Is paying for 'social media' marketing worth it?

Thanks for the feedback - that's really useful.
Any specifics would be REALLY useful (as you can probably tell - I'm new at this!) like what sort o thing I should include. Do you mean I should include an overview of the entire book? I did think about this but ti seemed like a real shame to give away the end or 'conclusion' - it felt like spoiling it somehow?

I really do appreciate the feedback - I suppose it's easier from a stranger (many friends etc seem like they don't want to criticize things and so aren't being terribly helpful)!

 

That's a brilliant idea but I'm still at the stage where I'm trying to set things up and get any type of following at all - so I don't know how many people would log on at such a time in order to ask questions or debate things etc. Maybe an idea for further sown the line?

 

for the website have the synopsis or description of your book on the site, have the first chapter and a sample chapter , even have characters pages ,
talk about why you wrote the book, any topics or research , any books or authors who influenced your writing.

 

Hey, have at it. You can't steal a gift.

 

No offense, but who are you thinking is going to watch this video? Only 2% of videos on YouTube get more than 1000 views in their lifetime, and the majority of those are being published on establish channels. For comparison, 3% of YouTube videos get 0 views and 65% get less than 100 views.

I don't mean to come across as trashing your concept, but I have been building my YouTube community since 2010 (I'm a comedian, and do comedy writing on various sites) and only now am I able to regularly clock in around 200k-300,000 per video. For the first couple years I was lucky to crack 1000 and we were putting out super high quality work since my friend directs tv commercials for a living.

@the OP

If you want to do social media promotion and have it be successful then you need to start building a community today. Build out your twitter or your Instagram and focus on content that makes sense for your potential audience. I would go with pictures on Instagram that look like they are from a dream world and tweets about what you are reading. Also, beyond that start submitting short articles or blogs to other sites and make sure that they include your social media pages if they publish. This will help you build your following off of an established subscriber base, and sites are always in need of content.

If you want to be successful in the social space, then you need to start putting the work in long before you need it for promotion. That said, having a great social media presence is THE best way to get a huge book advance. A publisher is going to be excited to promote a book for an author with 20,000 twitter followers.

 

OP, I'm not sure how to say this without sounding rude, but: If you have any money to spend, I would recommend spending it on someone to improve your website. I'm not saying that it's embarrassingly bad or anything--if it were purely a hobby site, it would be just fine. But it definitely feels like a hobby site.

As one specific comment, it appears that all of your text is in boldface--or perhaps you're using a really thick, muddy font. That makes the text samples painful to read. And there are some other formatting issues--sometimes you have a blank line between paragraphs, sometimes you don't, when you don't, you don't have indented paragraphs, so it's hard to identify the paragraphs...and so on.

Also also, you aren't allowing comments, and you SAY that you don't allow comments. ("Sorry, comments are closed.") If you don't want comments, it's best to remove that statement; as it is, it reads a little bit like, "I want your time, but I don't value you enough to spend my time reading your comments." Without the "comments are closed" message, readers are unlikely to get that message, because it simply won't occur to them that comments are an option.

But you might want to consider allowing comments. Folks who have made a serious effort at having a successful blog--and have succeeded --are a better authority for this than me. My impression is that comments are a useful tool for engaging and attracting readers, as long as you're prepared to deal with them--respond promptly, delete spam comments, and so on. But my blog is an itty bitty hobby blog (judging from my stats, about 100 readers) and I've never made a real attempt to make it bigger, so I'm not a great authority there.

 

I use email to deliver marketing messages. I think one of the best marketing campaigns you can do is to use email. Always try to collect the email addresses from your audience. Are you making it easy for followers to give their email address to you?

I've been collecting addresses for a few years now. I send emails with offers, or links to youtube, etc. The video, once put on youtube, can also be shown on a website. The point isn't to simply place the video on youtube and have it sit there waiting to be seen. You use it to show people.

 

Book trailers are becoming more popular. You put the trailer on your book or author's web page.

 

I'm not having any issue since I spent the time to build the following. My videos get hundreds of thousands of engagements and my articles get millions of hits.

