
Publish & Prosper
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Publish & Prosper
How to Repurpose Your Book (and Other Content) for Social Media
In this episode, Matt & Lauren review the best ways to repurpose content for social media. They talk through reusing your existing social content, reposting other people’s social content, and repurposing your book material as social content.
Jump in to hear about Matt’s recent appearance at Momentum and upcoming plans for Author Nation - or skip ahead to 13:50 to get right to the social media content strategies.
Dive Deeper
💡 Listen to These Episodes
- Episode #12 | Social Media Marketing for Authors & Creators
- Episode #25 | Author Branding 101: Building a Brand Beyond Your Books
- Episode #33 | Books You Can Create Using Your Existing Content
💡 Read These Blog Posts
💡 Watch These Videos
- Lulu U | How to Use Social Media to Grow Your Author Brand
- Webinar | Before Social Media: The Marketing Elements You Need Before You Post with Annie Schiffmann
💡 Check out These Resources
- HootSuite | Create Engaging and Effective Social Media Content
- Social Media Examiner | Social Content Repurposing: An Easy System for Creating Great Content
- The Social Shift by Katie Brinkley
- ManyChat for Instagram
Sound Bites From This Episode
🎙️ [27:07] “You never know where the content like this that you share and create is going to wind up… If you have this little like, bite-sized content that ties back to your book you don't know where it's going to go and it could serve as a lead magnet.”
🎙️ [33:05] “The riches are in the niches. So niche down as far as you can go to where you add maximum value and that's where you will see maximum engagement and revenue intake. And then if you want to scale up from there, you can.”
🎙️ [43:10] “Virality is not stability. Like, don't chase virality because you don't know how you're going to get it. And if you do happen to get lucky enough to have a viral post, you'll probably never get it again. You'll never know how or why you got it.”
💀 Can’t wait for our next episode? Check out our Resources page for links to our blog,
our YouTube channel, and more.
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💀 Sign up for our mailing list.
Matt: Welcome back to Publish & Prosper, everybody, where Lauren is about to get fired. Live, not live recorded.
Lauren: You know what? I think that if I got fired on air, on recording, I would probably still edit the episode for you to publish it, just because it would be so funny.
Matt: That's commitment to your craft, and to the brand, and to the podcast. So I appreciate that.
Lauren: I appreciate a good bit for that.
Matt: For that I will not fire you.
Lauren: Thanks.
[Intro]
Matt: We ready?
Lauren: Yeah, let's go.
Matt: Welcome back to Publish & Prosper. We are going to be talking about how to repurpose your book content for social media purposes.
Lauren: We've recorded a bunch of episodes where we've talked about my last, last, last job working at the bookstore.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: And we don't very often talk about what I used to do here at Lulu for like a solid four years, which was social media.
Matt: Well, that's because everybody here at Lulu is trying to block it out, so…
Lauren: Including me.
Matt: Yeah, probably including you. That's right. So Lauren is alluding to the idea or referring to the idea that when we first hired Lauren, it was for a social media manager. And she thoroughly enjoyed that position. She loved it. She didn't want to leave it to do what she's doing now, but we dragged her way from it, kicking and screaming. And here she is.
Lauren: I mean, I did say no when you first asked.
Matt: Did you really?
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: I don't remember that.
Lauren: You talked me into it in one half hour meeting. So it took - like, I didn't have to go home and think about it. But at the beginning of it, I was a hard no. And by the end of it, I was like, okay, let's try this.
Matt: I'm going to take that as a win.
Lauren: Alright.
Matt: Because here you are.
Lauren: I'm going to take that as a compliment.
Matt: There you go.
Lauren: You're glad that I agreed to do this.
Matt: It's a win win.
Lauren: Anyway, let's talk a little bit - I was, so I wanted to, I wanted to talk a little bit about social media. Actually, Matt kind of inspired this episode a little bit because of something he did on Instagram.
Matt: What did I do on Instagram?
Lauren: It was a good thing. So it was like a week or two ago, in our time, the Lulu Instagram had a post on it that was different customer comments and reviews and listener comments from the podcast.
Matt: Right. Yeah.
Lauren: And you shared that to your Instagram story and then added a poll to it saying, should we get swag?
Matt: That's right.
Lauren: And I really liked the way you did that. I was like, this is a great example of somebody -
Matt: Repurposing.
Lauren: - repurposing content that was created by somebody else, sharing it, getting some engagement on it, and then also using it as a way to touch base with their audience.
Matt: Which, by the way, we got 100% poll results that we should do swag for the podcast, so.
Lauren: How many people responded to the poll? Do you know?
Matt: I don't remember.
Lauren: Was it more than one?
Matt: Yes.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: It was more than you. Because it shows me who responds and what their answer is. It was definitely more than you. It was more than I expected.
Lauren: Okay good.
Matt: To be honest with you.
Lauren: Good. I just wanted to make sure you weren't basing that entirely on me voting yes, because I did.
Matt: I will say that 50% of the results that were positive for swag were either Lulu employees or friends of ours.
Lauren: Well that's because -
Matt: But the other 50% were people I don't really know as people that work for Lulu or with us or whatever. So that was good.
Lauren: That is awesome. That is actually something that continues to delight me every time it happens. So shout out to anybody who is listening to this podcast or watching this that does not know me or Matt personally. Because every time that I see like, a comment from somebody or anything on social media or anything like that from somebody that is responding directly to this podcast.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: That isn't somebody that I know personally or I know Matt knows personally, I'm like, oh, cool.
Matt: Spoiler alert, everybody that's ever responded to this thing, I know them personally.
Lauren: No, don't tell me that.
Matt: I've paid them.
Lauren: Well, money well spent.
Matt: I'm just kidding. I am definitely irresponsible with my money in other ways, but not that.
Lauren: Same.
Matt: Yeah. Most of it's Disney related.
Lauren: Also same.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But that's one thing. I mean, this is free advice unrelated to this episode. Don't ever pay for followers or listeners or an audience.
Matt: I mean, if anybody's doing that at this stage in the game, it's tenfold stupid. Don't buy followers. Yeah. There's a pro tip social media number one.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Don't buy followers.
Lauren: You're welcome.
Matt: And newsflash, everybody knows you bought them if you did.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: When you've got 50,000 followers in the matter of a week. And every post you make gets four comments and six likes. Everybody knows you bought your followers. So why bother? And you're not beating the algorithm at all. Just don't do it. It's a waste of money.
Lauren: Yeah. Instead find some healthy, organic ways to grow your audience. Like for example, what we're going to talk about in this episode.
Matt: And to be fair, why we're talking about this is also particularly because at this point it's extremely hard to get any sort of engagement on any social media channel right now. Like. All the algorithms are different. They're all incomprehensible. The only place that I've seen any real engagement lately is LinkedIn, but I mean, no author really wants to be tooling around LinkedIn.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Like that's straight up mostly B2B stuff, but it's a nightmare right now. Couple that with the fact that you can only create so much content for social media before you get burned out. You might as well turn to your book, right?
