these days is more and more about finding people and getting them interested in your content and then off of social media and onto your owned platforms. Whether those are your email marketing lists or your email subscriber lists, newsletter lists, whatever, your website. A community that you've created elsewhere, if you have a community on somewhere like Discord or Circle or something like that - which I do consider a separate entity than social media. We were talking about this earlier as like social media is, is the stepping stone to those other places. So this is where you're finding your audience. You're engaging them. You're earning their interest and their trust and then attempting to move them into a more engaged platform. Basically. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So how do you do that? Matt just looked at me like, is that a question that I'm supposed to be answering? 

Matt: No, I think it's, it's a very broad and open-ended question. 

Lauren: Sure is So should we just start with some of the top strategies, best practices, things that I like to tell people and then pull my hair out when they don't listen to me?

Matt: Lauren and I were talking about this before we hit the record button, best practices, quote unquote, these days are a lot different than what they were a year ago, two years ago, four years ago. It's really hard to put down on anything static or in writing like what best practices for social media strategy is. There are a few that will probably stay tried and true, have been and will continue to be, and we'll definitely touch on some of those. But keep in mind too, that some of these best practices that we'll be talking about, they have a shelf life. Like everything to do with social media, there's a shelf life there. And sometimes that shelf life is a couple of months, and sometimes that shelf life is a couple of years. These best practices are meant to help guide you in the right direction, if you're not already there or, you know, enhance what you've already been doing. And then there's probably some of you out there that are way better than this or at this than most other social media marketers. 

Lauren: Including both of us. 

[5:45]

Matt: So, you know, you can just sit back and laugh at us for the next 30-40 minutes. Otherwise, yeah, let's jump into some best practices. And I'll start because this one is one that I know is tried and true. And it's one of the ones that I try to, like when anybody asks, ‘Hey, what's, what's something I should know about social media? Or how do I do social media marketing?’ One of the first things I always say, because I think this will always hold true, I don't think it'll ever not be the case, is that you should not try to be on every platform. That is a huge mistake. But it's a mistake that a lot of people make, so don't feel bad if you are doing that or have done that. It happens. It's a natural inclination when you approach something like social media that you just kind of want to be everywhere because you think you need to be but, your audience for your book or your content or whatever you're doing. They're not on every channel. 

Lauren: Absolutely. 

Matt: No matter what you think. They're not on every channel. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So just don't do it. 

Lauren: Completely right. And in fact, if you tried to be on every social media channel, I mean, first of all, there are people who like, that's literally their entire job is to be on every social media channel. So that would be a full-time job for you is just social media. Presumably you are not interested in a full-time job as a social media manager for your own business. That is just one facet of your brand. So don't try to take on that role. If you're interested in trying to figure out where you want to be and how do I narrow it down to the one specific platform or the two to three specific platforms that I do want to be on? By the way, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about like one to three platforms. 

Number one recommendation, play to your strengths. If you really don't like being on camera, if you're not comfortable being on camera, if you're not comfortable making videos, TikTok is not for you. I don't care if you hear that it's like the most important platform in the world right now. If you are not comfortable making videos, you are never gonna succeed on TikTok. So at the very least, put some work in to try to get more comfortable making videos, but don't get on TikTok until you're ready to do so. There are still other platforms that are available to you in that case. 

And number two, research where your target audience likes to hang out. If you're writing romance, you probably, I mean, I know I just said, don't go on TikTok if you don't wanna be on TikTok, but romance is very popular on TikTok. But it's also very popular on Instagram. So if TikTok is not for you, try Instagram, it's also a great opportunity for you to start with posting static content and then occasionally test out posting videos and see how you feel about that. If you are a content entrepreneur, you are probably looking for people on LinkedIn. So do some research, figure out where your people are and hang out there and focus your efforts on those specific platforms. 

And then just a side note on this one, you don't have to be on every social platform. We're definitely encouraging you to, like, focus in on a couple of them. But if you do hear about something new and you think it sounds interesting and you think it sounds authentic to your brand, don't be afraid to try it out. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: You don't have to, you don't have to try something new. 

Matt: Yeah, that's different. I think you're absolutely right about that. I think when something new comes along and it does all the time, or a platform completely rebrands or changes, there's nothing wrong with trying it out, of course. You'll never know if your audience is showing up there if you don't go check it out and try it out. But again, I think the point here is learn how to pull the ripcord really fast if it's not going the way that you feel like it should be going. And at that point, you're gonna know what you're comfortable with. And like Lauren was talking about, don't stray outside of your comfort zone. You don't have to. Pick one or two channels that you're really comfortable with, that you can show up every day consistently on, and leave it at that. You're not leaving things on the table, don't feel like you're missing out. But if something new comes along, muster up that courage, hop on, sign up. And if nothing else, at least claim your name. You know what I mean? Anytime a new social channel comes along or people are trying whatever the new soup of the day is, at least go claim your name over there so nobody else can. Give it a sho, and if it works great and if not, cut your losses quick. 

But yeah, I agree. The difference is don't try to be on every single one all the time. But absolutely experiment when new ones come out for sure. Jay Clouse says this thing all the time that I love and it's very relevant to this. And that is, you know, the idea of trying to do all social media channels and be good at all social media channels. That's just crazy. It's very similar to, like, when you're in high school and mom tells you, ‘hey, I need you to get straight A's this semester, this report card, you need straight A's.’ Like versus if dad and mom comes to you and just says, ‘hey, I need you to get at least a couple of A's this semester.’ Like. For me, the difference between trying to get straight A's, like an A in every subject, A's every subject, versus like, ‘okay, I can get one or two A's for sure, and then some B's, right?’ That's the difference to me. Like trying to get straight A's in six, seven, eight subjects, i.e. six, seven, eight social media channels, versus just trying to be a straight A student in one or two social media channels, I'm taking that one or two for sure, because I know I'm gonna do a good job. 

