TIPS FOR USING SOCIAL MEDIA

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Amazon, Author Page, Facebook, Instagram, LouiseMangos, Twitter, Universal Link

We asked our friend, writer Louise Mangos, to share her top tips for using social media to get our work noticed.

It doesn’t matter where you are in your writing career, whether you’re a best-selling novelist or a budding poet, a great way to get your work, ideas or publications noticed (apart from a multi-million PR budget through your publisher – dream on!) is through social media networks.

The obligation of maintaining a social media presence is often included in the clauses of today’s publishing contracts. It’s the task many authors often dread. We spend our days isolated in our writing caves, creating fictional worlds, and suddenly our publishers say they want us to increase our social media presence. The task seems daunting, and it can certainly be time-consuming.

So here are some tips to help minimise the hassle, while aiming to increase your fan-base, expand your network, and hopefully bring in some sales.

FACEBOOK

Facebook is the most intimate platform of the three mentioned in this article. Most users have Facebook accounts to share their personal experiences with family and close friends. But creating a separate Author Page allows you as a writer to keep your personal and professional life separate. Instead of “friending” contacts, people will “follow” you as an author and “like” your page. Facebook has a random timeline. Posts with “like”s might appear days after they’ve been uploaded, and will consequently reappear when a comment is added. So you don’t really need to post more than once a day. If you’re promoting, it’s important to vary each of your posts. Readers and fans love to learn about the personal life of a writer. They still want to see pictures of your dogs or cats, even if your principal intention is to draw attention to your writing, but not too often. The most innovative posts might include a combination of the two – have your dog display your novel between its paws – and you might make a reader out of a pet-lover. It’s best to use single images in each post, and don’t forget an all-important URL link to your work.

TWITTER

If you’re new to Twitter, create an account with a name that’s easily identifiable to other followers – your author name is the best option if it isn’t already taken. You can add “author,” “writer,” or “books” to your name if someone has already claimed your Twitter handle (for example @LouiseMangosAuthor). Follow friends or colleagues who already have accounts, then follow as many writers as possible whose books and news you’re interested in. You can also check to see who these people follow, and follow people from their lists too. People to follow might include agents, publishers, book reviewers, journalists and bloggers. You’ll eventually get people following you back.

Until recently Twitter was an instant platform. Once posts were seen in the moment, they would disappear into the ether, unless someone later commented on the thread. Now followers who check in to their accounts at any time of day get “in case you missed it” posts. If your fans have “liked” your posts in the past, they may see your threads long after you have posted them. This gets your posts seen more frequently. But it also means you need to be more innovative about what you post. If users only see the same links to your books and the cover of your book, they will quickly become bored with your content, and may end up unfollowing you or muting your account. If you have a book to sell, find an image from its setting. If you’re travelling, take a photo of the book on your journey. Readers love to identify with you as an author as well as your work. There is no harm in posting interesting photos from your everyday non-writing life. You can also link these images somehow to your writing life.

Don’t forget to share other authors’ work or news, especially if their writing is the same genre as your own. Other users are more likely to share your posts if you have done the same for them. From time to time check your own timeline to make sure you’ve been posting a variety of images with tweets.

Twitter has a more conversational thread than Facebook, but it’s important to note there are certain times of the day when it is best to post. To avoid getting sucked into the habit of forever checking your social media accounts, you should schedule a short time twice a day to go online. The best time of day in the UK is tea time – between 3 and 4pm. This is also a great time if you’re hoping to hit the US as users will be on their way to work or just waking up, and will be checking their devices. In this respect, between 7:30 and 9:00am in the UK is also popular. If you’re without inspiration and have a moment before bed, you could retweet something you’ve posted earlier in the day to catch the US market. You can only retweet your posts once. Hash-tags are useful tools. They are less influential than on Instagram, but are still useful to attract new followers to your account. I would limit your hash-tags to two or three in your Twitter posts. A list of writer-driven hash-tags appears at the end of the Instagram section.

INSTAGRAM

Instagram is image based, and completely instant, as it suggests. Posts don’t reappear. But it is less interesting in terms of generating sales because you cannot post URL links on your timeline. If you’re a published author, however, you should open a business account, where you can show a URL link in your personal profile. This link should either be your personal website or your Author Page on Amazon. Instagram followers love to see photos in the manner of those mentioned in the Twitter section above, but it is also a platform highly driven by hash-tags. A popular time for users seems to be evenings. Hash tags (examples listed at the end of this section) are a way to get more followers. Instagram users often look for posts with particular hashtags. There is no limit to the amount of hash-tags you use in your posts, but be aware that on mobile devices, if you have a long list, some may not appear due to limited screen space.

