64. Cracking the Code: How to Attract Readers on Social Media

Do you want to spend months, maybe even years, toiling away at the keyboard, birthing characters, perfecting your story, and publishing your writing—only for no one to read it?

No, of course not. We want our words to find our ideal readers because we love writing—most days. 

But in order for our words to find those ideal readers, you have to learn the marketing side of this business too, regardless of whether you self-published or signed a contract with a traditional publishing house.

In today’s episode, you’ll learn how to leverage your social media platforms. 

More specifically, you’ll discover how to find your ideal readers online, how to stop them from scrolling past your posts, how to encourage readers to engage with your content—maybe even share your posts too.

Topics discussed in this episode: 

• Every author’s marketing responsibility
• Don’t try to be on every social media platform
• Choosing your platform
• Befriending your readers, not other writers
• Posting content that reflects your author brand
• Five primary types of content to engage your idea readers
• Promoting your books effectively
• Planning and scheduling your weekly content

Connect with Parents Who Write: 

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/parentswhowrite 
• Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/parentswhowrite 
• Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/parentswhowrite  
• Book a free 30-minute strategy call to learn about my editing services: https://calendly.com/parentswhowrite/30min-meeting 

Resources mentioned: 

• Cara Dion: https://www.instagram.com/caradion.author/ 
• Ginny Moore: https://www.facebook.com/GinnyMooreAuthor 