Lauren: As a recovering burnt out, gifted kid who tried way too hard to get all those straight A's in high school - it's not worth the amount of effort and the exhaustion. So, can confirm, great metaphor and also absolutely can confirm focus on those classes and social media platforms that you are actually good at and that you actually enjoy. You're gonna spend a lot of time on social media. So focus your energy on the platforms that you actually like, like being on and like engaging with. Also, Matt mentioned something in there that is another great point. Whenever possible, wherever possible, use the same social handle across all your platforms, whether that's one platform or fifteen, whatever. And like he mentioned about hopping on a new one and claiming your handle immediately. Absolutely do that. And just think about it as simply as like, it is so much easier to say ‘follow @ luludotcom on Facebook, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn,’ than it is to say, you know, ‘follow at @ luludotcom on Facebook and @ Lulu Publishing on Instagram and @ Lulu Press on X. So yeah, hop on there as soon as you can and try to get a consistent handle across all your platforms. It's so much easier for you and your marketing efforts in the long run. 

Matt: Great advice. Yeah, we see a lot of people making those mistakes early on. And so if we can help you avoid some of those, I think it's just going to save you time in the long run. 

[11:46]

Lauren: Yeah. Another one in that wheelhouse that I see people making this mistake all the time is creating different social channels for their book titles. Yes. Like you'll see somebody, they're publishing a new book, so they've created an Instagram and their Instagram handle is that book title.

Matt: What if they're only going to publish one book in their lifetime? That's it. They're never going to publish another book again. I mean, because clearly that's the approach they're taking, right? Surely you're not assuming that you're going to set up a social media account for every book you publish. So why would you do it for the first, second, or third one?

Lauren: I'm so taken aback by the like mental image of somebody publishing just one book and then disappearing off into the ether forever that I've gotten completely sidetracked about that. Matt: Well, I mean, we work in self publishing -

Lauren: That’s true. 

Matt: so we do see that. But - 

Lauren: That's true. 

Matt: Those aren't the people who are also being serious about social media and building a business. So yeah, I just thought I'd jump in there and get some clarification on that. That just seems crazy to me, but clearly you've seen it before. You wouldn't have pointed it out. 

Lauren: Oh, I see it all the time. And yes. So that's, you know, your book is your product. You are your brand. Whether it's you as the author of the book or your business or brand that you are writing the book to support and promote, one way or another the book that you're currently promoting is one product for that brand. 

Matt: I'm just gonna say it back real quick, cause I think people need to understand this. 

Lauren: Go for it. 

Matt: And this probably should be reiterated at the start of every podcast episode we do but: you are the brand. Full stop, period. No notes. 

Lauren: It's so nice when Matt gives me sound bites. I love this. 

Matt: You are the brand. Your book is a product of your brand. Your books, plural, hopefully, are products of your brand and anything else that you create. But you are the brand. And so many authors and creators don't see it that way or don't wanna see it that way or can't see it that way. But if you're serious about making a living, small or large, at what you're doing, you have to see it that way. So I just wanted to say that back. That was a very good point you made. Please don't turn that into a sound bite, but. You are the brand period.

Lauren: I'm gonna turn it into a sound bite. That's gold. 

Matt: It's gonna be your ringtone next week. Matt said I was right. 

Lauren: Oh, it might be. I'm still working on collecting the clips of Matt saying that I'm right. 

Matt: Oh my god. 

Lauren: There was another one in the last episode. 

Matt: Nobody needs any of that. 

Lauren: I do.

Matt: Alright. 

[14:01]

Lauren: Also to that point, to that same point, it is up to you to decide whether or not you want to create a separate account for your business and your personal accounts. I see that question come up a lot from people because obviously in 2024, the majority of us have at least one personal social profile already. So it kind of comes up with the question of like, do I want to create a separate account for this? Do I want to keep this independent from my existing account? And that is entirely up to you. It's entirely up to you how you want to handle it. Only you can really answer that question.

Matt: I think that's a great point too. God, I'm giving you way too much credit today, but I do think it's a good point. Like a lot of us have, you know, especially, I know some of us at Lulu here and other people I meet in the industry and in general, we have a personal profile on our platform of choice, like I do, but I also have one that's more oriented towards what I do every day for a living. The difference is that my personal one is private. It's for my friends and family. It's got a lot more content on there when I do post that is friends and family oriented. And so I choose to keep that one private. I choose to keep it my personal one, but I do have one that is basically Matt from Lulu. You know what I mean? Matt from Publish and Prosper. So that one is public. You know, when I post on there, there's some personal stuff, but it's not as personal and it's more related to what I do and what I'm trying to help authors and creators do. So that's okay. Please don't confuse that with when we say that you shouldn't have multiple profiles for all of your books. That's the difference between profiles for products and a profile for brand versus personal. I just wanted to clarify in case people didn't catch all of that. 

Lauren: This is so nice. 

Matt: Oh god. 

Lauren: It's like, I'm getting validation for four years of work. 

Matt: I'm done. I'm going to go eat lunch. 

Lauren: That's fine. That's the goal. Get done, eat lunch. But back to Matt’s point about deciding what kind of content you want to have on your personal profile. for your brand or business, that it should be this super like, serious business profile with nothing, no personality at all. Like it, you absolutely should have personal content on there, behind the scenes content. You want people to come to know you as the person behind the brand, but it should definitely just be like a more curated version of what you might share on your personal Instagram with your friends and family. 

