5 Tips On Social Media For Today’s Author—Guest Blog by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Please welcome Bryan Thomas Schmidt as a guest today. Bryan is a writer, a musician, and a professional at social media, so he's going to give us  some valuable information on how to handle social media and book promotion while still writing our books.

Bryan Thomas Schmidt

If you’re an author today, chances are, social media has become a big part of the way you communicate with people. Modern authors often use it for communicating not just with fans but fellow authors, their editors, publishers and other professional contacts as well as family. In fact, many publishers and agents expect a commitment to social media from authors before they’ll offer a contract or as part of one. With the publishing industry in flux due to ebooks, downsizing of bookstores, the explosion of online sales, etc., more and more the marketing of books has come to fall upon the shoulders of the author.

For many, this can be very daunting. Artists by nature are often introverts. Authors, in particular, spend lots of time alone in a room with their computer, working. Social interaction is a distraction and drain they don’t seek. And certainly to do social media well, you have to learn how to come out of that shell. I’ve been building my online platform since 2009 and grown my author blog from 30 hits a month to over 3000 in that time. I’ve had success nationally marketing my novels and work through social media, and it has opened doors I never imagined. So Linda graciously asked me to share some tips with you.

First, social media is social. It’s not about you, it’s about the community. If you’re going to get involved, you must remember that above all else. The surest way to ruin your efforts is to be all about yourself. If your tweet stream is nothing but ads and links to your work, then you are going to chase people away. Your goal should be to build relationships, first, buyers second. People who like you and enjoy your conversations will, eventually, become interested in your work. That will lead to sales. While in the past, readers found a book, liked it, and then started contacting the author to get to know them, this is not how social media works. So you must approach it that way from the start or you’re very likely to fail before you begin.

Second, go with what’s comfortable. There are so many options it can be daunting. Experiment and find the ones you can get into and stick with those. You don’t have to be everywhere. It’d be impossible to keep up. For me, outside of my blog, I use Facebook and Twitter primarily. Google+ is there for me to distribute links from my Twitter and blog and that’s about it. With Twitter and Facebook, I get into comments and discussions a lot. I promote other people’s stuff as much as my own. I started a Twitter chat, in fact, called Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chat (hashtag #sffwrtcht) to promote others and regularly interview authors, editors and others live on Twitter, every Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET. This has opened up a huge name recognition and network of relationships which have definitely helped my career. Many people in the business know my name now who otherwise never would have, including some legendary authors I’ve admired for years.

Yes, it’s hard to talk about yourself for most of us, despite our egos. I get that. But once you get into the flow of a conversation, you can get over that. For example, there are ways to support each other without saying much.

RT @rodriguez_linda: #FF these tweeps! @beatsbooknook @laurabenedict @lilithsaintcrow @richyanez @BryanThomasS @thebookmaven @BenoitLelievre @thrillerchick

This is Linda’s Follow Friday (#FF) recommendations. When I RT (ReTweet) them to my followers, I help her and I don’t have to add a thing. Of course, I’m mentioned which is rather kind of her. But you get the idea.

Someone may post blog links, book links, or links to interesting other posts from blogs, news, etc. Perhaps it’s something you have thoughts on which you’d want to discuss. Pretty much anything is fair game but I’ll make two warnings: politics, religion and language are dangerous. Social Media is not private, no matter how low your follower count or what your security settings say. Twitter and Facebook both save copies of everything posted and reserve the right to post it how they wish. Past Twitter conversations can be found via Google Search, for example, so you never know who’s going to see it. I’d say avoid foul language to keep from alienating potential readers. Avoid religion and politics for the same. This is hard. We are passionate artistic people. We have strong opinions. We have strong emotions. But stories are legendary about people who have lost publishing contracts, sales, relationships, etc. over this stuff. Yes, freedom of speech is a constitutional right. But discretion and common sense are personal virtues, so use them.