Some useful hashtags for writers:

#WritingCommunity #WritersLife #Fiction #Novels #Writing #amwriting #amreading #BookRecommendation #BookShelf #BookWorm #Bookaholic #BookCommunity #BooksToRead #Bookstagram

Hashtags with your genre: #CrimeFiction #PsychologicalThrillers #Romance #Suspense #HistoricalFiction etc.

Last tips:

If you are an author, a useful tool is to create a universal link to your novels. When you post on social media with a link, for example, to Amazon, a universal link will connect to the Amazon account in the global region where the user lives. There are several platforms who do this. Type “Universal book links” in your search engine to create one for your novels.

#Competitions and #Giveaways also create a great deal of traffic and followers on all social media platforms. If you organise one for your novels, for example, it’s easier to manage on a single platform, and then link to the details on the other platforms to guide fans to your post.

 

Louise Mangos writes novels, short stories and flash fiction, which have won prizes, placed on shortlists, and have been read out on BBC radio. Her suspense novels Strangers on a Bridge and The Art of Deception are published with HQDigital (Harper Collins). You can connect with Louise on Facebook www.facebook.com/LouiseMangosBooks/, Twitter @LouiseMangos, and Instagram as louisemangos, or visit her website www.louisemangos.com where there are links to some of her short fiction. Louise lives in Switzerland with her Kiwi husband and two sons.

Link to Louise’s Amazon Author Page in the UK:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Louise-Mangos/e/B07BTW6FY9/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

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‘Swanking’ – unavoidable for authors?

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Mary Killen, The Spectator

‘Swanking is still unacceptable’ says Mary Killen, on the (always enjoyable) Your Problems Solved page of this week’s The Spectator magazine. She is replying to an anxious letter from a reader  who would like to give copies of his/her two  ‘respectably published’ novels to neighbours and acquaintances who are unaware of the novels’ existence, but worries that these gifts put the recipients in an awkward position.

There is something altogether endearing about this concern for the feelings of others and the appeal for advice in general ‘about trumpet-blowing, however subtly done’. The writer says that in his/her younger days ‘swanking’ was considered the worst of sins …

Mary comes up with a creative solution to the problem perfectly tailored to this particular correspondent. But for most of us it may be that swanking is now a necessity – part and parcel of publishing and marketing novels, however much it goes against the grain.

 

Interview with author Sarah Salway

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Alice Duer Miller, Carol Shields, Denton Welch, Gardens, Margaret Atwood, Sarah Salway

In this guest post ninevoices talks to Tunbridge Wells author Sarah Salway

First of all, tell us about what you are writing now?

I’m writing what I hope will be my fourth novel. It’s provisionally called ‘There Was Nobody There’, and is a detective story – but with a difference. It’s told over a week, and from a series of first person voices. Everyone sees a little bit of what happens but a) doesn’t realise or b) has their own reasons for keeping quiet. I was inspired by how the police put out that rather plaintive request sometimes: ‘surely someone must have seen something’! We’re all so tied up with our own lives and stories that sometimes we miss the huge things going on around us.

This is traditionally published – were you still able to choose the title and cover and other aspects of the design? What about the blurb?

Actually, this is the only novel I’ve written that hasn’t been already signed up by a publisher. Even my first was under contract to Bloomsbury before it was finished. I deliberately haven’t tried to sell this one although my agent has seen it. There’s something liberating about writing it while thinking it may never be published. It has allowed me to really play with the format and the story, although I’ve realised that I do need a deadline!

With the others it was a mixture, really. I’ve been published in both the US and the UK, and Something Beginning With was called The ABCs of Love in the States – this led to confusion with people complaining because they’d bought both thinking it was a different book. I haven’t been involved with choosing the covers of my novels – the big publishers have experts on hand so it seemed better to leave it to them. I have been involved with choosing the covers of my poetry and short story collections though, and have really enjoyed that. There’s something satisfying about getting stuck into all aspects of the book.

I love the physicality of books anyway – I’m often to be found stroking beautiful covers in bookshops!

Tell us how you first became a published writer?

I was a journalist, and studied fashion journalism at the London College of Fashion. I have worked in fashion PR, for Cosmopolitan, the Scotsman and Time Out magazine. We were living in Edinburgh when I had children, and I found a morning drop in class in creative writing. I’d always loved to read, but at school we mostly studied dead male writers so I didn’t think it was something someone like me could do. After the first class, I was hooked. I started writing short stories, and one of those stories was on the internet where it was found by my first agent who asked me if I would turn it into a novel. This became Something Beginning With, my first novel.

What have you published since?

