What Should Authors Do to Achieve Social Media Success?
With dedication and planning, authors can grow their social media accounts to be more successful than they imagined
It’s common for authors to feel uneasiness when it comes to growing their social media platforms.
Mainly because this requires:
Planning posts ahead
Researching what topics are working for their target audience
Constant engagement with not only the comments on their posts but commenting on other people’s posts
Consistent posting
Truth be told, managing social media accounts can feel like a second job with the time it requires.
However, as daunting as the tasks are to achieve social media success, they are well worth the payoff.
A little background on why I am explaining this.
Ten years ago, I published my first book and quickly discovered that only telling my friends and family about it was not going to gain me the sales I hoped for.
So, I created an author’s Facebook page. Admittedly, I had no idea what I was doing. I also had no idea what I needed to be posting about.
I waited for a bit to see what would happen, but my account went stagnant without me posting much new content.
Then, I decided I needed to see what other people were doing.
Here is what I found out:
On Facebook
Authors posted live videos about their process, characters, tidbits about their lives, and more.
In addition to this, they were:
Collaborating with other authors
Sharing sneak peeks of their work
Reveals
Shoutouts to readers/followers
Giveaways
Updates and news events
Seeing all of this, I planned out some content and scheduled some content ahead using the scheduler.
My increase has been very slow, but I grew from 25 followers to 303.
On Twitter
When I first began posting on Twitter, I felt as if I was shouting into the void.
My posts weren’t getting any engagement. I wasn’t really getting anywhere follower-wise. And it was honestly disheartening.
Paying attention to what was happening with other authors taught me:
Commenting on other people’s posts was crucial
Sharing other’s posts was also important
Posting informational threads was a great way to share your own knowledge and value
Using hashtags was a great way to help your content get seen
Posting questions I had about writing and publishing turned out to be a great way to start conversations
Once I began focusing my efforts on this, I grew my following to 27k followers.
On Instagram
Knowing what photos are going to garner your follower’s engagement is a must.
And in the beginning, this was something I had no idea about. But, furthermore, it’s something that I’m still learning.
From what I’ve gathered, other authors are:
Engaging with other users’ posts
Sharing quotes from their books with an eye-catching image
Creating creative reels that catch people’s attention
Collaborations with other authors
Participating in follow-trains
It could be done, but conducting some market research and thinking outside the box were the key to success.
I’ve managed to grow my follower count to 535 followers.
On TikTok
This is an area in which many people are uncomfortable, mainly because putting yourself in front of a camera is never easy.
However, these are things that are working for authors:
Humorous videos about what happens when they are writing (arguments with characters, overediting, starting another book before finishing another)
Recreating TikTok trends
Tips and tricks of writing, marketing, and publishing
Book trailers
And after trying some of these, I did manage to raise my follower count to 167.
If being an author for ten years has taught me anything, it’s that patience is key.
Consistency
If you work to post content consistently on all social media platforms, you increase your chances of being seen.
My general rule of thumb is to post on each social media platform four times a day. And that if you can cross-post content to different platforms, it will cut down the time you spend creating content.
Engagement
As much as we want others to comment and share our posts, it is equally important to return the favor.
Along the way, you would be surprised to find the relationships you will form from commenting and sharing other people’s content. As well as what you can learn from other people.
Patience
Growing a following on social media doesn’t happen overnight.
In order to reach my large following on Twitter, it took me five years. Even then, it caused me to invest in a scheduling application called Hypefury so that I could plan my posts ahead and spend most of my time responding to comments and others on social media.
If you want people to follow you, knowing what to expect from you is key.
The people who follow you care about what you have to say, which means showing you care about them and giving them what they expected upon following you.
As an author, if you want to grow your following, take the time to do the research and plan out your content.
In doing so, you can deliver content people are looking for and connect with them.