Third, use variety. I post about my novels, short stories, etc. The kinds of things I tweet are: daily writing goals and what I accomplish, upcoming events, key news, links to blog entries, reviews and books, humor, general thoughts about various things. Blog and buy links are limited to one or two a day. I post at 8-9 a.m. and 5-6 p.m. Those are the busiest times. That way I hit the night crowd. I try and let other people speak for my book rather than myself. For example:

@BryanThomasS: Hours left to win a signed ARC of my 2nd novel. @Paulskemp: "A page-turning story that takes off like a rocket" http://t.co/p2DiQd56 #scifi

Paul Kemp is a bestselling author. People know him. His recommendation goes a lot further than me saying something like this:

@BryanThomasS: Hey, my awesome new novel, THE RETURNING’s out for preorder, so you should buy a copy now here http://t.co/p2DiQd56

Of course I think my novel’s great. But I’m not exactly unbiased. Let others recommend it for you. Write a tweet that’s good enough, and people will retweet it to spread the word:

RT @talekyn: RT @BryanThomasS: Hours left to win a signed ARC of my 2nd novel. @Paulskemp: "A page-turning story that takes off like a rocket" http://t.co/p2DiQd56 #scifi

Hearing it from other Tweeps (Twitter users) is much more influential than from you, at least until you’re a big name. So that’s why relationships and networking are so important.

For blog entries, interviews, and book links, my rule is twice a day. Other stuff can vary. I also try not to send more than three of these at a time so as not to drown people who follow.

Fourth, use hashtags. Hashtags are important. People follow @myname, yes, but they also follow hashtags. #scifi #fantasy #mystery #writing #mywana #amwriting #science #publishing #marketing are just a few. You can click any hashtag in a tweet and pull up a list of all tweets with that hashtag to follow along. It’s incredibly helpful. #sffwrtcht (my chat) wouldn’t work without it. By selecting appropriate hashtags, you are reaching out to interest groups which hopefully represent your audience of potential readers. So take the time to learn hashtags and use them.

Fifth, use shrinkers. Shrinkers are helpful because tweets have a 140 character limit. Shrinkers will take a tweet that’s too long, especially hyperlinks to websites, and shorten them so they’ll fit with everything you’re trying to say. I know it’s not proper grammar. Get over it. The fact that younger text-addicted generations haven’t learned that they have to talk differently in correspondence than texting doesn’t mean you’ll be the same. There are common shortcuts people use and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s about conciseness as well as clarity. Syntax and etiquette for Twitter are a bit different than other mediums.

For example, say I want to tweet this:

@BryanThomasS: My schedule for @conquestkc is going to be much fun. Check out the panels and other stuff http://bryanthomasschmidt.net/2012/05/17/my-schedule-for-conquest-43-may-25-27-2012-kansas-city-hilton/ and join us if you can. #scifi #fantasy #mywana

It’s too long by 78 characters. But with a tweet shrinker, it might work like this:

@BryanThomasS: My schdl 4 @conquestkc is gng 2 B mch fun. Chck out the panels & other stuff http://bit.ly/JlYhcN & jn us if U cn. #scifi #fantasy #mywana

Looks like nonsense? Not really, because as with copyedits and typos, your brain will fill in the gaps with the most logical missing letters to make sense of it. Once you’re used to it, it’s automatic and you can fit a lot more into 140 characters.

Well, this post is getting lengthy, and, as Linda will tell you, this is a subject about which I can go on and on. Perhaps she’ll have me on later for a discussion. I do post Write Tips every Monday, a popular series which you can find on my blog here: http://bryanthomasschmidt.net/category/write-tips-2/ And I’d love to respond to comments and continue the discussion. I hope these tips are helpful. I’ll end with a brief bit about my latest novel and myself.

In Bryan’s second novel, The Returning, new challenges arise as Davi Rhii’s rival Bordox and his uncle, Xalivar, seek revenge for his actions in The Worker Prince, putting his life and those of his friends and family in constant danger. Meanwhile, politics as usual has the Borali Alliance split apart over questions of citizenship and freedom for the former slaves. Someone’s even killing them off. Davi’s involvement in the investigation turns his life upside down, including his relationship with his fiancée, Tela. The answers are not easy with his whole world at stake.

Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the author of the space opera novels The Worker Prince, a Barnes & Noble Book Clubs Year’s Best SF Releases of 2011 Honorable Mention, and The Returning, the collection The North Star Serial, Part 1, and has several short stories featured  in anthologies and magazines.  He edited the new anthology Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 for Flying Pen Press, headlined by Mike Resnick. His children’s book 102 More Hilarious Dinosaur Jokes For Kids from Delabarre Publishing. As a freelance editor, he’s edited a novels and nonfiction.  He’s also the host of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chat every Wednesday at 9 pm EST on Twitter, where he interviews people like Mike Resnick, AC Crispin, Kevin J. Anderson and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. A frequent contributor to Adventures In SF Publishing, Grasping For The Wind and SFSignal, he can be found online as @BryanThomasS on Twitter or via his website. Bryan is an affiliate member of the SFWA.

Juggling Novel-Writing and Book Promotion—Part 2 Next Steps

In my last post on this topic, http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com/2012/02/juggling-novel-writing-and-book.html, I gave you some awesome resources I’ve run across in my own search to learn how to handle this new dual job of writing books and promoting them at the same time. Most of those were resources for the social media/promotion half of the equation. I suggested you look at Twitter, Facebook, and the world of free blogs and add one only to whatever you already have. The other piece of that half of the equation is to build up your presence on whatever social media you are already using.

If you’re already connecting with friends, family, and old school chums on Facebook, you know the basics there, so make a little plan of what you could do on Facebook to build your professional presence there. I know there are people who say we should all get Author Pages on Facebook, but I’ve chosen not to go that way. As writers, a lot of our promotion, of necessity, is just giving our readers and potential readers the opportunity to get to know us and the tone of our voices. An Author Page is more formal and doesn’t allow our regular posts to show up in others’ timelines. So they have to seek us out always. A regular Friend Page lets our posts show in our friends’ and readers’ timelines. NOTE: This does not mean posting five status updates in one morning that all say, “Buy my book!”

Twitter is a very different kind of interface. Tweets are so short and so quickly replaced by others’ tweets that you can tweet several widely-spaced times in a day with a link to a blog or review or announcement that your book is out, is free, won an award, whatever. Again, however, if you send dozens of “Buy my book!” tweets, people will either block you, unfollow you, or place you on a list they don’t have to be bothered with (essentially making you invisible to them).

The key word in social media is social. It’s not cold-calling in sales. You wouldn’t go up to everyone at a party, saying “Buy my book!” Neither should you online. It’s called courtesy and basic etiquette.

If your choice from the last post was to begin a blog, I suggest you sit down and spend half an hour brainstorming topics for your blog, making a long list. You’ll be glad of this when your brain goes blank as you open the New Post window, and it will come in very handy later when we move into writing multiple posts ahead of time and scheduling them to publish at later dates.

I know. I know. I haven’t touched yet on GoodReads or LibraryThing. Haven’t even looked toward Google+ or LinkedIn or any of the other social networks out there. But we’re starting with basics here. We’ll look at those later as we start branching out.

 

The other half of the writing/promoting equation for next steps is answering the question, How do I find time to do all of this and write my books, as well? And the beginning to the answer to that is to restrict promotion to one or a very few types of social media at first, and only as we learn how to use them and combine them to make them more efficient and effective expand. If you throw yourself into every kind of social media at once, you will burn out without ever learning enough about any of them to make your efforts bear any real fruit.

As part of that beginning of balance, we need to keep reminding ourselves that promotion activities may be important, but they’re not vital, not the way writing the next book is vital. Writing has to come first in our lives if we’re writers.

One of the major problems I’ve encountered, as have many other writers I know, is how to keep the promotion/social media stuff from overflowing into writing time. This is something it will do easily. So next week, we’ll look at ways to be actively involved with promotional and social media activities without sacrificing writing time.

Friday, I’ll have a special Writers of Color post on here about the writers of the books banned in Tucson, including my most-published poem, “Spell for Banning a Book,” and Saturday, I’ll be talking on the Writers Who Kill blog about the necessity to a writer of an efficient postal service and what’s going on with our once-envied U.S. postal system.