[16:16]

Lauren: In general, you're gonna wanna think about what kind of content you're gonna wanna share, and you should probably think about this ahead of time. Like this isn't a decision you should be making completely on the fly. We've talked about planning in advance. I'm gonna continue to advocate for planning in advance. It's a great idea to have at least some kind of broad idea of what kind of content you want to share on your social channels and to set a cadence for how often you're gonna share that kind of content. 

You don't wanna be inundating people with nothing but sales and promotional content for every single post for three weeks straight, they're gonna get real sick of your content. They're gonna be real bored of it and get kind of blindness to your content and not really see it at all. But alternatively, you don't just want to post blog post after blog post after a blog post. You want to have some opportunities to promote your product or your business or whatever in there too. So set up a cadence for how often you want to post, what kind of content you want to post, and like figure out a little bit of a structure ahead of time that can kind of set you up for success with that.

Matt: Yeah, and I think one of the points here too, that is subtly being made along with the idea of scheduling and creating a calendar to a degree for those of you that are inclined to do that. And then there are people like me who are terrible with that. And again, we choose the Mike Tyson way of doing things, which is no plan. We just get in the ring and start swinging. However, I think there's a delicate, or I should say a healthy balance of those two things for those of you out there who are listening right now. And what Lauren just said kind of scares you like, oh my God. Here's one more thing I got to do. I got to create a content calendar. Like I got to schedule posts. I got to, I got to figure out what I want to say two weeks from now. For somebody like me, that does sound daunting when you actually sit down and start to do it, it's really not. Because what you're going to do is you're going to design and schedule content that is basically evergreen. So that two weeks from now, if you create a post that is talking about how you came to enjoy and love the art of writing or writing science fiction, fantasy, or things like that. That's evergreen content. It's never going to go out of date. And so if you want to schedule that for two weeks from now, it's okay versus tomorrow you might want to hop on real quick and just give a brief piece of news to your fans and followers that just came about. And that's okay too. There is a delicate balance between scheduling, having a calendar and also having spontaneous impromptu content. You actually need both. So please don't misconstrue what she's saying. You absolutely should start trying to be better about scheduling content so you always have something because the goal there is consistency and continuity. Remember, you're a brand. You're building a following around you as a brand so that every time you come out with a new book, i.e. product, you've got a larger and larger following and they wanna buy that from you. So you need consistency, you need continuity, but some of that does need to include spontaneous, real, genuine human content. So they feel like, oh, there is a real person on the other side of this Instagram account, not just some scheduling bot.

Lauren: It's the engaging and responding to people too. You know, this is once again, we are not just shouting into the void and running away from it. You can't just schedule all these posts and then walk away and never look at them again. You definitely want to go back and see if people are engaging and responding to your content. You want to respond to them. And you also want to see how those kinds of posts are performing. If you shared a blog post that's getting a lot of engagement from people, that's probably a good sign to either share that content again, which like, yes, you absolutely should be like repurposing, reusing, and sharing your content over and over and over again. And also maybe create more content about that. That might even lead to a book idea, I'm just saying. Free tip from me.

But yes, Matt is absolutely correct about that. One of the tips that I see a lot of time from creators when we go to these different conferences, one of the like go to hot tips for social media is: set aside 15 minutes every day and just do it. You know, it doesn't have to be the entire focus of your day every day. Set 15 minutes every morning, or maybe say I'm gonna dedicate my lunch break to like checking my social accounts, seeing how things are going, engaging with some people. Somebody at PodFest mentioned something about, I would reply to one person a day. Like I would pick one tweet that I saw, like not somebody replying to one of her tweets, but like somebody, another tweet that she saw on her timeline. And she would reply to that tweet and like start a conversation with that person or just like share her two cents on it. And that would be like one a day. Just as simple as that. It's just habit building. 

Matt: Yeah. Honestly, that's a great tip. 

Lauren: Yeah. That was a good one. I'm sorry that I can't cite my source, but. It was memorable. I'll give you that. 

[20:56]

Lauren: Okay. Similarly, when we're talking about planning ahead, this is a great opportunity to create a content calendar. We've talked about this. Matt's smiling because he and I have fought for years about creating content calendars, but it's fine. 

Matt: Lauren obviously wins by the way, so. 

Lauren: Yeah, yeah, I do. Every single time we go to a conference where somebody talks about creating a content calendar using the scheduling tool and batch creating content, I make a point of putting it in my notes so that I can share them with Matt after.

Matt: No comment. 

Lauren: But yeah, social media is a beast. We've all seen it. We all know it. Do whatever it takes to your own style of communicating and creating content to make it manageable. And if one of those things is creating a content calendar, highly recommend it. If one of those things is to not create a content calendar and to instead just say, I'm gonna dedicate 15, 20 minutes every morning and see where the content takes me, that's okay too. Just figure out how it fits into your workflow and make it work for you.

That being said, there are some things you should figure out how to organize, and that's going to be things like, are you going to have any pinned posts on your pages? Are you going to put things in your bio? The answer is yes. The answer is absolutely yes. You should be putting things in your bio. We've talked about this. You should have links in your bio. But are you going to make use of pinned posts? Are you going to make use of playlists or highlights? How are you gonna organize your content once it's on your page to make it as easy as possible for new followers that are checking you out to see the most important information that you have to share with them right up at the top. So that's definitely something that you wanna do. If you have a new book out, you wanna make sure that that's linked at the top of your profile somewhere.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren:  If you are currently promoting a course that you have open registrations right now because you're gonna be doing an online course in a month, you're probably gonna want that pinned at the top of your profile, whatever the case may be. 