I’ve published two more novels, Tell Me Everything and Getting the Picture, a collection of short stories, Leading the Dance, two poetry collections, You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book and Digging Up Paradise, and a collaboration of short pieces with Lynne Rees, called Messages.

How difficult is it to get your books into bookshops? Do you have to do a lot of marketing yourself?

It depends on the genre, I think. And also the publisher. I was lucky with my novels in that Bloomsbury had very strong links already, although there was one instance when my book was placed on a table right at the front of the Waterstone’s near where my father lived. He very carefully moved all the copies to the shelf under ‘S’. He was very proud of himself, so I didn’t tell him that it had actually been a coup to have been so prominently displayed! Luckily, my publishers saw the funny side.

Contemporary poetry doesn’t tend to have a big space in bookshops – I think I’ve sold more copies online and at readings.

More and more though writers are expected to do their own marketing. It’s difficult because it feels a completely different set of skills is needed from the actual writing. Many of us write because we are happy pottering around on our own, making up stories and sometimes spending days searching for the perfect sentence. The real world can be a shock – not just because you have to get dressed! I’ve often talked with other writers about forming a co-operative where we promote each other’s books – somehow that’s an easier thought than selling our own. I don’t know if this is different in other cultures, but I was always told not to talk about myself because nobody would be interested.

But then here I am… right now… talking about myself!

How do you use social media to promote yourself?

I’m a big fan of social media, but more to find out about other people, other books, other worlds than promoting myself. It works best for me when it is a conversation – I love how generous other people are. I tend to stay away from the trolls and the haters – although recently there seem to be more and more of them.

Where do you find inspiration?

What a question! All over, really. There are times when I have to consciously turn myself off because there are too many stories coming at me. I love history, strange facts, old books, snippets of conversation, people’s faces. I often have to stop myself staring but I’m sure most people don’t realise how beautiful they are. The trick, I’ve found, is to put two things together. Often I’ll get inspired by one thing but it isn’t enough to sustain a story. Add something else into the mix – especially if doesn’t immediately seem to connect – and I have a more interesting story.

Do you belong to writing organisations?

I’ve taught creative writing for many years now so I suppose I’m making my own organisation! I’m very proud of my students who have been published widely over the years, and I’m gradually curating a bookshelf of their work. As well as classes in my own home, I teach at the University of Kent’s Tonbridge centre, and with the Freestyle Yoga Project in Tunbridge Wells. I keep a list of classes and events on my website, http://www.sarahsalway.co.uk.

I have a special interest in working with groups and individuals for writing for wellbeing, and was co-founder, along with Victoria Field, of the Kent Writing and Wellbeing Network. It is now being ably run by Nicky Thompson. I’m also a member of Lapidus and National Association of Writers in Education. Part of my day job is to be the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Kent, and although it’s not an official organisation, we have a busy Fellows forum which I find very useful.

Which authors have influenced your writing?

There are so many, but three I’d particularly like to mention. Denton Welch was a writer from Kent who wrote so beautifully and with so much attention that he can make three pages of description about one plate completely thrilling. From him, I learnt to slow down and allow the reader to breathe. Then, one rainy holiday in a rented cottage in the Lake District, I discovered an American writer called Alice Duer Miller. She wrote in many different genres – poetry, novels, even silent movies – and I absolutely loved her sly wit and playfulness. Lastly, Carol Shields is such an elegant writer and what she does with structure blows me away. Reading her gave me a real feeling of permission. I’ve just realised I’ve nominated no living writers, so I’m going to add Margaret Atwood here too – not just because of her words but because she is always pushing the limits of what people expect her to be doing. I take courage from that.

What would you like to do next?

Last year I worked on so many projects that – although busy and stimulating – meant that I didn’t feel I was finishing anything. SO… this year I have made a resolution to work on one thing at a time. I’d like to finish my novel before doing anything else, although I have a list of things I want to do. It seems to be the way of it that when we’re working on anything for a long time, there are always ideas that seem so much better waving at us from across the desk!

I’d like to get the final draft of the novel finished by the summer though, so I can carry on with my writing blog, writerinthegarden.com. I studied garden history relatively recently and am now obsessed – there are so many stories, so many eccentric gardeners, and so many dreams involved in gardens throughout history.

www.sarahsalway.co.uk

www.writerinthegarden.com

Designing our book cover

I was interested to be sent this link, presumably for self-publishing in a digital medium: https://blog.dreamstime.com/2016/08/19/book-cover-design-how-to-choose-and-use-images_art44964

I quite like the idea of subverting a genre by having space ships alongside a regency heroine.  I guess I’ll never get employed as art director for a publishing house…