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. And I think especially this time of year, the time of year that this episode is coming out - I mean, this is good evergreen content strategy all the time, for sure. But especially, you know, as we're getting into Q4 and the holiday season and the end of the year, people are really busy. People have a lot going on. It is not easy to be spending dedicated time every single day on social media, creating new content, whether it's because you're burnt out and you're running out of ideas or you don't have the time or you're constantly on the go. And it kind of feels like you're shouting into the void right now, which I totally understand. You know, it's hard, it gets harder and harder to create content when you're getting little to no response.
Matt: Yeah hopefully this helps -
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: - people create some more original content and not feel so much burnout and maybe actually get some positive effects and engagement from the the algorithms, but I don't know. We'll see.
Lauren: Here's hoping.
Matt: We're trying.
Lauren: We're trying. Which I think is a great way to jump right into the first thing.
Matt: Well, hold on.
Lauren: Yes?
Matt: You're moving too fast.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: The most important question everybody's going to want to know and they're probably going to comment on if we don't address this right now is what your bracelet say today?
Lauren: I'm so glad you asked. So one of them is the only bracelet that I've ever made that is two together. It is a failed experiment.
Matt: It’s a double?
Lauren: It's a double, and it says I cry a lot, but I am so productive.
Matt: Well, I can vouch for the second part, for the most part. And -
Lauren: The first part is also true.
Matt: I can almost guarantee that that first part is true, knowing what I do know about you.
Lauren: Very fair. It is from a Taylor Swift song.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: And then the other one is also from a Taylor Swift music video is je suis calme. The cold open to the video is Brendan Urie telling Taylor Swift ‘you need to calm down’ and her turning around and screaming ‘I am calm’ and then storming out the door. Which is just the energy that I wish to embody in all things. But it's all done in French for some reason so it's her screaming ‘je suis calme’ at him. Which, I also don't speak French, so, sorry.
Matt: I was gonna ask why but I don't care.
Lauren: No it's okay.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: But anyway those are the bracelets.
Matt: Got it. If anybody wants an idea of what to get Lauren for a holiday gift, or if you're going to happen to see her at Author Nation in Vegas in November, bring her a box of beads from Michaels because she is surely running low.
Lauren: Oh, first of all, no such thing.
Matt: Oh.
Lauren: But you know what?
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Actually.
Matt: I was trying to help you out.
Lauren: If anybody is listening to this podcast and comes to Author Nation.
Matt: That’s a big if.
Lauren: If there's anybody listening to this podcast who is also going to be at Author Nation, come find me and specifically say that you heard in this episode that I'm going to have friendship bracelets at Author Nation. And I will bring a few friendship bracelets to give to people that listen to this podcast.
Matt: Yeah, you buried the lede there. So you're going to have some friendship bracelets that you're going to create.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Specifically for anybody who comes up to our booth and mentions that they heard on the podcast that she would have friendship bracelets.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Yeah. So if you come up to me, you know, say you listen to this podcast and you heard or ask me what my bracelets say that day or whatever, I will have some to give out to people.
Matt: Okay, I like that.
Lauren: And more importantly, one of the other inspirations for this episode was my girl Taylor Swift in general. So thanks for giving me that bracelet intro.
Matt: Should we give somebody a free ticket to Author Nation?
Lauren: Whoa.
Matt: If anybody listens to this podcast and legitimately wants to go to Author Nation in Las Vegas, November 11th through the 15th, and you can supply all your own travel and hotel and all of that stuff - which I think they have discounted rates for rooms and stuff where the event is being held at the Horseshoe.
Lauren: I think so too.
Matt: We will cover the cost. We will get you entry into the event. We'll get you a pass into the event, which will save you, I want to say somewhere north of $500. Am I wrong on that?
Lauren: I'm going to fact check that right now, but that sounds amazing. Yeah.
Matt: Is it?
Lauren: It's - yeah.
Matt: Okay. Yeah. So the first person that legitimately will use it, will show up because you don't want to take it out of somebody else's hands. It would, but the first person that would actually buy a plane ticket, book a hotel room and join us in Las Vegas for Author Nation, we will cover the cost. We'll get you a pass.
Lauren: What do you want them to do? Email us?
Matt: Yes, no, yes.
Lauren: So email us at podcast@lulu.com.
Matt: So the first one to hit our inbox, we'll get them a pass. But again, please don't email us if you're not gonna go, because that's just not right for anybody who would have been first and would have actually done it. Yeah?
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: That sounds fun, right?
Lauren: That's awesome.
Matt: Okay, I hope I don't get fired for that, but. I won't. I'm just kidding.
Lauren: Okay. Putting it on record, that was Matt's idea, not mine. Fire Matt, not me.
Matt: Well, what's the old saying that stuff rolls downhill? Can I cuss?
Lauren: Don't put that -
Matt: Because we're on YouTube?
Lauren: No, I don't think so.
Matt: No? Are you sure?
Lauren: I don't know. You're the one that said you didn't want to cuss on this podcast at all.
Matt: I said that?
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Have I not cussed on this podcast at all?
Lauren: We've had a couple of… a couple of minor slips, but...
Matt: I feel like I should be given an award for that. Is there an award for that? I'd rather just cuss. It's too much pressure.
Lauren: You’ve got this far. You've gone this far without.
Matt: I think you're right. I don't think I've said a single cuss word in 44 episodes.
Lauren: I mean, I think it - I think it depends on your definition. I think there are people that have a less lenient definition of what cursing is than you and I do. So there are a lot of words that you and I would say and have said in these episodes that we wouldn't consider cussing, but other people do.
Matt: That's fair.
Lauren: But in terms of like the big ones that I'm not going to ruin our streak by saying now, we haven't said any of them. And not that I, not that we have any -
Matt: I don't think I've even said any of the medium to small size ones. Have I?
Lauren: Maybe like one or once or twice. There have been a couple that I've had to cut out.
Matt: Oh. Okay.
Lauren: But I mean, even like those big ones, like we haven't even like accidentally said them and then been like, oh, cut that out.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Like we haven't said them at all.
Matt: I was at an event a week ago in Orlando called Momentum. Shout out Lou Mongello.
Lauren: Oh, I literally already told my friends that I'm not coming to the fundraiser next year because I want to go to that.
Matt: You -
Lauren: - it sounded incredible.
Matt: You missed a good one.
Lauren: It looked incredible.
Matt: For anybody listening that was at Momentum.
Lauren: I’ll be there in 2025.
Matt: I would love for you to email podcast@lulu.com and tell Lauren how much she missed. But anyways, I don't think I said a single cuss word during my entire presentation, which was over an hour long.
Lauren: That is very impressive. I wonder -
Matt: But I did have somebody ask me if the reason I had an anchor tattooed on my face was because I had a mouth like a sailor.
Lauren: Huh. Oh, okay.
