#TeamAndMore Tuesday

Social Media 101 for Authors

“Do I need a website?”

“Should I be on Facebook? How about Twitter?”

“How do I do a mailing list?”

If you’re an author, and you’re reading this, then you’re online. So you know there are a thousand and one topics related to social media that you might be interested in.

Sales! Marketing! Branding! Reviews! Mailing lists! Groups! Pages! ENGAGEMENT!

Image by Olena Bohovyk

I’m not going to talk about any of those.

Well, OK - I lie. I am loosely going to talk about the simplest branding you can do. However, this article is really to help you understand the basics of dealing with social media as an author. It’s intended as a primer to help you either get up and running, or to tune what you’ve already got out there.

Following this advice will not turn you into an overnight social media sensation, but it may keep you from stepping on your own toes as you head out into the wilds of the internet.

Ready? Good! Let’s go. Buckle up, because there’s a lot to cover.

Background

I’ve got a little bit of experience when it comes to dealing with social media. Both from a technical side (20+ years), and from a practicing side (um, also 20+ years).

On the technical side: If I make a recommendation for a service or utility, that’s exactly what it is - a recommendation. There are a hundred different ways to skin a cat, and there’s just as many cat skinning sites out there to help you do it. If I recommend SkinTheCat.com and you think CatSkinnr.io is better for you, go for it.

On the practicing side: my experience largely comes from dealing with political campaigns, not author’s blogs. There’s actually quite a bit of overlap between the two, though, because basic social media practices are just that. Basic. A lot of how you manage things on this end is going to depend on who you are, how much of yourself do you want to put out there, and how you want to interact with others.

Take what you need, and leave the rest, as they say.

Before You Begin: Set Your Limits

Here’s a few questions to help you understand where I’m going.

• Do you write and publish under your real name?

• Do you use a pen name for any of your work?

• Do you want to be known by your real name, or your pen name?

• If you have multiple pen names, do you want people to know that they’re all you?

• Do you have other online activities (family, faith, business, politics, etc.) that you want to keep separate from your “writer” life?

• Do you want to be private and quiet, just talking about the absolute minimum about you and focusing on your books?

• Do you want to be public and outspoken on one or more issues, or share details about your family and personal life?

All of those are questions you should consider, keeping in mind that there is no “right” answer here; just what’s right for you.

Personally, I have always been vocal about my faith, and I got involved in politics before I started writing. So I don’t really have a choice about what I put out there. However, I can chose how much emphasis I want to put on any particular aspect of ,y life on any social media channel. So while it’s out there, I’m not generally in-your-face about anything, at least online.

You may decide differently. For example, your Facebook profile might be your personal space, and you don’t want random fans sending you friend requests there. That’s fine! You’ll have to be ready to deal with that, though, and it may mean having multiple accounts on some social media platforms so you can maintain that separation.

Whatever you do - when you are online, only disclose the information you’ve decided that you are comfortable with revealing to the world.

You may want to discuss this with your spouse or significant other and figure out what the limits are. Personally, I chose not to post online about most trips or events until after they are done. And until my daughters were adults, I generally referred to them by nicknames instead of by their given names.

Decide Who You’re Going To Be

“On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” – Image by Samson Katt

This might seem like a strange question - you’re you, after all - but a bunch of folks out there are nodding their heads right now.

How are people going to find you on the internet?

Most social media sites are organized around the idea of names or handles. If you’re SummerMommy on Facebook, AuthorJoan on Instagram, and Jeepster692 on Twitter, your fans are going to have a hard time remembering where to find you. Heck, you might have a hard time remembering how to tell them where to find you! (More on that later.)

You can use this to your advantage, both in helping to build your social media presence as an author, and in helping you to segregate your personal life from your public life online. Ultimately, though, you want to do the best you can to use the same handle on various related social media accounts, so you're easy to remember and find.

Start by making a list of what social media platforms you want to have a presence on. Please note that I didn’t say “participate in”. You might despise Twitter with a passion, or hate Facebook with the fiery fury of a a thousand suns. If you have fans looking for you on those platforms, though, you probably want to at least have a presence there, even if it’s not one you use regularly.

The purpose and use of social media platforms is way outside the scope of this article. I’ll probably do a follow on or two to talk about using different platforms. So in the following example, I’m going to gloss over why you might chose to be on one platform or another, and simply presume that you’ve already made a selection.

