Social media is an incredible tool… but only when you use it properly.  Too often we get sucked into the never-ending pit of despair that spins us downward on a spiral of doom-scrolling.  We think, “I have a few minutes, I’ll check out the latest.”  Only to realize you’ve stared at your phone for the last two hours and just feel miserable about your life choices.  I know, I speak from experience.

It might not all be doom and/or gloom though.  You can use that social media to your advantage (and to help you sell books or promote your blog).  It takes a little bit of creativity and some tweaking to ensure the right hits are hitting.

Using Social Media to Promote Your Book

Authors use social media to promote their books all the time.  The larger your following, the easier it is.  Once you’re an established author, and people follow you simply because you have written something they really like, it gets much easier.  That doesn’t help the rest of us – those who don’t have that NYT best seller under our belts and just a couple thousand followers (if we’re lucky).

Fortunately, we can grow that following.  A few quick tips:

Comment – Find people who are talking about what you wrote about in your book.  Comment on their posts and say something like, “Hey, I wrote about this in my book How to be Awesome, I suggest people do XYZ.”  Quick, easy, promoting self by adding value.

Post – Post pictures and videos with text (links end up being garbage and lower your reach so much they are terrible anymore).  Pictures of yourself, videos of you doing something and offering advice, and more.  People want to see you – not just promos for your book.

Offer Value – “Buy from me!” offers no value.  “Check out my book!” offers no value.  “Look at what I did!” offers no value.  Use concepts from your book to tease in the audience so they want to learn more.  Then they have to buy your book and learn the juicy details.

Using Social Media to Promote Your Blog

Similar to your book, social media is a great place to showcase your work.  It’s a bit different, though, because of the fact that even putting links in the comment box reduces your reach by 75% (based on my experience and the numbers I see on my own promos).

There are, however, ways to get around this.  It takes a bit more creativity.

Post – Activity drives activity.  When you post often, you tend to get more traction with subsequent posts.  Tag people (especially those who have connections with whom you’d like to connect), and offer value (value can be a little bit of humor).  Follow up with DM’s that have the link to the rest of the story.

Snippets – Pull sections from your blogs, and turn them into social media content.  Unsure how to do this?  Well do I have an offer for you!  Read all about how to repurpose blog content into social media posts.

Questions – Ask questions in your posts.  This helps drive engagement, and once you get a couple dozen answers, then you can start following up with links to the answer to all their questions (if applicable) in your blog post.

Combining the Two for a Double Whammy

Here’s the fun part, when you can spin both pieces of content and writing for one ultimate purpose.  A brief way to set this thing up.

Write New Posts – Create your new blog posts around content you talk about in your book.  Every chapter has at least a handful of amazing concepts.  Create a blog post about them, and spin them in a way that you don’t give away all the information, but add some good value.

Repurpose for Social – Now you have those posts that can be used for social media content.  Using the concepts up above, you spin those posts (or pieces of those posts) into their own little bits of social media.  The goal is to ultimately get people back to your website… for now.

CTA – Once you’ve lured them back to your lair website, you hit them with your real call-to-action.  You offer such amazing value on social, then even more amazing value on your blog, that when they get to the end they’re fascinated.  They can’t help but to buy your book to get all the details.

What Doesn’t Work Well When Promoting

Okay, so we’ve touched on what you should do.  How about the things you should not?  This is where people royally mess up.

All Promo – Your social media can’t just be a big fat promo for your work.  Mix in the value-added stuff while you promote.  It’s a fine line, but your engagement will give you the feedback you need.

Irrelevant Content – If your book is about commercial real estate, but you’re posting about gardening, then you’re gonna have a bad time.  Keep it relevant, or at least be able to tie the two together.

Too Much Tease – You have to deliver some value.  If you tease too much, people get quite annoyed. As Thomas Ligor of New York suggests, good marketing should always impart substance so a viewer feels richer for listening, while also feeling enticed.

Bad Audience – Maybe your social media connections aren’t the right audience.  It’s time to start adding people who are the right audience.

Struggling to Write Your Book?

All this to say, if you haven’t finished your book yet, why not?

Not enough time?  Then you need a ghostwriter.

No idea of what to do?  You might need an author coach (I hate the word coach, more of an educator here).

Either way, book some time and let’s see how we can get your book from an idea in your head, to a book in your hand.