Matt: And they're not partially wrong there.
Lauren: Were you in the Disney bubble? Where was the conference?
Matt: So the conference was on Disney property. It was at the, the hotel, the Hilton that's across from Disney Springs, the one that's actually attached by a walkway.
Lauren: Oh, the one we stayed at?
Matt: No.
Lauren: Oh.
Matt: That's on the other corner of Disney Springs.
Lauren: Oh.
Matt: There's literally another one on the other corner.
Lauren: Oh.
Matt: The one that this was at was the one that has the Benihana in the lobby.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: So yeah, still Disney bubble. And 50% of the creators and entrepreneurs that were at that event I would say, probably 50%, maybe a little bit more, had businesses or products or things that were rooted in Disney, whatever. So it was super cool. But all like, extremely qualified and knowledgeable and it was just a really great conference.
Lauren: I mean, it sounds incredible, but also I wonder if that's why - cause for me, that's what - not that I cuss as much as you do, but I definitely am very freewheeling with my vocabulary. And there is something about like the second I get on Disney property, like all those words leave my vocabulary.
Matt: Oh, not me.
Like I am never going to in front of a kid.
Matt: Not me.
Lauren: So, okay. Unrelated.
Matt: Disney does not affect my mouth at all normally. Like I was, I was being very cognizant of it during my presentation, just because I think that Lou had some people there that probably would not have appreciated where my mouth can sometimes get up. Otherwise, no, I'd be on the monorail cussing up a storm if it gets delayed or if I'm in the middle of a ride and it stops.
Lauren: Well, that's very considerate of you.
Matt: What do you want me to do?
Lauren: No, I met at the conference.
Matt: Oh, well, yeah. I don't care. I mean, I like all those people.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: I like Lou. I wanted to be invited back next year.
Lauren: I want to be invited next year too. So thanks for not doing anything.
Matt: There you go. See, I did it for you.
Lauren: Thanks. I appreciate it.
Matt: The stuff I do.
Lauren: Speaking of stuff to do, do you want to get back to the actual episode topic or?
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: This is what I get for springing an episode topic on you -
Matt: That's true.
Lauren: - after you've been traveling.
Matt: It's your fault.
Lauren: So sorry.
Matt: Yep.
[13:50] - Reusing Your Existing Social Content
Lauren: Anyway, let's talk about using your social media or using your book for social media content.
Matt: Go.
Lauren: First thing I wanted to talk about was actually something that Matt gave me a segue to like ten whole minutes ago, and then we obviously got sidetracked in way cooler conversation. But I want to talk about reusing your own content, literally reusing your own social content that you have already posted. Cause I feel like that's something that people tend to think is like a faux pas, which it's not.
I think that maybe that's something that's dying out, like that belief that you can't repost your own content. So hopefully that is. But if you are somebody who still feels that way, let me be the one to give you permission if that's what you need to hear that you absolutely can and should repost your own content. Mostly because the algorithm is nuts right now. So, there's plenty of opportunity for you to say, this post didn't do as well as I thought it was going to. I'm gonna try reposting it at a different time.
Matt: Yeah, that's a great point. And I'm gonna jump in real quick.
Lauren: Yeah, please do.
Matt: Because somebody else was talking about this recently that I was talking to, because I used to be of the same stance too, right? I thought part of why I'm not really good on social media for anybody that follows me, I'm sorry. Part of why I'm not as consistent as I should be or could be is because I've also subscribed to this train of thought that you can't or shouldn't repost content, like the same content or whatever. And so it's like, God, every single time I got a, I'm too busy, forget it, you know what I mean?
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: And I'll just lurk or look at Disney stuff or whatever, or comment on other people's stuff. But I was talking to somebody and at least for me, they raised a couple of really good points. The first one being, the only place people are going to see that your content has actually been duplicated or you've doubled it or tripled it, is if they actually went to your main page and saw all of your posts stacked next to each other.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: Nobody really does that anymore.And if even if they do whatever, it's not like they're going to DM you and be like, bro, what the hell? Oh, sorry. I just cussed. That's not a cuss word.
Lauren: That's not a - no, I wouldn't count that.
Matt: Thank you.
Lauren: I am literally wearing a shirt with a grim reaper on it right now.
Matt: Yep, there you go.
Lauren: Like, okay.
Matt: So that made a lot of sense to me. I never thought about that. The people, yeah, they really don't go look at - like I don't. What's in my feed is in my feed and that's it really. Unless it's a brand or somebody I'm considering buying a product from, I might go look at their page just to make sure everything looks legit and it's not some fake AI driven Instagram store, because they're out there.
But the other thing they said was based on the way these algorithms are behaving - and I've seen this firsthand, everybody has too - there's no guarantee that anybody saw your first one.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: So reposting that same content, maybe with a slight twist or maybe even not. Chances are the same people aren't going to see it again. That's just the way things work. And we don't have a lot of control over that. When I heard those two things, it made a lot of sense to me. And now I feel a little better and I'm going to try to be a little better about posting.
Lauren: Yeah, I, because I'm the same way or I was the same way for a really long time. I feel like it's the same thing as like, being an outfit repeater, which was definitely something that Lizzie McGuire was accused of being an outfit repeater when I was like 12 years old. And that has lived rent free in my brain ever since.
This is the kind of that same principle of like, Oh no, I can't post the same thing. I can't show the same thing that I've already shown people. Like that's ridiculous. And it's really not the case. It really isn't. And it is like Matt just said, if it helps you a little bit to ease yourself into it by trying to like, frame it in a certain way, maybe? There are always ways to do that, too.
You can do something like, you know, this time last year, this is what we were talking about or last month, last week, whatever. You always see things that are like how it started versus how it's going. There's one on I'm pretty sure the Lulu Instagram right now has a post that is how it started versus how it's going about this podcast specifically and showing us like in this undecorated room with boxed up equipment. And then like here we are now, almost a year later.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: There's ways that you can do that. You can also do like roundups or compilation. These are some of my best posts. These are some whatever. Or even like if you really, depending on what kind of content creator you are - this is probably better for nonfiction or content entrepreneurs or people that are in that space than it is like fiction authors.
But I've always found it really interesting when there are people that I follow in like, the marketing industry that I see them flat out say, hey, I'm A-B testing, trying to see whether my posts perform better when I post them in the morning, at night, weekdays, weekends, whatever, blah, blah, blah. So I've been posting the same content at different times throughout the day and looking to see which ones get more engagement.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: I always find that really interesting when I see people outright talking about that. And in fact, that might have like super work in your benefit. You know -
Matt: Super work?
Lauren: Yes, extra super duper work in your benefit.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Because it might give you a reason for people to come back to your page.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: You know, if you're saying like, oh, I'll share the results. I'll let you all know at the end of this week what the results of my mini experiment were. So like come back if you wanna know whether I had better results posting in the afternoon or the morning or, you know, varying it up or whatever, blah, blah, blah.