Matt: Anything that you're actively selling. So, you know, if you have multiple books, first of all, congratulations, but second of all, you can link to whatever page on your website hosts all of the books for sale. But if this is your first book, or there's only one book that you're really promoting hard, then put a direct link to that one. And again, that can be an online course, whatever your latest one is, or anything else for that matter, a webinar, whatever it is that you're actively trying to encourage people to purchase, you should have a direct link to that in the top, and then you should have a direct link to preferably your email signup list. So those are the two links that really should be in every one of your social media headers.

Lauren: Absolutely. We said it in the last episode, we'll say it again now, you should be cross-promoting on all of your different platforms, whether that's social, email, your website. So make sure you have that stuff accessible on your profiles in whatever form that looks like. 

[23:34]

Lauren: It's great to have your content and your profiles and all of that in shape and in a place where, you know, you're creating content regularly, you're sharing content regularly, you're engaging with people. Everything looks good on your pages. Hopefully, I don't have to talk about things like your profile picture should be something that isn't a potato quality photo or whatever, I think we're all there. But that's all well and good. What happens when no one's coming to your profile and no one's engaging with your content? How do you build your brand and build your audience using social media? 

Matt: I like this topic. Social media should be treated as nothing more than a follower farm. It's a way to farm for new followers. That's it. I wouldn't rely on that platform for anything significant other than finding new followers that you can turn into fans. So finding more people that will follow you, but taking every opportunity you can to get them over somewhere that you have more control, like your email list or something like that. Social media is probably the best way to find new fans, followers, readers, whatever you wanna call them, but it's not the best way to retain them. 

Lauren: Which is why, circling back on that idea of you are promoting your brand and not your book.

Matt:  Yeah

Lauren: That's what you want. That's what we're talking about. That's why we want to do this. Because when it comes to social media, you want to engage with people who are either remembering you personally or your brand as something that they like, something that they're interested in, something that they can rely on to get valuable content or information from so that when the product that you're promoting right now, or will be promoting soon with your book, when that has phased out, when they've already purchased that, they've already read that, they've gotten everything they want from that, they'll still come back for more. And they're not going to do that if you only sold them on your book and not on you as a brand. 

Matt: That's right. Yeah. 

[25:26]

Lauren: We've talked before about the idea of true fans and people that are going to, you know, engage with you and engage with your content and your products, regardless of what that is, because you've fostered that relationship with them. Social media is where you start that relationship. So the question really is then how do you do that? How do you actually find those people and foster those relationships? And the first thing that I'm gonna say is also like the worst advice possible, especially for self-proclaimed introverts like us. And that is to participate in conversations. 

Matt: Oh, are you kidding? 

Lauren: I know. I know, it's insane advice for me to give as a lifelong lurker. I don't ever participate in conversations. I left a comment on a TikTok this morning, and I think it might've been like the first comment I ever left on a TikTok. I've been on that platform for like two years.

Matt: I've never left a TikTok comment. 

Lauren: It was probably only because it was 7 a.m. and I wasn't really awake yet, and I wasn't thinking about it. 

Matt: Why were you on TikTok at 7 a.m.? Nevermind. 

Lauren: You don't actually wanna know the follow-up answer to that, which was that Taylor Swift was playing live in Tokyo at the time that I woke up and I opened TikTok to see how the concert was going. 

Matt: Nevermind. 

Lauren: Yeah, that's what you get for asking questions.

Matt: That's true. Yeah, sorry. 

Lauren: But start there. Start by participating in conversations, preferably ones that are within relevant spaces. As much as we all want to talk - definitely all of us, everyone in this room - wants to talk about Taylor Swift, fostering conversations in a Taylor Swift fan community isn't going to do a whole lot to help you sell your book on how to build your own food truck. Like that's not your niche. That's not your target audience, it's not where you want to be. Find these conversational spaces and participate in them, engage in them. Make sure though that when you're doing that, if you are in a place that has either official or unofficial community rules, that you're paying attention to those. Because people absolutely remember the authors and content creators and content entrepreneurs that break the rules. 

Matt: Oh, for sure. 

Lauren: If you get a reputation as somebody who has blatantly disregarded the rules of a community, people will remember that and they will not remember it in a positive light. 

Matt: That's a big albatross to carry. 

Lauren: Yes. Yes, it is. Another way that you can do this is to connect not with your readers or your potential readers, but connect with your fellow authors and creators and other people in your industry. We've talked a lot about this. We will talk a lot about this in future episodes, I'm sure. Networking with your peers is just as important as building an audience of readers and fans and followers. Bringing back the advice to reply to one tweet per day or share somebody else's insights and retweet it with your own thoughts, great opportunities to do that to connect with your fellow creators. Just make sure you're not weird about it. 

Matt: Wait a second, you know, I have a follow-up to this. 

Lauren: Yeah?

Matt: What do you mean make sure you're not weird about it?

Lauren: Like don't be creepy.

Matt: Oh. Okay.

Lauren: But also like don't - I mean, everyone, everyone can tell when someone's being too sycophantic. You can always tell when someone's just being a little bit too much of a kiss-ass, you know, and that is crossing the line into like now I have the ick from this person and I don't want to work with them, and I don't want to connect with them. So, you know, just like the same way that I'm saying pay attention to community rules. Don't be creepy to your fellow creators. You're not gonna develop a positive relationship with them if you're weird about it. 

Matt: Yeah, I can get behind that. Okay, like that's cool 

Lauren: Okay, good. What did you think I meant?

