Quick Links: How Authors Can Get More Fans and Book Sales with Less Social Media

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

You know you need social media as part of your overall marketing strategy, but there are so many different types of platforms. There just isn’t enough time in the day to really utilize them all.  At Digital Book World, Chris Syme helps you to use your social media time wisely.

~ * ~

How Authors Can Get More Fans and Book Sales with Less Social Media

By: Chris Syme

June 20, 2016

Expert publishing blog opinions are solely those of the blogger and not necessarily endorsed by DBW.

A mind-boggling 78 percent of Americans have a social media profile. According to Statista, 2.72 billion people will be social media users worldwide by 2019.

It is a given that authors can develop loyal audiences and sell more books with the help of social media. But as numbers of users rise, the pressure to “be on every channel” also rises, as authors succumb to FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).

Even though it may be true that you have potential readers on every social media channel, it may be a waste of your time and resources to try to connect with people everywhere.

It’s Not About Numbers Anymore. It’s About Engagement

Internet users have an average of five social media accounts (Global Web Index), but they do not engage on them equally or use them for the same purpose. Numbers do give us information about social media, but numbers can be deceiving, as their meaning can shift with time. For example:

• In the pre-algorithm world of 2011, the race was on to build up as many fans on social media as possible. The more followers you had, the more people would see your content, as Facebook was yet to become the first social media channel to institute an engagement-choking algorithm.
• In 2016, numbers are a function of baseline reach as they have always been. But today, three of the major five platforms (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) have engagement algorithms that restrict reach. Because of the sheer volume of online information, users have cried out for a better way to see the information that’s important to them. The result: constricting engagement algorithms. Today, your fan and follower numbers are only a baseline. The effectiveness of your content to get fans to like, share, comment and click will determine how many people actually see your content.