Matt: Yeah, yeah.
Lauren: So.
Matt: That's actually great content in general though, or a great content tactic, which is to post something that requires a followup from your followers.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Survey content, things like that. That's why polls and surveys and other types of content are great because they do want to come back. They do want to see what the results were.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: They will keep their eyes open for that results post. And if they don't see it, they will seek out your account to find out what those results were. People get invested in those types of things. So that's great content to use just in general.
Lauren: Absolutely. Anything that's going to bring people back to your page again.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Which is even like Matt was saying earlier with the nobody's going to notice that you're reposting the same things unless they go to your page and they see like your grid and they see that you've posted several things.
Matt: Grid. That was the word I was looking for. Grid.
Lauren: It took me a second there, too.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: If people are looking at your grid thoroughly enough to notice that you've reposted the same things over and over again, you've already got them to do what you want them to do. They're on your profile.
Matt: That’s true too.
Lauren: They're looking at your page right now.
Matt: Ha ha. Gotcha.
Lauren: Yeah. Congrats, you did it.
Matt: Yep, yeah.
Lauren: Something to keep in mind for sure.
[19:58] - Reposting Other People’s Content
Lauren: And then the other thing, before we get into like, actually using your book itself as content, the other thing that I wanted to talk a little bit about was what originally inspired this episode, which is that idea of repurposing other people's content.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So I gave the example already of Matt sharing the Story with the poll, but I've also seen there's an author that I really like that what she does, a lot of her Instagram Stories content is like, when she sees memes or something that she thinks her characters would relate to, she will share it and say, like… this is Jake when he's having the Sunday scaries or whatever or something like that. And it always just makes me giggle a little bit every time I see it. Or I'm like, oh, yeah. And it reminds me this was a character that I liked from a book that I liked, and -
Matt: Yeah, yeah.
Lauren: - this is relatable. And I like this. And I wonder what that author is up to. And I wonder if they've got anything else going on right now. And like it catches my attention more often than not.
Matt: I love that stuff too. I love when I see people using like, Jaws for various different like holidays or things, especially when Shark Week comes around, like the meme starts surfacing of Jaws and Peter Benchley's book and how he was the originator, so everybody can thank him for Shark Week. I love seeing all of the memes that come out way before Halloween that have Michael Myers or Ghostface on them or things like that. So I love repurposing content and tying it back to a particular character and then having them put their own commentary or spin on it, so yeah.
Lauren: Yeah, for sure. There's also, I think, our social media platforms lend themselves really well to this in particular - Repurposing other people's content with your own responses to it. So whether that's like, God I cannot bring myself to say X so i'm just not going to on LinkedIn If you see somebody else's post and you go to share it, you can either just share it directly without adding anything to it.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: Or you can share it with your own thoughts.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: And you can like leave your own comments on it. Or on TikTok.
Matt: You could do that on Twitter too.
Lauren: Ugh. On TikTok when you stitch videos.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: It's a great way to kind of like, establish yourself. Again, this is more for nonfiction than fiction, but kind of establish yourself as somebody who knows what you're talking about in a specific field.
Matt: Yeah, no that’s -
Lauren: And kind of create that content of like, hey, I'm, I know what I'm talking about here. Instead of me creating my own original content, I'm going to stitch somebody else's with my response or my thoughts or my expertise.
Matt: It's a tactic. It's an approach and I like it, but you have to be prepared for potential backlash, right?
Lauren: Well, with any of this stuff I would say that’s true.
Matt: Because if you make that your thing, if your thing is doing that, like fact checking or commenting against other people's content, that's great. It is a good tactic and you'll get a lot of engagement in many cases. But you'll also get, if not the original posters of that content, other people that support that original poster coming on and potentially trolling you or wanting to do so.
Just, yeah, it's a great tactic. I think it does encourage a lot of engagement. I'm not saying it's a bad one, but I think that I don't think everybody's thick skin enough to use that tactic. So just take this with whatever grain of salt or sand or whatever else you tend to use in your slogan.
Lauren: I mean, I know I'm not so. I know I don't have a thick enough skin for that. So I completely agree and understand. But I think that a little bit, if you're going to be creating content on social media at all, you have to be prepared for that.
Matt: That's also fair. Yes. I mean, if you're going to play in that space regularly with any sort of volume in terms of the amount of content and engagement, then yeah, you're going to have to be prepared for that anyway. So that's fair point. Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. Just something to keep in mind. But I just wanted to throw those couple of ideas out there. I am going to link in the show notes, two articles that I was reading through while outlining this episode, one from HootSuite and one from Social Media Examiner. Both of which are great resources if you're doing social media content creation in general, whether you're new to it or a seasoned pro, both of them are great resources.
But I'm going to link both of those articles in the show notes. They dive much deeper into the idea of repurposing your content, whether it's your content or somebody else's content. They also talk about repurposing your content across different social media platforms, which was something that I didn't really want to get into in this episode because it's could be its own episode entirely.
Matt: Oh, can it not?
Lauren: No, it's not going to.
Matt: Oh, okay.
Lauren: No, no, no, no, no. I'm not saying we're going to do an episode on that, but like the idea that you should not be just copy pasting the same piece of content on like six different social media channels. You should be kind of tailoring them to the specific platform. Nope, nope, nope, nope. We're not doing it.
If that's something that you want to learn more about, if you want to know why me and Matt are both kind of making these faces right now, go check out these articles, I will link them in the show notes.
Matt: Fair enough.
Lauren: Okay. I mean, you can argue if you want to, but we have already deviated from the plot for like a solid ten minutes.
Matt: That’s true.
[24:53] - Repurposing Your Book Content for Social Media
Lauren: We are half an hour into the recording. Let's get to the part of the episode that is the main episode topic. I'm so sorry.
Matt: I thought we had been talking about this.
Lauren: No, we have been. We have been.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: We've just been sprinkling a lot in here. Shout out to anyone that has made it this far.
Matt: Well, let's actually talk about repurposing your book content for social media.
Lauren: That's a great idea.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Okay. In case you've gotten somehow this far and haven't really -
Matt: Nobody has. You - you might as well cut the first 30 minutes.
Lauren: No, it's going to be great. In case you have gotten this far and haven't really wrapped your head around what it is that we're talking about. We're talking about like, specifically using your book content. Stuff you've already outlined, written, things that you might have solicited, like reviews or testimonials, and even things that you had created, like cover art or if you have a book that has like, charts and graphs and infographics and stuff inside of it. All of that can be used as social content in addition to what you've used it for in your book and should be. So I will get into ideas for how you can do that. But I wanted to talk a little bit more first -
Matt: That’d be helpful.
Lauren: About the practice of doing it.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: We talked about it at the beginning of this episode, the idea of like, oh, this is a great way for you to like make it a little easier on yourself during the busy season and also like trying to fight the algorithm wars and figure out how to get engagement from people. But I would also argue that no matter when you're doing it, even if we lived in a world where the algorithm was perfect on every single platform and worked exactly the way we wanted to and we all understood it perfectly. There's other reasons to try repurposing your own content.