Matt: I never know. I never know

Lauren: That's fair. I also did not elaborate at all. Even in the notes, it literally just says, don't be weird about it. It almost makes me wonder if I had something more specific in mind when I was writing this and didn't think about it. Oh well.

[29:21]

Lauren: Other ways that you can connect with people in your audience is by adding valuable content. That's what you really want. That's like actually should be the goal of anyone on social media, is to consider what kind of value your content specifically can add. Why do I want to follow you?

Matt: So the irony here is that I'm kind of surfing my social media channels as we do this. And I can't agree more with this bullet point, because I feel like when I look at the people that I follow and I think about the ones that I actively spend time engaging with or really reading through their post or feeling like it was a good follow, it's because they have posted something or continue to post things of value to me or that I find valuable in one way or the other. And it feels like they genuinely want to help. In other words, it just sounds genuine, whatever it is they're talking about. And so I think that's the key here is, and we talked a little bit earlier about consistency, right? And continuity and showing up and being genuine. I think that's how you win at social media. And that is the most timeless sort of best practice you can put in place. You can't change the algorithms, you can't game them, you know, so why bother? There's a lot of things you can't control on social media. Most things, really. You can't control virality. You never know which one of your posts is going to go viral in a good way or a bad way. But what you can control is how you show up and the content that you bring to that channel. And if you're bringing content of value that you truly find valuable, that doesn't mean everybody will. But if you truly find some value in it and you're being genuine with why you're posting it, then you can't go wrong. You will continue to build an audience, word of mouth will spread, as your content gets more popular and people are engaging with it, the algorithms will pay attention. Show up authentically, consistently. 

Lauren: The show up authentically, I think was like the most important part of that. Cause I couldn't agree more with everything that Matt just said. But it is- 

Matt: Can I have a sound bite of that? 

Lauren: Yes, you can. 

Matt: Thank you. 

Lauren: You got it. The most important part of that is the authenticity, because that is something that I think a lot of people lose on social media. And it's something that when you're chasing that idea of virality, if you're doing it by any means necessary, let's say great, you did it, you succeeded, you went viral for a post, but you did it on a post that doesn't necessarily ring true to your content. Now what? Now you got a bunch of people that liked your post because you posted a video of you tearing apart a recipe that you saw and just breaking down how it was the stupidest possible way to cook a meal, but you are like a financial analyst who's giving people personal business advice. You have to figure out, when you're trying to figure out what kind of content you wanna provide and how you can provide valuable content, figure out what it is that you can do that makes people press the button to go see your profile and find out more about you and actually follow you and not just hit like and then keep scrolling. 

Matt: We're throwing the word value around a lot. I feel like it's important for you to kind of explain to our listeners, all five of them, what we mean when we say value. Like what are some examples of adding value? What type of content are you talking about here? 

Lauren: You know, it's gonna vary very much by what your goal as a brand or creator is. Generally stuff that is going to engage your audience in an authentic way. Like you just talked about, if you're writing nonfiction and the value that you can provide is, I'm an expert in this particular subject, then that's what you want to provide. Like that's - you want to provide educational content that is something that people will learn from you and come to know you as an expert in your field. And then hopefully when they reach a point where they need to learn more than just the little sound bites that you find on social media, they will come to you as that expert. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Educational content was always Lulu's top performing content on social. And we would track that, which is something you absolutely need to be doing, once again, do not shout into the void and run away. You have to look back and see how this type, how these different types of content are performing. If you see, like we saw on Lulu's social media over the last few years, that consistently the top performing posts every week, every month, every year, were educational posts, things that were helping people to create books, to publish books, to sell books. We started sharing more of that. We started creating more content along those lines. It gave us the insights that we needed to know. Like, our fans are interested in this kind of content. We’ve got to make more like it. Let's look specifically at what types of content they like within it. And it kind of helped create that knowledge wheel, in a way. 

If you are writing fiction instead, if you're not somebody who's trying to educate people on how to grow their business and instead you just want to write about people falling in love. Great. Love that for you. Also love that for me. There are still plenty of things that you can share that you can help people. I always love, I look to a lot of the authors that I love, a lot of authors that I follow on social media, I look to them for book recommendations. You know, if it's something that I'm like, I love your content. I love what you write. Like I love the tropes that you love and the types of characters that you write and the worlds that you write in. So the books that you are choosing to recommend to me, I'm probably going to like too.

Matt: Yeah, no, that's a great one. And by recommending other books from indie authors in your field, you're also doing something really good for your field, and you should feel good about that. So it was kind of killing two birds with one stone. But that's a great thing because we hear a lot of fiction writers talk about ‘how do I add value on social media? What do you mean value?’ Like there's very little opportunity, at least in the eyes of a fiction author and creator, to add value through some sort of educational piece of information or process, but there are other ways to add value as a fiction author, creator. And again, one is book recommendations of other indie authors. So keep that spirit alive. People, fans, you know, you hear Lauren talk about all the time and me sometimes, but your fans love to see some of the behind the scenes stuff that you're doing or your writing process or things like that. I mean, that's value too, just in a different way. There's entertainment value, there's educational value. Value can be defined a number of ways. But you know, what Lauren said about keeping track of your posts and the engagement levels, you'll start to figure out what your readers value the most and that'll really help you going forward. 