For now, let’s say that you’re a writer named Bob James Smith. You’ve published a few short stories as Robert Smith (because you’re formal like that!). Looking at the social media landscape, you have identified a handful of platforms that you want to have a presence on:

• Facebook, with a public author page so fans can chat with him

• Twitter, just to reserve his handle

• Substack, to start creating a blog/newsletter

• LinkedIn, to network with other publishing professionals

• TikTok, to drive traffic elsewhere

• An author web site of some sort

Now, Bob hates Twitter - his favorite pet died of Twitter when he was a kid, you know - so he doesn’t want to really do anything there. But he also doesn’t want someone to come along and steal his “author” handle. So he’s going to get his handle over there and put up a single post directing people to his Facebook page.

Before he can do that, though, he needs to know what handle he wants to use. The pattern I recommend here is to start with your name, and see if that handle is available on all the platforms you are interested in. (Don’t forget to check domain names as well, for your eventual website!)

In Bob’s case, since he publishes as Robert Smith, he’d start off by looking for RobertSmith on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Now, you might be one of those folks with a really unique and snazzy name. If that’s the case, and FirstnameLastname is available as a handle on all the sites you’re interested in - plus as a domain name! - then you win the interwebz today! You can skip the next long, tedious step.

Because, unfortunately, most of us don’t have a unique name like that. Kind of like Mr. Robert Smith. If you go to Facebook and Twitter and so on, you’ll see that those handles are already registered. Drat! What do you do now?

You start adding new elements, and iterating over different combinations.

• RobertJSmith

• RobertJamesSmith

• BobJames

• BobJamesWrites

• AuthorBobJames

… and so on, and so forth. In a lot of cases, it’s probably easiest to just skip to “AuthorFirstLast” or “FirstLastAuthor” or some combination. There’s a lot of people in the world; someone out there shares you name, but they probably are not writing, so use that as a differentiator.

Note that this works just as well for pen names, too. If Bob Smith writes alien romance fiction as Cassidy Williams, he can go through the same exercise.

Do you have to hit 100% unique across all platforms? That’s up to you. I try to go by “SamRobbWrites”, with the exception of Facebook and LinkedIn, where I’m simply “SamRobb”. I’ve been on those platforms forever, and don’t want to give up my unique handles there just for consistency with Twitter and other social media.

Let’s say Bob gets lucky, and realizes that “RobertSmithWrites” is available across all the platforms he’s interested in. Once you have that handle, use it!

Start by finding a domain name registrar and grabbing your domain name (robertsmithwrites.com in Bob’s case). Then take an hour or so to sit down and register your account on each of those social media sites.

Organize Your Data

“Why did you have me sign up on all those sites if I’m not going to use them?”

You will! Be patient. Before we can get those sites updated, we need to have some stuff to put up there.

In the next few sections, I’m going to talk about graphics, photos, biographical snippets, lists of links, etc. You don’t want to be scrambling for these every time you need one, wondering where the heck you put it. Or - even worse - have old copies of everything kind of scattered around so that you get confused and send someone your bio from two years ago.

So take the time to create a “Social Media Assets” folder somewhere where you can chuck all these documents. That way, when someone asks you for a head shot or you need to update you bio, you know exactly where to go to find it.

Get a Head Shot

“Someone is going to ask me for a head shot?”

Yep - and the first person that’s going to do so is you (more on that later!)

Start by getting a decent, professional-style head shot. It doesn't have to be expensive, but it has to look good. You but this will show up on social media, book covers, and who knows where. Have it available in several resolutions, and name the files so that it’s easy to identify which is which (ex, “MyName_200x200.jpg”, “MyName_1024x1024.jpg”, etc.)

What does “look good” mean? Consider a couple of examples: Steve Diamond and Charli Cox. Note that both of their headshots are exactly that - head shots, top 1/3 of the body, including the shoulders and a bit of the upper torso. While each has an interesting background, there’s no other person in the image. They are looking at you (the camera) not off into the distance or at their feet.

Work on Your Bio

Sooner than you think, you’re going to need a biographical snippet to hand off to people. You know the type: “Bob is an alpaca masquerading as a human. He started writing to pay for his alfalfa habit.”

Your bio can be serious, whimsical, or something in between, but it should only disclose the information you’ve decided you’re comfortable with revealing. It doesn’t have to be a novel, but it’s got to say something.

Personally, rather than keep separate documents, I like to keep all my bio snippets in one plain text document. That forces me to not use any special formatting (since it won’t translate in most instances) and helps me to remember that if I update one, I may need to update others.

Now that you are nodding your heads, agreeing that you need a really snappy bio, I have an interesting writing exercise for you all. You are going to need your bio in several different lengths, so you might as well do that now. Here’s a few that you’ll need to have ready, and what you’ll likely use them for. Note that some of these lengths are in characters, not words, and you’ll get an idea for how condensed some of them need to be.