This way could be a great way to serve as a lead magnet. I see people all the time sharing content that they don't realize is - there's a Lulu author, a lot of the content that she puts in the planners, she also shares as Instagram graphics.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: And I see them all the time on other like, whether it's on other Instagrams or Stories are being shared, sometimes on Pinterest, sometimes on Reddit like, whatever.
Matt: Well hopefully with credit back to her.
Lauren: All of her graphics have -
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: - her handle on them, which is of course an essential part of this. But that is something that is you know, you never know where the content like this that you share and create is going to wind up.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: If you have this little like bite-sized content that ties back to your book you don't know where it's going to go and it could serve as a lead magnet.
Matt: That's a really good point though. Though let's extract that out for just one second. You never know where it's going to go.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: On the internet.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: So just unpack that for a minute. That's good and bad, right? So it's a double edged sword. It could go viral. It could not in most cases it won't, but you still don't know where it could go. It could go good places, could go bad places. It doesn't matter. So just like Lauren said, if there's any way you can create some sort of a watermark with your social media handle on it or your website address, or even something that's not quite a watermark that's more bold. Like, just make sure that it's there somewhere in that graphic fairly prominent so that if people do try to use that graphic without giving you credit, it's almost impossible because your website address or your social media handle or something like that is there in a way that it can't be removed or -
Lauren: Absolutely.
Matt: - photoshopped or something like that. Because again, you never know where that content's gonna end up, good or bad.
Lauren: Yep. It's also why it's a good idea to commit to your branding, especially when it comes to something like your social media handles and have them be the same across all platform and not something that… we've talked about this in other episodes. You're not creating a profile for your book. You're not creating a new Instagram account for every book that you create.
Matt: Well, you shouldn't be.
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. We would highly advise against you doing that, but this is why, because this kind of stuff. lives forever on the internet. So if you have a post or a graphic or something that goes viral and does really well and kind of exists in the internet forever and ever, you want the handle that is watermarked on it to still lead back to your page no matter when somebody is coming across it.
Matt: I would argue it doesn't live forever on the internet, which again is also potentially a drawback, but I still agree with what you're saying is it could live on forever depending on the channel that you posted on, or you could wake up tomorrow and it's gone forever. One way or the other you need to protect yourself and your brand and you really need to make sure that whenever you're putting content out there, you're doing what's best for you as an author and your brand, and not just one single specific book or…
Unless you only have one book and that's all you're ever going to write. It'd be a little bit odd, but that's okay. Still, it could live on forever or it might not live on forever. Similar to this podcast and the video for this podcast.
Lauren: I really thought I fixed that video problem. It didn't happen in the last episode.
Matt: That's okay, because thankfully you came up with really cool interstitial art.
Lauren: Oh, I do really like the…
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. I'm glad we worked those out on air.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But if anyone listens to the episode where we talked about creating Haunted Mansion-themed interstitial text inserts for the video clips, we did in fact do that.
Matt: And did in fact have to use one on the first episode that had video.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: And in fact, we'll probably have to use one on this episode.
Lauren: Yeah. I actually don't think we've gotten through a single episode that didn't have at least one in them, but we're working on it.
Matt: Well, there you go.
Lauren: Let's see how that goes. Anyway, I can't argue with any of that. So fair enough.
Matt: Love that.
Lauren: I know. I know you do.
Lauren: Other things that can be useful to you or other ways that they can be useful to you to kind of be repurposing your own content, whether it's existing content or your book content. It's a great way for you to test what kind of content you have that generates the most interest and engagement from your followers and maybe even your non followers.
Which can be great if you are information gathering for a potential future book. So if you're looking for what's my next book going to be about, what's my next social media campaign going to be about, what blog am I going to pitch to somebody as a guest blog post or something like that? Knowing what kind of content resonates best with your audience is super helpful in helping you to determine what you want to lean into moving forward.
Matt: Yeah. So, some examples of that could be, you know, extracting a character out of your book and pulling your follower base to see like, hey, would you guys be interested in this particular character getting their own spin-off or… Things like that, I think, are examples of kind of what you're talking about with using the existing content.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: Obviously when creating new content, you should use that follower base as well. So, these are five ideas I have for the cover of my new book. Which one do you like? That's a great way to encourage people's engagement and activity, which will shoot you to the top of that algorithm. But when repurposing existing content, you might be thinking like, hey, I want to do a whole series based on this one character who's not a main character, but I think they have main character potential, or something like that. And so that is a great way to, to solicit feedback and encourage engagement. Which again, the algorithms right now seem to really only care about engagement for the most part. Although again, don't take my word that it could change tomorrow, but.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. Who knows? By the time this episode comes out, we'll have brand new algorithms on all platforms and a new social media channel.
Matt: Everybody that might actually be listening to this just literally like, had a heart attack.
Lauren: Things I don't miss. It's fine.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Last little thing, we kind of already mentioned this, but the idea that this can be great reputation building for you. Whether it's you leaning into your niche and specifically being the voice, being the expert, being the person that people come to recognize as like, oh, I want their take on something.
You know, you never know when your content is going to be top of mind for people and relevant to people that are following you on social media.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But that's kind of the goal, right?
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Is to become the person or the account or the brand that people think of when they're like, hmm, I'm looking for more information about this thing.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Where can I get it from? Who is a trusted source that I can go to get it from?
Matt: Somebody said that conference I was at, I don't know if it was Connor Brown or Jeff Sieh or one of them, but one of them said something and I really loved it. Basically what they said are the riches are in the niches. So niche down as far as you can go to where you add maximum value and that's where you will see maximum engagement and revenue intake. And then if you want to scale up from there, you can.
I love that little saying that the riches are in the niches. And you're right. I mean, if you can be remembered for something very specific or sought out for something very specific and niche, I mean, that's great. Not a lot of people can get down to that level. And then I think that is where you'll start to see a much faster timeline for success than, than just trying to go really broad on something or a topic or…
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. I am really disappointed that that phrase only works if you pronounce niche like that.
Matt: Yeah, but every normal person says niche.
Lauren: No, they don't. No, they don't.
Matt: You're the only weirdo that says niche.
Lauren: I absolutely am not.
Matt: Niche.
Lauren: Oh my God.
Matt: Because you say everything in French, je suis calme.
Lauren: That was, I think that was better than I pronounced it.
Matt: Freaking Ratatouille over here. Sacre bleu.
Lauren: I've never seen Ratatouille
Matt: - Shut. Can you hit the stop button on recording? Please?
Lauren: Only if I can go home and watch Ratatouille.
Matt: How are you - how have you not seen Ratatouille? This is - are we - here we go again. What was the other one you hadn't seen Peter Pan?
Lauren: No, I've seen Peter Pan. Black Cauldron.
Matt: You didn't see Black Cauldron.