[35:35]

Lauren: No notes. Great advice. Great job. Last kind of tip for how to connect with audiences and whether that's audiences that you are hoping will be future readers or fans or followers or anything, or networking with your peers or whatever. Any kind of collaboration opportunities or public appearances that you're taking part in. You know, if you're going to be attending an event, if you're going to be speaking at an event, if you are going to be hosting a book signing, if you're on a podcast episode, if you're the guest on a podcast episode, or if you have a guest blog, that's going to be on somebody else's blog, any opportunity where you're going to be appearing publicly or in a format or a place that you are not normally going to be. This is a great opportunity for you to share it, for you to talk about it on social. Tag relevant people. If you're going to a conference, use the conference hashtag, tag the official social accounts for the conference. If you're gonna be on somebody's podcast, if you are on somebody's podcast, make sure that you're sharing it to your fans and tagging their podcast, tagging the person who's the host on that podcast, whatever it is. This is a great way to like create collaboration and put your name in front of other people by using those public appearances as community building opportunities. 

Matt: Yeah. 

[36:51]

Lauren: So it was one thing for us to talk social media best practices, general strategies, but this is a podcast on publishing and self publishing. And this should be an episode on book promotion.

Matt: Very true. 

Lauren: Let's talk a little bit about specifically promoting your books on social media. 

Matt: Can I just post a link to my book every day? 

Lauren: Please don't. 

Matt: Okay. I mean. 

Lauren: For so many reasons. 

Matt: Seems easier. 

Lauren: Why would anyone click on it?

Matt: I don't know, because I posted it. 

Lauren: Do you click on every - now I'm concerned, do you click on every link that you see on any social media post? And approximately, follow-up question, how many viruses have you had on different computers over the course of your lifetime? 

Matt: The answer is no, and I don't think any, but. 

Lauren: Okay, well that's good. So, stands to reason then that people are probably not gonna click on just a link to your book if you post it daily in posts on your own social profiles, perhaps in comments on other people's - 

Matt: Oh definitely don’t do that. 

Lauren: On related posts on social. 

Matt: That's definitely bad form.

Lauren: It's tacky. 

Matt: Yeah, it's very Captain Hook-ish. You want to be more like Peter Pan. 

Lauren: What? 

Matt: Captain Hook would absolutely jump onto somebody else's thread that has nothing to do with him and present bad form by posting a link to his book with no context. 

Lauren: Trying to decide if I agree with that or not.

Matt: Make it work in your head. 

Lauren: Okay, if you say so. Anyway, books. 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: Don't spam links to your book. 

Matt: Correct. 

Lauren: Don't just post links, especially with no context. We're not saying don't ever post a link to your book. Of course, you should do that. But it's something that I see a lot where people will just drop a link to their book and that is the post. It's not even a formatted link. It's not even like a nice little short Bitly link or something like that. It's literally just the long - 

Matt: 600 characters, all the tracking tags included. 

Lauren: Yeah, with no context, no comment, no graphics, they're using the thumbnail that gets pulled up, which isn't always a super flattering picture of your book or your content. 

Matt: Correct

Lauren: So definitely not a great look. Definitely don't spam comment on other people's posts with that link either. Also, on the subject, while we're here: taking a screenshot of your book's sell page doesn't look good on social, especially not on Instagram. Please stop posting Instagram posts that are just a screenshot of what your laptop screen looks like on the Lulu sell pages. Please.

Matt: Alright. 

[39:22]

Lauren: Now that we've covered the don'ts, let's talk about some important things that you should be doing instead. To be clear right now, we are talking about specifically upcoming, brand new or recently released books. So, you know, we'll have a different conversation about your backlist once your books have kind of been out for a while. And you're going to have like a little bit of a different approach to that. But this is for either upcoming, brand new, or very recently released books, some best practices, starting off right away with when I say your upcoming content: start promoting early. We talked about this in Episode 10, when we were talking about the three stages of book marketing.

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: Start talking about your book, especially on social media, before it's published, before it's for sale, before you've even finished writing it if you want. Matt has referenced some of our friends and authors that are doing a great job of involving their social media communities in the writing process. 

Matt: Yeah, publishing in public. 

Lauren: It's a great way to get your audience invested, to involve them in the process, let them know it's coming. We've seen some really great examples of people doing that. Also, you know, we mentioned earlier the idea of creating behind the scenes insight to make yourself look a little bit more like a person and not just a bot that is scheduling posts and leaving them and running away. 

Matt: Yes. 

[40:43]

Lauren: Matt already brought up one of the most important points, which is not just posting a link to your book and leaving it at that. So what can you do instead? How do you share specifically your book's content instead? The first thing you're gonna wanna do, and we'll talk more about this in an upcoming episode, is create an elevator pitch. 

Matt: Yeah, nothing's worse than talking to an author and you ask them, oh, what's your new book about? And you get three hours of a pitch. You've basically just read the entire book to me. Create an elevator pitch. And if you don't know what that is, essentially it's like it sounds like. You should be able to pitch somebody on what your book is about in about the time it takes you to ride an elevator up a couple of floors. That's it. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Couple of sentences and be done with it. And that's going to be really important in a lot of your marketing efforts prior to launch at launch and post launch. You can't spend three hours explaining the concept or the premise of your book to every single person that asks or on social media or anywhere else. 

Lauren: Yeah. And to that effect, don't be afraid to use comp titles. If that's something that would help your elevator pitch. I've absolutely had books pitched to me before as just like, this is a book about if Hermione was a Slytherin, but also Hogwarts was trying to actively kill the students that were attending it while they were there. Done. Sold. I don't need any more information. 

Matt: Isn’t that fanfiction though? 

Lauren: I bought that. Well, no, because the - it wasn't fanfiction. It was original fiction, but it was like - 

Matt: Oh, okay. I get what you're saying.