• Start by writing a 500 word bio (website, blog)

• Pare that down to 200 words (media, press release)

• 100 words ("about this author" at the back of an anthology)

• 50 words (convention bio)

• 1000 characters (Amazon author bio)

• 150 characters (Twitter, Instagram)

• 100 characters (Facebook)

Know Where You are

You would be amazed at how many people don’t know their own email address.

Please. Don’t be That Guy.

Start a document named something like “MyName’s Social Media Links”. Put it in your social media assets folder, of course. Then take a few moments to go through all of your social media sites (website, Facebook, Twitter, etc. - don't forget Amazon!) and decide which ones you want to include.

Warning: again, do not list personal accounts unless you are comfortable with random people seeking you out there, because it will happen. If you’re not OK with that, leave your personal Facebook, Twitter, etc. out of the fray.

Once you have this list, you’re ready to give it out, either as-is or by opening it up and doing a copy/paste on the contents. This turns out to be very useful when - for example - you go on a podcast or do an interview and two minutes before you go live the host asks you, “Where can people find out more about you and your books, so I can put them up on the screen for you?”

Use What You Have

Ok, now that you’ve got some info in your “Social Media Assets” folder, we’re going to use it. All those social media sites you signed up for?

Start updating them.

When a sites lets you put up a photo, you’re going to use your professional headshot. When it asks for a bio, you are going to pick whatever version of your bio fits in their field. If there’s some place in the “About” box that lets you link another site, you’re going to link to the primary site you want to steer readers to (your Amazon author page, your web page, your blog, etc.)

I don’t have a sample of what this might look like for Robert Smith, but I do have examples of my own social media sites I can share.

The first thing you likely notice is the headshot. It’s the same picture on each platform, though I’ve adjusted/cropped/zoomed in to best suit the provided presentation. Twitter, for example, tends to show a smaller graphic, so I zoomed in on my face to make sure it’s recognizable.

You’ll note the same bio on each one. I did one version, saved it in my “Social Media Assets” folder, and used it everywhere I could. If/when I need to update it for some reason, I’ll edit the version in my folder, then update it where needed.

Finally, I made sure that my Facebook and Twitter info blocks have a link to my Substack blog (this blog, as a matter of fact). You can’t see it in the Facebook screenshot because it’s lower on the page, but it’s there. The screenshot, bio, and Substack blog link are all present on the other social media platforms (LinkedIn, MeWe) that I use as well.

Why Substack? It’s not necessarily where I interact with people the most - that would probably be Facebook and Twitter. However, it is where I generate the most new writing-related content day to day. So it’s a good place for someone to start to follow me and see if they like what I do before they engage me on another platform.

There Will Be a Quiz

One of the things that I learned very quickly in politics is that you will very often get asked the same things over and over. For me, it was to the point where I had prepared responses to roughly two dozen of the most common questions I might run into.

Here’s the thing: a lot of those questions were really simple. Muffing them made you look bad, though. For example, if someone asks a candidate “Why are you running for office?” and they cant give a snappy, solid answer, they come across as fumbling and - frankly - not that sharp. If you’ve given a bunch of quick answers, a pause makes you look like you are deliberating. If it’s your first question, a pause makes you look like you don’t care, or that you’re unprepared.

As an author, you will eventually find yourself in the situation of answering questions about yourself, your books, what it’s like to be a writer, etc. Spend some time thinking about what you'd say beforehand. Listen to or read some author interviews and you'll get a feel for what the "usual" questions are, and think about what you might say (and maybe even write them down) so you’re prepared to answer them when they come up.

Here’s some of the questions you might be asked:

• "Where can I find your books?"

• "Who or what inspired you to write?"

• “Where do you get your ideas?”

If you want more, you can check out this article on the 66+ Most Frequently Asked Questions for Authors. Go on, read through them and give them some thought. Maybe even write down some answers and tuck them away somewhere. (In your “Social Media Assets” folder, maybe?) Be ready to answer them so when you have to, you come across as a smart, articulate, charming author instead of someone who’s got a favorite flavor of crayon.

You’re Just Getting Started

There you go. Look back over this and you’ll see that none of it is about how you write, or what you write! Whether you are a plotter, a pantser, or something in between; a Romance writer, or a MilSF grunt; a historical drama guru, or an expert glamper, this advice will work for you. Follow it and you’ll look like a professional author who has it all together and are the center of a media empire.

You'll also be ready to run for office if you ever have a that particular bout of insanity, but that’s an entirely different blog post! :-)