Lauren: Yeah. Sorry.
Matt: Stop.
Lauren: I haven't seen a couple -
Matt: Sword in the Stone.
Lauren: Yes. Yes. Don't look at me like that. Okay, but there's two very - never mind. Never mind. We are already so off-topic.
[34:33] - Ways to Use Your Book Content as Social Media Content
Lauren: Let's talk about ways that you can actually use your book content as social media content. Let's talk about actual examples. This is the fun part. It took us 50 minutes to get to the fun part of the episode.
Matt: I don't know if I can get past this. Let's try.
Lauren: All right. What if I promise that I'll watch Ratatouille before the next time I go to Disney?
Matt: You won't.
Lauren: You're right. I won't. It’s okay. Anyway, ideas for using your book content. I kind of split this up into two things because I think there… there is some overlap between nonfiction and fiction authors, but some of these ideas are very specific to nonfiction and some are very specific to fiction.
Matt: Yeah, a lot of that's probably based on their goals too, though, right?
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: So nonfiction authors oftentimes have different primary and secondary goals for their books -
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: - than fiction authors do. Not that one way or the other is wrong or different, necessarily just sometimes based on your goals, how you do some of these things we're gonna talk about will be different and change.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So for nonfiction authors, one of the things that I think you see most often is using the actual content of your book as repostable long form content, but that you kind of break it down into key points and ideas. You know, not a bullet point summary, but that kind of idea where you take a chapter.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Break it down into a bullet point list and then either turn that into one post as a long form post on something like LinkedIn or break that down even further. And say you… break a chapter down into five bullet points and that's five separate posts.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: You're creating content about that, that whatever your specific area of expertise is, you're just kind of giving these bite-sized content pieces or longer form content pieces.
Matt: This is where I do agree with your earlier statement about not just taking a piece of content and blanket posting it across all channels the same. I do think that if you're a nonfiction author and you're utilizing LinkedIn and… and one other social media channel like Instagram or X or something like that, post the long form to LinkedIn. Cause maybe you only post there once a week anyway, so that's okay. And maybe you post on the other channel like Instagram four or five times in a week.
So take that same piece of content, like you said, post the long form on LinkedIn, let that marinate for a week, but then break it up into the five bullet points or smaller posts for a daily on Instagram or X or TikTok or whatever your other social media channel of choice is. Having more than two is probably a little ridiculous, but nonetheless. Here's where I would agree with you where you can take that one piece of content and repurpose it in multiple different ways.
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm also going to take that a step forward and say this is also where you can be transparent about A-B testing that, if you want. You might even be able to do that on the same platform. You might do a long form post on LinkedIn and then also a month later do five shorter posts on LinkedIn using that same content.
Matt: Have you seen Aristocats?
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: You want to just run through a list?
Matt: That's what's going on in my head right now.
Lauren: I know. I can tell.
Matt: I feel like deja vu though. I feel like we've had this conversation before, but -
Lauren: We probably have. It's okay. You keep running through the list in your head and I'll keep going with this episode.
Matt: All right.
Lauren: You can also - kind of a similar idea to that. If you want to do something that you're giving specific advice for actionable steps that your followers or fans or readers of your book can take to help them accomplish a certain goal. You can turn those into social posts. You know, if you're saying something like your book is a guide to growing your small business on social media and you want to do, we're going to do a little mini series of how to grow your Instagram following in ten days and every day you're going to post one step of that and create that social content.
That's almost two weeks worth of social content right there, especially if you're not posting it every single day, spread it out a little bit. And then especially something like that where you're doing it, you know, you're doing part of a series and you say, this is day five of ten, or this is step three of seven, whatever, you're giving people a reason to either come back to your page for future posts or to go click on your page to see the ones that they've missed in the past.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So you're giving people a reason to like, engage with your content and engage with your profile, which is always the goal of any social media content is for them to come learn more about you. In both of these cases I do want to include their reminder that you should have some kind of CTA in there about your book.
Matt: You should.
Lauren: Whether it's - go ahead.
Matt: Yeah, you should have a CTA to buy your book. Of course. That should always be in your bio as well.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: I don't think enough people are as forward about asking for a book sale as they, as they should and could be. I think people sometimes get the ick about selling their own book, which is silly to me. But you should absolutely have a link to buy your book, preferably not on the Zon, that's in your bio and anywhere else for that matter. Which by the way, if you're not using ManyChat right now, you should be using ManyChat, especially on Instagram. You know what that is?
Lauren: I do.
Matt: Cool. More importantly, on any of your social media channels, if you are not frequently, continually, and on a regular basis, asking people to come sign up for your email newsletter, or come to your website and do something along those lines, then you're really missing the boat. So I don't care if you don't even have an email newsletter yet, start one. At least get set up with an ESP, an email provider, and start building that contact base, because the last thing you wanna do is start building a follower base on a social media channel and then lose that, 100% gone.
That is rented land, it's not yours, the content you put there is not yours once you post it, those followers are not yours, but if you can get them to sign up for your newsletter, your email newsletter, or come make a purchase from your site where you're selling direct or some way for you to grab that information from that user, then now that's yours.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: And you can have a conversation or two way communication with them essentially whenever you want, but social media, that's not yours and you've got to get them over to somewhere else. So yes, have a CTA to buy your book, but more importantly, forget all this other crap we're talking about. If you are not getting people from your social channels over to somewhere where you own and are in control of that data, then you need to go back and listen to some of our other episodes and then come back to this one.
Lauren: Yeah, for sure. And that's a really important takeaway too. I think if you're listening to this and you're like Lauren, you're telling us to give the content of our book away for free. I'm not. I'm telling you to trade it for more valuable engagement with fans and followers.
Matt: 100%
Lauren: Or potential fans and followers.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: In the hope that you giving them a couple of tips here will result in them buying your book or will result in them joining your mailing or your newsletter list or whatever action it is that you want them to take. That's the trade here.
Matt: Yeah. That is the goal, you're right.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: So you want either a purchase, an email newsletter signup, both, something else that gets them over onto, again, a platform or a list that you control. That is worth giving away a free book or a chapter or something else because once you now have that information to do with as you see fit, hopefully for the purposes of good, not evil. That's a whole ‘nother ball game.
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. Couple other ideas for nonfiction authors, content creators, content entrepreneurs, whatever you self-identify as. We've talked about both of these already, so I'm gonna just really quickly, pulling kind of motivational, inspiring, funny, insightful, otherwise useful quotes from your content and creating graphics or videos using those little bite-sized pieces of information that have the possibility of being shared by somebody out of context. Things that are still helping to kind of establish you as a voice in this industry, in this area, whatever it is.
Similarly, the charts, graphs, infographics, things from your book, anything that is going to kind of identify you as like, this is somebody who is sharing insightful information about this particular topic.
Matt: So not posting pictures of Moo Deng is…
Lauren: Can I confess something out loud on this podcast that I have not before?