Lauren: It was instead of saying this is a book about a teenage girl who can do magic and is definitely the kind of person who the end justifies the means in whatever she has to do. And she's going to a school that is actively working against her as she's attempting to learn magic, which is still the exact same thing that I just said, but it's a longer version of it. 

Matt: Gotcha. I see, I see. 

Lauren: And the key words there - and I don't love referencing Harry Potter, but it was a short and sweet way to do it.

Matt: Gotcha. 

Lauren: And if that works for you, that's even better.

Matt: Yeah. 

[42:42]

Lauren: Another thing that you can do, if you're not sure how to create that elevator pitch, or if you're not sure what comp titles to use, use your readers. Use testimonials, use blurbs, use review quotes that you've gotten from people, but -  

Matt: This is where some of those relationships that you're hopefully building with other authors in your craft and genre will come in handy. You guys can lean on each other for these types of things, a book blurb, a testimonial or something like that. You can send them an ARC, you know, an advanced reader copy and then get a little bit of feedback that you can chop up for your social snippets, for your social proof, things like that. So again, you know, we talked in an earlier episode about events and why they can be important for authors to be able to network and meet other authors in their genres or parallel genres. This is one of the benefits of that.

Lauren: Absolutely. Any opportunity that you have to make friends that can potentially read your book, give you a blurb, give you some social proof that says like, hey, this book was really good. You should check it out too. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That's great social content for you. 

[43:43]

Lauren: And last but not least, we mentioned the idea of not just relying on whatever thumbnail pulls up when you're sharing your book, take the time to either create some graphics or have some graphics made. Whether that's graphics with your book cover art on it. There's been a trend going around lately that has been romance authors doing, like, the cover of their book with a couple of arrows pointing out of the book with different tropes that you'll find in the book. So like this is a book with grumpy sunshine romance, and takes place in the 1950s, and there is a cat involved. Like, you know, like it's like just little things like that. And it's great. I've added a bunch of books to my TBR just with that trending format right now. Little things like that. If you have a really great pull quote from your book, one-liner, two-liner, something that really conveys the point of your book or something that proves how you have really valuable educational content in there, make a graphic that has that quote featured on it. And then in the copy or in the body of the post itself, learn more about this by clicking on this link and buying my book here. There are ways to share your content without just posting the link and hoping that somebody clicks on that scary, scary link for no reason. 

Matt: I also love how these days there is no other genre that is as adept and creative at creating sub-genres than romance. You just threw one out there that's the first time I've heard it. Sunshine, whatever. The amount of different subcategories of romance that I've seen over the last two years is mind boggling. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: And you don't see that in most other genres.

Lauren: Don't confuse sub-genres and tropes. 

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: Because those are - that's a whole new episode. 

Matt: Yes. Yeah, let's move on from there. 

[45:22]

Lauren: Okay, other things that you can do on social to promote your new book, that isn't just throwing up a link and hoping for the best - share good news. You know, if you get a really good review, share it. If your book makes some kind of top 10 list or some kind of earned media, if it gets one of those little like bestseller tags on some website or something like that, share it. Promote yourself, promote your successes. Absolutely do that. Also share good news about your own brand. Like even if it's only tangentially related to your book, if you were invited to be a speaker at a conference, maybe your book was one of the reasons that you got invited to be a speaker in the first place. So share that, especially if the thing you're going to be talking about at conference is related to your book, you know. Whatever it is, share those little things. And when you're sharing those things, whether it's reviews, blurbs from other creators, event appearances: tag the people, outlets, places, whoever that are relevant to that post. 

Matt: Yeah, that's a big one. I see posts often where, you know, an author creator is sharing something or just posting about something in particular that involves other people or an event and there's no tagging going on. And so the tagging is not just meant for your viewers to be able to see, okay, it's gonna be at this particular venue. They've tagged the venue, so I know that. It's also so that the people, places, events, things that you're tagging will see that you tagged them and they'll want to repost it hopefully for you. So it's a way of getting even more exposure. So that tagging component is very important and a lot of people, they fumble that. They get it wrong and it's to your detriment. Make sure wherever possible, as best as you can, that you're tagging other outlets and creators and publishers and things like that. 

Lauren: I used to get that question all the time when I was the social media manager here. People would say to us like, hey, I saw you feature a book on Instagram, whatever. How do I get my book featured on there? How come I've shared my book on Instagram and you haven't featured it on the Lulu page? And I would say, well, did you tag us in it? And they would say, no. And I would say, well, then how was I supposed to know?

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: How am I supposed to know that it exists if you didn't let us know? 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: That's how you do it. And again, same advice that I gave earlier. Don't be weird about it. Don't spam people. You don't have to tag them in every single post that you post about it, but relevant ones. 

Matt: Yes.

Lauren: It's worth tagging. 

Matt: Yeah. And also look at it this way too. Don't feel like you're necessarily bothering them per se, because in many cases you're also giving them some content to post or repost. Make sure you're doing those relevant tags. You need that extra exposure. You need that coverage. And in some cases you're going to be giving somebody else some content to post. So that's great.

[47:56]

Lauren: Yeah. So how is it different than when we're talking about promoting your backlist? First of all, in case we're not clear about this, backlist is any book that you've published previously that is not your most recent book and or kind of if your most recent book is like heavy air quotes around most recent because it's over a year old. 

Matt: Yeah. So how in the world do you promote old stuff? 

Lauren: That's a great question. And the answer is when relevant. 

Matt: Oh. 

Lauren: You promote it when it's relevant to do so. What makes it relevant is the real question.