Your follow up post is much more helpful to the OP than your original post, since you went on and explained the effort that you took to collect emails and build a mailing list. That's the helpful information that would have been valuable to the OP. The idea of making a YouTube video without having collected a massive distribution list is not going to sell any extra books. The OP needs to be working right now to build a following prior to the release of the book, not after.

After reading your post it is clear that you understand this, but you didn't initially relay this to the OP.

 

Just browsing over at GoodReads looking for something else and I came upon a discussion of paying for reviews. Goodness, it sounded like $500 (give or take $50) was the going rate.

 

Yes, and if you don't have a pre built fan base of followers, then who is going to see it? Your friends and family?

There is a reason why john green is one of the most influential writers in the world right now...and it would have happened irregardless of the books. The reason that he is big is an army of 1 million nerd fighters that sold out over 100,000 copies of "a fault in our stars" before anyone had even read a page. That is 100% because he and his brother are YouTube royalty.

 

Goodness, such a party pooper.

You don't start out with 100,000 followers. You build a following up from scratch. I already have a domain name for my close but not yet finished book. At some point once it is published, people will see the book on Amazon or wherever and the listing will connect to the book's webpage whereupon there will eventually be a very professionally produced book trailer. That's the plan anyway.

 

Couldn't agree more...which is why you need to start building a following long before you are publishing.

 

In an ideal world.

But in the real world I live in, alas, time does not allow.

 

I'm glad you approve of my second post. Maybe you could add more value to the topic of building an email list. Are you trying to collect email info from your youtube viewers and from those who read your articles? If so, how? If not, why not?

 

I don't mean to drag this thread too far off topic. It started with social media marketing, then I went youtube, then email, and you are going domain name. I love all these topics and they do all pertain to marketing.

I'm wondering, is your domain name the name of your book? Or your name? Personally, I think it a good idea to have a domain name for the author, and the book. Opinions vary.

 

You sound like the expert (!) who is always the best person to go to for help!!
So how do I build this community? I already have a web page, a FB page and a twitter account designated to the book (or the world in which it's set) but it doesn't seem to be 'taking off' yet. So what's the secret?

 

Well the book itself is called 'The Seraphs', so the web page is www.theseraphs.com and I have included information about the characters and the topic of the book on there. I've also included several 'teasers' (like extracts) to show the writing and ideas - I'd love any feedback or comments

 

I like your idea- it's a really cool concept. Sure marketing and getting the word out is good, but also make sure your writing is top-notch. Have you met the posting requirements for the Writing Workshop? I'd recommend putting an excerpt up.

 

In my real life i actually consult for digital startups in their angel and series A rounds of funding. The last 4-5 years there has been an explosion of tools specifically made to help large brands execute their Social media strategy more efficiently. So I have been over exposed to these types of media solutions.

So how do I build this community?

In the simplest terms possible, time, persistence, and patience. For an author/artist/actor just getting started i would highly recommend against any form of paid social media until you have built out your organic following. Using paid media to build fans/followers without a strong starting base community will likely end up with you gaining a poor quality low engagement audience. For somebody who has limited resources this would be counter productive. (we all have limited resourced compare to the billion dollar companies pouring money into these sites)

I already have a web page, a FB page and a twitter account designated to the book (or the world in which it's set)

From a marketing perspective, i would make a few quick changes to how you are laying everything out. Looking through this and it seems that your focus is building community around the book specifically, with a web site for the book, FB for the Book, and Twitter for the book. What you should be doing is thinking of yourself as the brand, and the book as the product.

More to the point, you should be building your site and communities around yourself (the author) not the book (the product). You should then make the book a subsection of all of these communities.

I know this question may sound like a first world problem situation...but what will you do if this book finds success and you get the opportunity to publish another one of your stories that has nothing to do with The Seraphs? Your site, twitter and FB are all dedicated to your first book about Angels and Dreams...your second book is about Robot Cowboys (I have no idea if this is true, it just an example...a badass example, but just an example). Yes, you can promote the new book on the old Seraphs community and start building a new community for the Robot Cowboy book, but holy heck what a hassle to start from scratch again.