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Transcript

Erin P.T. Canning: 0:00

Do you want to spend months, maybe even years, toiling away at the keyboard, birthing characters, building entire new worlds, perfecting your story's message, and finally publishing your writing, your work of art, only for no one to read it? I have yet to meet an author who said, sure, it's all good. My story can fall through the cracks. Of course not. We want our words to find our ideal readers. Because we love writing. Most days. But in order for our words to find those ideal readers, in order to thrive as an author, you have to learn the marketing side of this business too, regardless of whether you self published or signed a contract with a traditional publishing house. And one component of this is leveraging our social media platforms. Now, if the marketing side of this business isn't your favorite, I completely understand. It's not my favorite either. But over the years, I joined two different high ticket coaching programs, interviewed dozens of authors, and attended numerous workshops hosted by experts. And a lot of the social media marketing advice I've received overlaps. So how do we find our ideal readers online? How do we stop them from scrolling past our posts and instead get them to engage with our content? Maybe even share those posts? That's what you're about to find out. Before we dive in, if you're tired of going it alone, and you'd rather have someone walk you through finishing and marketing your book, stick around at the end of the episode to find out how I can help. Otherwise, let's get to the show. You're listening to Parents Who Write, the podcast that helps you pursue your writing dreams. I'm your host, Erin P. T. Canning. I'm an author, editor, writing coach, and mom of two young boys. And my mission is to help you prioritize your writing, strengthen your voice, and gain confidence and direction so that you can own your identity as a writer and thrive as an author. Hey, friend. Thank you for joining me for another episode of Parents Who Write. Today I'm going to be talking about organic social media marketing because I see people ask this one a lot, especially for indie authors, honestly, even traditionally published authors because of the fact that publishing houses don't help really when it comes to marketing. That is expected of the author, no matter what route you choose. And that's expected of the writer, no matter what type of writing you do. If you are trying to build an audience, it is pretty much on you. One of the first things that I want to stress when it comes to organic social media marketing is choose one, maybe two platforms. I've said this in the past. I will repeat it again. Choose one. Maybe two. Because you spread yourself too thin if you are trying to be everywhere. And I did start off in the beginning trying to be in more than one or two places, and it's exhausting. I kept telling myself, oh, what's the difference? I'm just reposting the exact same thing in a different medium. It's not the same. There's always some sort of tweak that you need to make to it. You have to change the size or the type of content. And truth be told, if you're hitting a different audience in a different medium, then you should also be adjusting your marketing that way too. It's not just five minutes. Plus, you need to show up in those places and be able to respond and share to your stories and like and make sure that it's popping up everywhere and that you're commenting on other people's stuff so that your stuff is being seen. It's, it's not only five minutes. So, pick one, maybe two. And my mentors in the past have recommended that whatever your primary one is, don't really stress about picking up that potentially third platform until you hit around 10, 000 followers with your first slash second platform. Because once you hit that 10k, you will now know what is actually resonating with your ideal audience, and then you'll be able to decide, okay, is it time to now try tweaking that with a different platform, or keep doing what you're doing because you're rocking it, right? So, focusing on one specific platform is going to teach you so much more than if you're trying to be everywhere at once and trying to take in all those different, replies and algorithms and etc. So the next big question becomes which platform do you choose? Sarah Werner talks about this in episode 62 of Parents Who Write. She's amazing! She has so much information to share with you when it comes to finding your audience, but she talks about this too in her episode. And basically what it comes down to is figure out where your audience is. Like, a lot of romance readers are on Instagram. Now, if you prefer to be on Facebook, and that's where you've been rocking it, that's where you've been focusing, don't stress. Don't change. Don't tell yourself that you got to rework the whole thing. But if you're just starting off and you have to choose a platform, take a look and try to see where your ideal readers are. Look at the hashtags that people are using. See how people are commenting and responding, and you'll kind of get a sense of, cool, this seems like a really good reader community. Awesome. I want to be there. The other thing is that when you are engaging in content, and you're setting up your author platforms, I know this is hard, but don't just send friend requests and invites to other authors. It's hard because I love the writing community. I love the support and the engagement and the encouragement that I've experienced connecting with other writers. We need that community. But you're on here to find readers. And yes, writers are readers. That is 100 percent true, but you're trying to market your book to readers. And writers are also writing their own books right now, so keep that in mind, you want to find your readers. So, that begs the next question, where do I find my readers? This is where you need to start digging into who your ideal reader is. You need to ask yourself, where do they hang out? What are their likes? What are their dislikes? For me, for example, on my author page, I write fantasy romance. So, I try to put out funny content that is, you know, talking about other fantasy slash romance stories. I have been posting a lot recently about Labyrinth because I loved that movie as a little girl. Another one of my big influences was The NeverEnding Story. So I've posted pictures of that as well. I'm also a huge Charmed fan. I was like, I should really be doing some Charmed memes. So, you want your content that you are putting out on your author pages, on your author platforms, to reflect the kind of writing that you do. Because if somebody sees my Labyrinth picture and how I just couldn't reconcile as a child how The Goblin King could be both seriously hot and also creepy and somebody sees that and they resonate with that, then I'm hoping that means that they're my ideal reader and they'll want to follow me because I'm putting out this funny kind of stuff. So think about where your readers are hanging out and just engage with them. Here's the other really, really, really big thing. When I say engage with them, I don't mean posting in other groups and pages, and whatever platform you are, it's not constantly posting, buy my book, buy my book, buy my book, buy my book. People who see those posts just scroll past them, because like, I don't know who you are. I don't care about that. Like, good for you. Awesome sauce. But when all they see is, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, they go right past it. When you're engaging both in other groups and also on your own page, there are five primary types of content that you want to create, that you want to rotate between. The first one is entertainment. You want to have content that entertains people. So that's like memes, jokes, giveaways, viral videos, anything that gets a good laugh on the internet. But again, keep in mind, you want those laughs and those jokes, et cetera, to be related to whatever type of writing it is that you do. If I'm a fantasy romance author, I'm not gonna be posting memes about thriller, murder, suspense kind of stuff. As tempting as that may be. But I want to make sure that people see that stuff if they like it, and then when they go and they check out my own page, I don't want them to be like, Oh man, I thought this person was like thriller, suspense, murder type stuff, and, ugh, it's fantasy romance, okay? So, you still want to make sure that it's it's falling within your brand. For memes, Cara Dion does an amazing job of this on Instagram. You can go check it out. She does some really funny stuff. I'm trying to do it too. The second