There are a host of problems that can arise after you set up an author account on social media. It’s not the same thing as running a personal account. It’s easy for your page to have little, if any, personality. You might check your previous posts and see a list of sales pitches as you beg readers to give you a chance. After a few weeks or months, you might struggle to find new content, and then your social media pages start draining from your author experience instead of adding to it.
The good news is that this isn’t the end of the world. There are many ways you can spruce up a page to get more leads and sell more books while never running out of things to share, including finding a platform that works for you, stylizing your author persona, defining what kinds of posts you’ll write, and working more effectively to ensure you never run out of ideas.
Restoring Your Social Media Page
Before you spend a lot of time and effort revamping a struggling social media account, you need to consider the role that you want social media to play in your publishing strategy. Not all authors need to maintain rigorous social media presences to sell books, and some don’t even bother. Even in this day and age, you can get by without it. Social media is merely one option out of many to bond with your readers and attract new attention.
Your problem might also be with the platform itself. If Twitter really isn’t your thing, don’t pursue a following there. Choose a platform that you enjoy and find fun naturally. Not only will this be easier to dive into, but it will expose you to readers who have more in common with you.
Managing Your Persona
As author, you can also be a character. You get to control what readers know about you and how closely they follow your journey, and you can be artistic in what you decide. Try developing a personal brand, something that can stand out even if you write in multiple genres. You can also find catchphrases or steal from various aspects of your life and personality to make yourself stand out more as a writer.
Broadening Your Subject Matter
Your followers want to see you as a person. This means that you can feel free to share things that aren’t directly writing-related. Unfortunately, sharing anything and everything can make your account confusing and hard to relate to. Focus instead on one or two extracurricular activities, enough to shed light on your personality and have fun.
Schedule Your Posts
Scheduling possibilities are different from platform to platform. If you feel like you have to spend too much time brainstorming topics to post about, try batching the work instead. On one day every month, take an hour or two just writing posts you can use for the next month. If you know you have a sale or new release coming up, schedule your posts to build up for each event to get the best return out of them.
How do you choose content for your social media pages? Please sign up to share your thoughts and ideas in the comment section below or click on the blue button to join my Facebook group for self-publishing fiction writers.