Matt: I'm afraid of what's coming. I'd prefer you not.
Lauren: I don't know where Moo Deng came from. All of a sudden I just opened up -
Matt: Thailand I think.
Lauren: Yeah, but I mean like what - I missed, I missed the phenomenon that made this a big deal.
Matt: Yeah but who cares?
Lauren: And then all of a sudden I just opened my feed one day and I was like, what is this animal all over every single one of my feeds?
Matt: But that's every viral post. Nobody knows where any of them come from. That's the whole point of this episode, really.
Lauren: I guess, yeah. I guess you’re right.
Matt: Virality is not stability. Like, don't chase virality because you don't know how you're going to get it. And if you do happen to get lucky enough to have a viral post, you'll probably never get it again. You'll never know how or why you got it. Moo Deng doesn't know why she's so popular all over the world, and neither does her zookeepers. She is, probably for another couple of days and then it'll be something else. But I mean, that's really the point of this whole episode, right?
Lauren: It really is. And I also love when you give me a sound bite like that.
Matt: The fact that you even -
Lauren: It's just great. Thank you so much for doing my job for me.
Matt: Why would you even waste brain cells trying to figure out how this became a thing?
Lauren: Well, sometimes I'm curious and sometimes there is interesting, especially that's one of the things.
Matt: Just enjoy it and move on.
Lauren: I guess, I don't know.
Matt: I mean.
Lauren: That's one of the things I like about TikTok and Reels, is I like getting to see like, if there's a trending sound that I'm like, okay, like I've seen this enough, like I want to know the like origin of it.
Matt: But do you ever find out the origin or why it became as popular as it became?
Lauren: Sometimes and sometimes it ruins it for me and sometimes it makes it better. And sometimes I discover new media or things to be excited about because of that. Social media is a prison. It's just like existence.
Matt: Just like Moo Deng’s cage.
Lauren: We are all Moo Deng in a cage.
Matt: Well, on that note.
Lauren: All right. One last thing that nonfiction authors can do, and then we'll talk to fiction authors. If anything in your book is some kind of process that you're trying to explain to your readers and it's something that you can do by creating a video with a step by step… Like whether it's a recipe where you're showing them how to make it or like, let me create a video where I'm doing a screen capture and showing you how to create a calendar on Lulu, whatever it is. That's something that if you're talking through it in your book and you have a reason to create video or graphic content that you can post on social media, go for it.
Matt: No notes.
Lauren: You don’t - Wow. First one. Moving on. Fiction authors, I already shared one of my favorite ones, which is sharing content that relates to your characters in some way or another.
Matt: You know what we didn't talk about though for fiction is actually sharing your characters.
Lauren: Oh yeah.
Matt: I've seen other authors doing this. Well, it's not in your outline, so I just want to make sure we talk about this.
Lauren: Wait, what do you mean?
Matt: Like your actual characters as a post.
Lauren: Oh.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Elaborate. You mean like, like saying like meet this -
Matt: Well, I was going there, but -
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So go.
Matt: That's all right. So, yeah, let's say you have a book where there's, I don't know, five characters that are pretty much involved throughout the entire story. That's five posts right there, introduction to characters.
Lauren: Absolutely.
Matt: Whether or not somebody's even read the book, like just introducing a character could potentially draw the attention of somebody who's like, oh, wait a second. Okay, that sounds a little bit interesting, or… The person I'm referring to, I'm terrible at this. I'm old. I can't remember this author's name, but what they did is they, they created these posts that almost look like baseball cards.
So it was just their character and like a picture of their character and artist rendition of it or whatever. And then little stats about that character in their book. And it was a really cool image, like visual, and then the caption was just like, hey, meet so-and-so. This is the secondary, tertiary, main character, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that was - I think this particular person, their book had about seven characters that were pretty much present throughout the entire trilogy that they had written. I think one or two maybe died off towards the end, but anyway, it's really cool way to create extra content.
Lauren: I actually love that idea. And especially if it's something graphically -
Matt: I’m done.
Lauren: - that you can tie in to -
Matt: I'm clocking out.
Lauren: Absolutely not. Something that you can tie into your book. There's some kind of business card graphic, baseball card, whatever, something like that.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: As you were saying that to your point that that's sometimes all you need to entice characters. Literally a text from my best friend last night, quote, the way I could not care less about the plot of a book at this point, just make one of them a little snippy and give the other one the patience of a saint and I'll read it. Like that's -
Matt: That's, that’s a low bar that maybe you shouldn't put your friend on Front Street like that.
Lauren: Well I didn’t.
Matt: That's a really low bar.
Lauren: You know what? I agreed with her a hundred percent.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: So that's what I'm saying, you’ve got -
Matt: To any authors that might be listening, please put effort into the plot, regardless of what.
Lauren: Of course, of course I'm not. But sometimes that's all it takes -
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: - to get somebody interested in your book is to say, like, here's a little character profile and I read it and I go, oh, I know my type.
Matt: That's true.
Lauren: And I know, I know what kind of characters I like to read about. And this sounds like a character that I love. I'm going to go click into this author's profile and see what book this character is from and see if I'm interested - I'm not saying that's going to be the only reason someone's going to pick up your book. But it is a reason for somebody to engage with finding out more about your book.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Right. Same thing with the idea of pulling a really popular quote from your book and putting it on like a nice graphic or a video or something. I know no one here is going to be surprised, including Matt, about this. I have absolutely read books before because of that specifically. Because of seeing like, somebody shared an author's Instagram post that was a quote from their book. And I looked at it and was like, oh, tell me more.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Okay, go ahead. And wound up reading the book because of that specifically. I can think of multiple examples of that happening.
Matt: I've definitely bought a few books - I've yet to read them, but that just speaks to my stupid TBR pile.
Lauren: Oh, same.
Matt: But I've definitely purchased a few books for the same reason, yeah. I haven’t got quite to the point of reading them yet, but yeah. I mean.
Lauren: It’s fine.
Matt: You never know what's going to, to spark somebody's interest -
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: - in your work, so.
Lauren: And you worked really hard on writing those really great one-liners and quotes for whatever reason.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Whatever this scene is, like - share them. Be proud of them.
Matt: I agree. It's hard to be as clever as Lauren and I.
Lauren: That’s so true.
Matt: So if you are, show that off.
Lauren: That's so true
Matt: I just threw up a little bit in my mouth even saying that.
Lauren: I can't believe you said that, you got that far with a straight face.
Matt: All right.
Lauren: We’ve lost it.
Matt: This episode is going to be a little bit longer than normal. So we still got a little ways to go. Let’s -
Lauren: Oh, I was going to end it after this.
Matt: Well.
Lauren: You want to do that last little bit?
Matt: I do think that's probably important.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: To help people get through some of that.
Lauren: All right. Well, shout out to our YouTube audience. Our -
Matt: If they make it this far.
Lauren: Look, our - I think our audio listeners, I think it'll be under an hour, but our YouTube channel, I cannot promise that this is going to be under an hour.