type of content you want to rotate between is inspirational content. So these are quotes, personal stories, success stories. There are things that inspire people that they see it and they go, Oh, that makes me feel good. And then they're inclined to want to share it with other people because it made them feel good and they want to spread that, that feel good feeling with their own friends. And so they go and share that content. Same thing with the memes and the jokes, by the way. If you're putting out this fun stuff, people are more inclined to share it, which helps get you seen more. So, that was number two, inspirational. Number three is educational content, so this is tips and tricks, research that you found, case studies, trainings that you offer, somebody else offers. It's always nice to share other people's content that aligns with your brand. I'm all for the whole, there's more than enough people in the world and I'd rather be collaborators than to feel like I am in constant competition with other people. No, thank you. I think it's great when we can all help each other and lift each other up. So, yeah, sharing trainings and articles that can help your fellow readers or that will resonate with them. So that's the educational category for number three. Number four type of content is conversational, meaning content that you post that creates conversation, that people want to comment and respond to. This can be questions like this or that, on a scale from one to ten, when was the first time that you ever blah, blah, blah? Those kinds of questions that, again, encourage people to reply. These are also polls, caption this photos, fill in the blanks. In Ruins and Redemption, Adaline reads stories to children in the area. She's always referencing other stories. And so I created a photo that I put up on my author page where it was, okay, Adaline opens a book and today she's gonna tell a story about blank. And I'm curious to see what other people thought that she was going to share. So that's four, conversational. And then the fifth main type of content that you want to rotate between is connection. This is behind the scenes. This is you being a real person and saying this is what I did over the weekend. This is the ups and the downs. I am struggling with this paragraph. Or, oh my gosh, I finally hit 30, 000 words. Or my character just ran away to this random place and I have no idea why they did this, and I have to back up or figure out how to get them out of this place. It could also be the behind the scenes photos, take a picture of your writing situation. I've done one before where I had a Sailor Moon blanket on my legs and my laptop and my word count. So behind the scenes photos and when it comes to the connection content, be a real person. Share your struggles. Because people connect with people. None of us are perfect. Nobody expects anybody to be perfect. And so, when we're real, people appreciate that. And they feel like they can be real too. Hence, the post that I shared recently that I'm struggling with depression right now. I will say that the people who reached out and just shared their support and that they have felt similar or they understand it means a lot. And so, again, don't be afraid to be human because people connect with people. So those are the five main types of content. Now there is the sixth. The sixth one is promotional, and the reason why I didn't include that initially is because you don't want it to be just by my thing, and you still need to make it interesting and engaging and fun. So promotional types of posts can include cover reveals and sharing your back blurb and reader magnets that you're releasing. You also still want to hook your readers, your audience. This means instead of, I'm so excited about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, maybe instead start with your elevator pitch. For Ruins and Redemption, my elevator pitch was, an anthropologist unintentionally travels to another world and has to use her skills to bridge the cultural gap between elves and humans. That one sentence hook is great to try when you're, putting content out there for advertising and promoting your writing work, your projects, your books. Another thing that you could do to promote your book would be fun facts about characters. With book one coming out, I did an entire series where it was, meet this character. It was like a little five sentences that I pretended that they answered with a visual that went with it. And people found that really entertaining. Another thing that's great to use for promoting your books, content wise, are taglines. Go to Amazon, check out the top sellers, especially if you happen to be in the fantasy romance genre like me. A lot of other genres have them too. But go to Amazon, check out the 100 best sellers. Look at their Amazon page blurbs and at the top of them, you should see one sentence, hopefully in bold, and that's their tagline. Take a look at what they're doing. See how they're hooking the reader, and then you can use those taglines in your social media content. For Ruins and Redemption, my tagline is stranded in a strange new world, can she trust her protector will help her find home? That's a hook to get somebody in and be like, Ooh, what's this about? The hook that I have for my second book, Treachery and Truths, is after searching for a way home, is the comfort of her past worth giving up the love she sees in her future? You still want to hook your readers when you're doing your promotional content on social media. I love what Ginny Moore does on Facebook. I'll never forget, she writes historical romance and she did this one with an animated video and it was if my two characters could actually text each other and what they would say, and I thought it was so funny. It's been almost a year, and I still remember that piece of content that she put out to promote her book, Adding Up to Love. Go ahead. Take a look at her page. She always has some great stuff out there that's just really engaging. So here is my tip for you, my tip or trick that I challenge you to try. Create a Word document for a week's worth of content. And granted there's seven days, but out of those seven days, repeat one. Don't let it be the promotional one. Pick another one. But say like on Monday, I'm going to post something that's entertaining. Tuesday, I'm going to post something that's inspirational. Wednesday, I'm going to post something educational. Thursday, I'm going to post something conversational. Friday, I would say Friday, go for promotional. And then Saturday, Sunday, go for that connection, especially what you're doing this weekend. And go for another entertainment, because you can always entertain people. That's my recommendation. Or inspiration, depending on the type of work that you put out there. So when you have this Word document and you have those headings with the type of content, then go ahead and write your posts. Use Canva to put together whatever it is that you are. Put it all in a folder. And then while you're chillaxing and watching TV during the week, schedule all of your posts so they go up and you don't have to worry about them for the rest of the week. And there you go. See how that works? Don't forget to use your hashtags. And then when you go into those watering holes and you're engaging with other people who are your readers, that's where you can be sharing that entertainment and inspirational, educational, conversational, and connection type content. Do not, and I repeat, do not go into other people's groups and be sharing your promotional content, unless the group says that it's okay for you to do that. And check their rules to see if there's a certain day of the week that you're only supposed to do that. Okay, make sure you're following the rules so that you don't get kicked out. But if you're posting that other type of content and readers see it and they love it, that is fantastic. And hopefully you guys can start becoming friends and growing your audience that way. So, there you have it. Now you know what types of posts are more likely to attract your ideal readers, help you connect with them, and more effectively entice them to buy your books. If you're tired of circling around your manuscript, if you're not sure which publishing path is right for you, if you'd rather have someone walk you through all the ins and outs of self publishing, then schedule a free strategy call with me. As a professional editor, I can answer your questions, help you define your goals, and identify your next steps so that you can focus your energy and make significant forward progress. All you have to do is click the link in the show notes. As always, keep writing!