YOU are the one constant that will be involved in everything that you create. So YOU should be what the community is built around. Your website should be sbarnwellbooks.com or stephaniebarnwell.com and The Seraphs should be a section of that site sbarnwellbooks.com/theseraphs/. Your twitter should be you, your facebook should be you (if you dont want random fans as friends, i recommend creating a seperate author version of yourself)

but it doesn't seem to be 'taking off' yet. So what's the secret?

Once you change this over to make YOU the focus, then you can start to truly build the community. This is where the time persistence and patience comes into play.

1.) Post consistently. Id say a couple times per day. This does not mean that you only post about your own book(s). Post about interesting articles you have read, Ruminations on your day-to-day life, images that you feel capture the feeling or themes of the book, and connections in popular culture that relates to your book (stuff like the info on the angels cut you provided on your site)

2.) Interact constantly. Tweet at people, talk with authors, comment on blogs. Respond when somebody interacts with you. Social media is 2 way communication you are not just giving information you are having a conversation.

3.) Don't expect to be big over night, it takes time to build out. However don't let this overwhelm your life either. None of this should be overly time consuming since it should be a representation of your passion anyways. You just need to get in the habit of making this a part of your day-to-day

Honestly, i don't think the particular social media portal you use matter to your success as much as making sure that you use it. So if you hate instagram, dont make that your focus. This is the same advice i give to people who are talking about trying to get back into shape. It doesn't matter how good the workout program is if you wont do it. The best workout is the one that you will do consistently.

Anyway, now that i've droned on and put you to sleep hopefully a Seraph will come to you in your dreams and give you some truly brilliant advice! That said, hope some of this was helpful.

Oh and just wanted to say, I really do love your book concept. I think it sounds like a very fun read.

 

I hope you realize I was not trying to be insulting to you in any way. Any curtness that came across in my tone was more a result of typing my response on my phone rather than me attacking you. So my apologies.

As for email, I personally have not made it a focus for anything that I have done.

Firstly - with how my content works I get a greater benefit from collecting subscribers on YouTube and followers on twitter since that process doesn't take them out of their media consumption.

Second - From an audience commitment standpoint, audiences are also much more likely to hit that button to subscribe/follow vs fill out their email.

Third - audience that follow/subscribe are receptive to receiving tweets or videos much more regularly than they would be willing to get email notifications and updates.

Fourth - audiences are less likely to share/forward email vs. share or repost content from twitter or YouTube. Having other influencers share your content is the most important aspect of extending my reach and building my follower/subscriber base. Which is why getting the first 1000 followers is much hardened than getting the second 1000.

All that said, as I mentioned in my other post the most important form of organic media and marketing you can do is the one that you WILL do. So if you are having success with email, then I think you are doing exactly what you should be doing.

 

I can't think of a single book I've bought because of anything I read from that author's social media presence.

There's one author whose work I enjoy who also does great social media stuff, and I follow her so I can read her great stuff AND get reminded when she has a new release. But if I didn't enjoy her books I would still follow her social media, and just not buy her books.

All this to say - be careful where you spend your energy. If social media is something you enjoy and want to pursue, great, go for it, have fun, and maybe you'll get a few more book sales than you would otherwise. But if you don't like it and it's going to steal all of your writing energy?

Ask yourself how you chose the books you read. Is it based on the author's social media presence?

 

I just posted a poll about this, if anyone's interested - you can detail how YOU choose the books you read, and maybe we can find some patterns.

 

That may not be the right question. It's too direct. The idea of social media marketing is also to build name recognition. When I'm browsing books I sometimes pull one off the shelf to look at because I've heard of the author. I may not even remember where I had heard of them.

 

Hey, don't worry about it. Your post more than makes up for any minor offense.

Questions: Do you sell a product? Does advertising revenue on your youtube spots help you pay the bills? Do you have a book for sale?

I see why you are using other methods other than email, but some marketing messages require more than a tweet, or cannot be sold on youtube very effectively. It depends. If you have a book for sale, how are your methods working out for you?

Yeah, I'm an email guy. Old school, I guess. It works for me. But, I'm open to learning new tricks.