Matt: Oh, that's the question I should be asking. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: So when is your book relevant? When is your backlist relevant? Couple of different circumstances. First of all, if you've had a surge of new followers for any reason, if you were just a guest on a podcast maybe and a bunch of people followed you because they heard you on this podcast, you were recently at a conference and you made a bunch of new connections networking at a conference, you've just had a bunch of new people come to your account. They are probably not familiar with your old stuff. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So now is a great opportunity to let those people know that you have a backlist of different books that you've published. 

Matt: That actually makes a lot of sense, yep.

[49:05]

Lauren: Thank you. Another one that you can't actually control in any capacity, if there is ever a reason that your book is currently relevant to a trending topic in the news cycle, in the culture cycle. Even if it's something like you wrote a book that is a holiday cocktail recipe collection. And it's specifically like, these are all like Christmas cocktails. Every holiday season, you better be promoting that book. 

Matt: Yeah, that's fair. 

Lauren: It might not be relevant in July, but it is relevant in December.

Matt: Nobody's gonna wanna see that in July, but yeah. 

Lauren: Definitely not, I don't want that reminder. You never know when those opportunities are gonna present themselves. It's a great opportunity to be like, hey you know, I saw people talking about a mummy that they dug up that no one expected, it's like predating anything that we've seen previously. Fun fact, I wrote a book about what happens when you dig up mummies that you're not supposed to. So, you know, go check that out. 

One thing that you can control on the other hand, if you're running any kind of sales promotions, if you're running a bundle deal, maybe you're with your new book, you're doing a deal where if you bundle it with one of my older titles, maybe it's something as simple as Black Friday. If you are running some kind of sale or promotion on your backlist titles specifically, which I do recommend you do, that is…great opportunity to occasionally do that. Books do have a shelf life, as weird as that might sound, and as on the nose as that might sound. Books do have a shelf life. So if you've reached the point where it is a little bit outdated, if you've been promoting the same book for five years and you've added nothing new to it, people are gonna stop paying attention. Find relevant excuses to promote it.

[50:40]

Matt: Yeah. What else can you do to promote your backlist? I mean, again, we're talking about older titles. And so I get that when there's something relevant in the new cycle or culture cycle, that makes sense. Or obviously if you take on a batch of new followers because of something else, again, that makes sense. I get it. They probably don't know about your older titles. So perfect opportunity, but that's, that's two, two sort of things that don't happen super regularly. So, I mean, there's gotta be some other reasons, ways to, to promote your older titles, right? 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: There are, but they tend to be more passive than what some of the other, which is why I did wanna separate these out into new top of mind titles and backlist titles. 

Matt: Sure.

Lauren: And that's gonna be mostly, you know, just keeping your backlist accessible. If you're traditionally published, books go out of print. So, you know, one of the great benefits of self-publishing and print on demand is that your backlist titles will never go out of print unless you choose to make them unavailable because they are print on demand. Keep your backlist accessible unless you choose not to, unless you choose to take it down. Keep them featured or at least linked in your bios and profiles. You know, we mentioned linking directly to the page where your new book is being sold and that's great. And then once the hype dies down on that one, put it linked back to just your general shop page that includes your complete catalog of books. You can also use content like reviews to promote your backlist. People will still be reviewing, people will still review old books all the time, just because they're old to you doesn't mean they're old to them. So if you get a new review on an older book, share that. That's one of those good news things that you can share. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Especially if it's like a really good review, it's a great opportunity to share that up again and be like, hey, quick reminder that if you liked my newer stuff, you might like this one too. 

[52:24]

Matt: Yeah. I think those are some great tips and I think there's some great takeaways for our listeners here on this one. And even backing up to the newer titles and the way that you launch new books and things like that. But you know, I think overall, I hope what people gain out of this episode is the understanding that you know, social media is a great tool to promote and find new readers and followers. It's probably one of the best tools for that, but it should definitely also be used only for that and you should still couple that or pair that with the activity of very regularly trying to get people over to your email list or your website some way to have better control over the outcomes of your content and your sales. So I think these are all great points and takeaways on how to use social media to market your book new or old. But again, just keep all that in context. We want to continue driving home the point whenever we can that you never really want to build your home or your castle on rented land. So use social media for what it's good for and make sure you're very hyper aware of what it's not good for.

Lauren: Couldn't have put it better myself. 

Matt: I want that in a sound bite too. 

Lauren: You got it. I think we've done it. I think we've mostly given a good overview of social media. I'm sure there will be future episodes that are diving deeper into some of the topics that we've talked about. 

Matt: Probably.

Lauren: If there are any in particular that you're interested in hearing about, figure out a way to let us know. No emails will be provided in this episode, so.

Matt: That's true. 

Lauren: But there are ways to get in touch with us. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Matt, what's your social media platform of choice? 

Matt: Mine? Instagram. 

Lauren: That's true. 

Matt: Yeah. I don't really mess with the others. Instagram. Well, LinkedIn. I like LinkedIn too, strictly for professional stuff. I like LinkedIn. And it's gotten a lot better over the last couple of years in terms of engagement, people using it. So I'm a big fan of LinkedIn, but Instagram is my social media platform. 

Lauren: Alright. Well, there you go. 

Matt: I see what you did there. 

Lauren: You can find Matt on Instagram or LinkedIn. 

Matt: Alright. You need to go home and watch Peter Pan and the rest of you, yes. If you would like to reach out, you know, provide some feedback on the show or topic choices or things like that. You can find me on Instagram. Absolutely. 

Lauren: You can also find Lulu on Instagram. 

Matt: That's true as well. 

Lauren: You can leave your comments there. 

Matt: Alright. Thanks everybody. 

Lauren: Thanks for listening.