SUBTITLE: There are three pieces of digital real estate you need to own for author success
BODY: Talking about writing and related matters can be daunting as there are diverse points of view. What works for one person may only work for one person. The best way to promote your author brand online is one example.
Because of the low barrier to entry, relative simplicity, and the ubiquitousness of social media, most writers on a tight budget use it to promote their books while building up and engaging with their readers. The downside to social platforms is they’re akin to renting real estate, where the landowner changes the rental agreement unilaterally with little to no notice, and it’s always in their favor. If you write spicy romance, they can censor or outright ban you for your content on a whim, often with little to no way to challenge it. Dispensing with social media and using resources you can own instead provides a better foundation for author brand building and readership stability.
Some may push back over the idea that using social media is a poor choice for authors. Their view is it works well for them, so it will work well for anyone if you use the right platform, the right technique, the right content, and so forth. The gist is you can succeed with social media if you do all the right things, though the definition of right things varies from author to author.
Some writers may succeed on many social platforms, but most don’t. The next best option for authors is to ditch social media and instead put words on the page for their writing projects.
Social media is a time suck no matter how well you manage it. Finding the perfect phrasing, title, photo, and so on eats into your precious writing time. If you believe you must have social media for your author engagement and marketing efforts, pick one or two platforms where you sparingly create posts. Make sure they’re ones that best fit your abilities and skill sets, such as YouTube if you’re good at scripting and recording videos. Or perhaps you have the skills to record podcasts, craft tweets, or take spectacular photos—all are useful for one or more social platforms.
Even with the right skills and platform match, please limit yourself to one post a day at most; once a week is better, and keep it focused on your writing as much as possible.
If you must engage with your followers more personally, remember the same sparse posting habit and don’t think you have to engage with every person who posts a response. You have no obligation to do that. Beyond mindful time management, it’s a matter of your mental health and self-esteem. Your writing is more important than commenting on someone’s response to your tweet.
Social media platforms addict users with a dopamine feedback loop. The site’s content is the stimulus for distraction and releases dopamine, providing pleasure. The process leads to a desire for more and reinforces the behaviors to get it. With sufficient use of social media, it becomes habit forming to engage on the site and leads to addiction because the user keeps seeking the stimulus for their pleasure reward. The behavior-reward loop is great for the platform but not for you as an author or your followers.
The algorithms designed for social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok bury posts containing links to external sites deep down in your followers’ feeds, such as your Amazon preorder page or a link to your ARC launch site. Even if you spend on ads to compensate for this, it’s still a losing proposition.
Even if you use internal links, sites such as Facebook drain your wallet by making you pay and pay some more to reach your followers. A little over a decade ago, it used to be easy, organic, accessible, and possibly viral.
If you link outside the platform, your posts get buried; even if you don’t, you must spend money to reach those who already follow you and like your posts. What exactly are you supposed to do? Either way, the platforms sink your engagement from the start and work to turn everyone on the platform into digital addicts.
Another point to consider is the matter of social media sites keeping your follower data locked in. You can’t take it with you when you want to leave. Suppose you must abandon a site because of an arbitrary sanction for an alleged violation of some ambiguous section of the platform’s ever-changing terms of service. In that case, you can’t export your follower data to set up on another platform. Instead, you must start over. All your hard-won fans are gone or may not follow you to a site they don’t use. Social media sinks your dreams again.
If using email to engage your followers seems like an antiquated notion now, just like handwriting letters did when email became mainstream, virtually everyone has at least one email account. That’s a conduit that takes effort to gain access to and win the account holder’s trust, but has a more solid and dependable aspect than social media.
This situation highlights the difference between social platforms and mailing lists. You can’t take your social media follower lists with you. Still, you can quickly switch from one mailing list/newsletter service to another by exporting your client data from the previous one and importing it into the new one.
Another issue is that while you may have a considerable number of followers, they may not be the kind who will buy your book. Those who let you into their email inbox are usually more genuine fans who are not only interested in what you have to say and sell, but also invite you into their private domain.
A blog works better than social media for sharing your thoughts and promoting your books as you control the platform and content without self-interested gatekeepers. Except for violating the applicable laws for your jurisdiction, no one will censor your content or delete your account.
You can promote yourself with ad services, working with expert BookTokers, BookTubers, Bookstagrammers, book fairs, writer conferences, and more, all you like, and your readers can follow your blog through email updates. This piece of digital real estate is another opportunity to build your reader base, and it is one where the subscriber allows you to enter their inner sanctum.
Owning a mailing list collects your fans to send newsletters and product promos to, and owning a blog allows you to post your thoughts and author-related content. A website will enable you to own your real estate online in another way. You can base your book promotion pages on a website, provide author bio information, offer direct sales of your work to diversify your sales channels versus depending solely on Amazon and other online book retailers, and as a bonus, you can sell fan merchandise.
The switch isn’t necessarily an easy one. If you’re willing to allocate at least two hours to create your website for every three you spend writing, you’ll be much closer to owning something to promote and sell your books. Combine that with your mailing list and blog, and you’ll have three pieces of digital real estate you own rather than rent.
Comments