Matt: Audio probably won't be either, but whatever.
Lauren: We'll see.
Matt: Let's go.
Lauren: Okay. Couple more ideas for fiction authors. This is one that I've talked about in the past, actually, I really like the trend that has been going on of authors doing just like, a graphic that's a cover of their book with the most compelling tropes that are included in their book. I know you hate it every time I say the word trope. I know. I’m sorry.
Matt: No, what I hate is that you look for every opportunity to say it.
Lauren: What else should I say? What else would you rather me say?
Matt: How about we just don't talk about tropes as often as -
Lauren: Fine. Fine. Okay. Last idea, if you have a fun reason to create video content about your book, go nuts. Whether that is reading a passage out loud, reading - maybe you have characters that have names that are difficult to pronounce, or there has been some confusion about it, do a character pronunciation video. Maybe your book is, is -
Matt: I like that.
Lauren: Yeah, right? Maybe your book takes place in your hometown, or takes place in somewhere that is like an actual location, and you're able to do a little like, I'm gonna walk the street that has the bar that the characters have this scene at. You can go see this place that's very real. Whatever it is, there are a lot of really fun reason to make videos based on the content within your book.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Even if it's as simple as reading it out loud, acting it out. If you've got friends doing like, a blind reading, maybe they haven't read the book and you'd be like, hey, do this with me and let's see how it goes. Could be fun.
Matt: That’d be fun, yeah.
Lauren: Could be fun. Get creative with it. But use - just use your source material as the inspiration for that rather than you trying to come up with a Reel from scratch.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: All right. Ready to wrap it up? Because I do think you're right that this last section is valuable. So let's get into it and then get out of here.
Matt: Yep.
Lauren: All right.
[51:24] - Batch Creating Your Social Content
Lauren: One last thing that I wanted to talk about for all of this to close it out here is that the thing that makes all of this easy for you, is making it less time consuming for you, is that all of this kind of content lends itself to batch creating and scheduling ahead of time.
Matt: Lends itself well -
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: - to batch creating, yeah.
Lauren: Yes. If you're not already doing that, I would highly encourage you to do that in general. Which is not to say that you should just never be on social media, that once a month you should go batch create content, schedule it for a month, and then check back in a month later. I'm definitely not saying that you should do that.
Matt: But there are lots of ways to, to spend less time on social media.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: And lots of people have written books or content about it, so I would seek some of that out too.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: If you're like us and you don't want to be on their every day posting and you want to really nail down the strategy and tactics that will allow you to batch create and post in a more efficient way, then seek that stuff out. People like Katie Brinkley have written about this stuff, The Social Shift. There's others that their whole thing is teaching people how to actually spend less time on social media, but really, you know, encourage engagement and beat those algorithms.
Lauren: Yeah. And even if it's, if you know what you're looking for is… I want to spend a half an hour every day working on my professional - I know. I want to spend a half an hour every day working on my professional social media pages, and I don't want to spend 25 minutes of that half an hour creating and scheduling or creating and posting content.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So this way, if you, if you are batch creating your content, you set one day aside to create a bunch of content and schedule it to post for a week or a month or whatever it is. And then you're still using that 20 minutes - we'll say, that hurts less than a half hour - of time every day. And you're using that as organic engagement time. You're using that to reply to comments, to share other posts, to engage with followers, to do things that are giving you more of an opportunity to actually, like, be present on social media, and you're not spending that time creating your content and posting it.
Matt: Well, there's also a lot of great tools that'll help you do that, right? So once you have the content, which we just talked about, you already do. There are tools that can help you just batch that content out and schedule it all for being posted on various channels. And you can, for those of you that either haven't yet tried using some AI-assisted tools or are - use those to help you with these types of activities.
You can take whatever a chapter of your book and drop it in your favorite AI tool and say, hey, can you create five social media posts, five different social media posts that are all 200 words or less, that basically give some sort of compelling synopsis of this chapter or my book.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: And then just let AI do the work, and then you can edit it up a little bit so it sounds a little bit more like you and then just drop those into your favorite scheduling tool. The content's already created. You created the content. There's no shame in using AI to help you be more productive at posting that content. This is what AI should be used for.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Productivity hacks and that's it. So start - experiment with some of that stuff. Have some fun with it. Let the tools do most of the work for you.
Lauren: Yes. And then the other thing that you're going to want to use that - if you're using a tool like Canva or something like that, if you're batch creating your content, create templates for this type of content. If you're going to be sharing, if you've pulled ten quotes from your book that you're going to share over the course of the next three months, create the graphics for all ten of those at once. Have them be the same graphic with just different copy plugged in.
Matt: Sure. Yeah.
Lauren: You know, it's going to help you with your brand aesthetic. We've talked about the idea of author branding and having your brand be kind of cohesive on your social media pages. It also is going to create a subconscious recognition in your fans and followers. If I, if I'm doom scrolling and I'm not stopping to read things and I'm instead just kind of like scrolling mindlessly as I'm going and I recognize, oh, that's that graphic that is always that author that I like sharing a quote from -
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: - their current book or their work in progress or one of their other books, that might get me to stop the scroll long enough to actually read and maybe even like and share the post.
Matt: Yep.
Lauren: And that way, look at that, you got ten graphics done in five minutes. All you have to do is create one version of it and then -
Matt: Hell of a lot faster than us creating a podcast.
Lauren: Tell me about it. Actually, I don't know which one I've spent more time on.
Matt: Currently this one.
Lauren: Editing our - Well, editing our podcast episodes versus creating and scheduling Lulu social media content.
Matt: No, I just meant recording time.
Lauren: Oh, yeah. Oh my God, please. I could schedule a whole month - I could create a whole month of social media content in the time that it's taken to record this one episode.
Matt: Yeah, so let's go, we got two points left.
Lauren: All right, what two do we have left?
Matt: What? Are we not looking at the same outline?
Lauren: We've deviated from this outline like an hour ago.
Matt: That's true, I was unsure if you noticed or not. Okay.
Lauren: Look, we're doing our best. Did you have anything that you wanted to add? Was there anything else in here that you wanted to add to this?
Matt: No, other than, again, find yourself some good tools to help with the actual posting and scheduling, you know, any of those productivity-type actions that you don't, you shouldn't be wasting time on. Go find yourself some really good tools to do that with. And if we think about it, we'll post a few in the show notes too.
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Check those out. I'll definitely have some resources in there, tools and some resources that I've created, resources that other people at Lulu have created, social media content creation.
Matt: Perfect.
Lauren: Done. That's it.
Matt: Thanks for sticking it out with us and sloshing through this 75 minutes of social media content.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Torture.
Lauren: Let's see what it winds up being in the end. But right now it is 75 minutes, this episode, so.
Matt: All right.
Lauren: Thanks and sorry, but there is some really good stuff in there. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week for our anniversary episode.
Matt: Yay.