In today’s article, we are imparting our knowledge on how to promote a book on social media. Your job isn’t finished once you complete your manuscript as a writer. Not at all! Whether you are publishing your book in the traditional way or the indie way, you have to promote your book.
To let your readers anticipate the launch of your book, you need to raise your social game. Book promotion is an essential part of self-publishing. Activities such as creating content, forming social media accounts and inviting readers will only generate good results in promotion of your book. We’ll walk you through it if you don’t know where to start. We have enumerated nine strategies to help you start your social media promotion journey.
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Contents
How To Promote A Book On Social Media
Promotional Content Creation
Create a blog page or your website where you can interact with the readers or potential readers because this will increase traffic and anticipation among your readers but even this won’t be enough. You need to churn out catchy and impressive content regularly.
Kristen Ashley, a romance book bestseller, regularly updates her blog by giving out quirky recipes for baked goods mentioned in her books, fashion tips her heroines sport, and sometimes additional short chapters on the side characters in her books.
Being Social
Do you have an account on Instagram and do you use it for the promotion of your book too? Are your followers not increasing and do you only get a few likes per post? It may be because you only post mundane stuff about your life, like visiting a restaurant and enjoying a smoothie.
Readers are always hungry for more book-related content. You can start a recommended content strategy, but never recommend a book from your own genre. Try supporting other authors from other genres. This will drive new authors and readers to flock to your posts. This is one of the best ways on how to promote a book on social media.
Instagram Giveaways
Appreciate your Instagram followers when you hit milestones like 1000, 2000, etc. You can start a giveaway campaign, another good strategy on how to promote a book on social media.
You can invite readers to like and share the post and tag a friend or two in the comments to whom they would recommend the book. This will increase your followers. Readers will be attracted by the giveaway and enter the contest.
This is another good strategy for how to promote a book on social media and you can ask your readers or family members to help. Ask them to post a picture of them reading the book or anything related.
Use unique hashtags to generate more buzz and a trend around it. Many indie readers re-share memes about their books or create them to be shared by other readers. Feature all these stories and posts on your book’s promotional page.
Make Your Presence On Several Social Media Platforms
The drawback of only maintaining an Instagram page is that it is highly visual. The demand for aesthetics is also a restraint on an author trying to promote his book. More than content, the Instagram community focuses on images and graphics.
Social media not only consist of websites like Instagram and Facebook, but many more. For books, there are several suitable social media platforms. Like Tumblr, BookBub, and Twitter. You can also set up a Pinterest page dedicated to your characters and add photos taken from the internet to show your character’s appearance in real life.
Use BookSirens
BookSirens is a great website for Indie authors. This website is a bridge between a new author and a potential reader. BookSirens is a platform where you can upload an e-pub file of your book two or three months before its launch.
This site has readers who can surf through multiple genres and, if interested, will demand a book for an ARC, which is an Advanced Reader Copy. In exchange for this advanced copy, an author can ask the reader to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Or post about it on their Instagram page.
Creating A Facebook Group
You can start a Facebook group as soon as you start writing because Facebook is one of the most popular for being a content marketing platform. It has effective social reach and utility. Authors interact with their readers by asking them questions about what kinds of characters they want. Even letting them help with small plotlines will draw readers into your book.
Facebook Analytics is a helpful tool to help you know your readers. It gives you an insight into your reach, views, and likes for each and every post. It is helpful because the better you know your readers and followers, the better you can generate content according to their demographics.
Offering A Peek
Sharing a freebie introductory chapter with readers is one of the best ways on how to promote a book on social media. It can be easily done by asking your readers to become subscribers to your email list, which will let them take a peek at what you are writing.
You can share a prologue or character list with the readers. Keep them in the loop and raise their excitement. So, share these details on your social media account when you are deciding to give away a free chapter.
Using relevant hashtags will increase the engagement of your posts and content. For extra effect, make your own hashtag after the name of your new book and ask your readers to use this hashtag too so that any future reader can then explore your book’s post under this hashtag and may get interested in it.
It is like building a whole community of readers. Every post related to the book will keep on adding to the previous posts and inviting new readers in.
FAQs
Do Amazon Reviews influence book sales?
Yes. The more detailed Amazon Reviews you'll have, the more readers will be interested in your book.
Do I need to promote the book if it is traditionally published?
Yes. As the publisher, they will do some marketing for your book but only in the beginning. It's better to create your own relationship with readers so that the next book you write will already have potential readers.
Do I have to post regularly?
It's better that you set up a specific time to upload a post so that your readers will know when you are active.
Conclusion
A writer’s active social media presence is important for promoting his book. It is a great way to get new people to read your upcoming book, making it more popular and selling more copies.
With the help of technology, you can use multiple social media platforms for marketing your books and doing it well. You can also get some help from professional graphic designers and they will draw and style your content in a reader-friendly way.
See Also: How To Start A Bookstagram | Guide For Beginners
YouTuber. Bookworm. Wanderlust. Mother to Ahaana, Argo and Haachi.