You’ve heard of Facebook, right? It’s this website where people judge you based off of how you look and users upload high contrast photos to look more attractive. Oh wait — That was MySpace.

Facebook is a social network where you can make new friends, find old ones, and keep in touch with the click of a button. Some people also refer to it by it’s more common name: The Future

Contents:
1. Introduction
2. Profile
3. Facebook Pages
4. Status Updates
5. Additional Tools
6. In Closing


Introduction

Facebook.com is, at the time of this writing, the most popular social networking website available to anyone connected with the internet. What is social networking? I’m not sure either, but the name seems to work and they’re sticking with it. In this article we’ll cover how to market your book through the magic of the Facebook website. Along the way you might make some new fans and some new friends and that’s by no means a bad thing.


Profile

Before you’re able to market your new baby (aka your book) through Facebook, you’ll have to create a traditional profile for yourself. If you’re like me, you’ll probably want to have your main profile be for just you and your immediate friends (i.e. people that you actually interact with offline and perhaps maybe even call now and again) and we’ll setup a “Page” dedicated strictly to you as an author or the new book that you’re hoping to sell copies of since they’re taking up way too much room in your garage.

If you don’t have a profile with Facebook.com, simply log onto their website, click the gigantic SIGN UP button and follow the on-screen directions. They’re going to want you to upload a photo and enter all kinds of personal information that they’re going to sell to giant corporations like Microsoft, MSN, and Time Warner so that they can email you whenever the Backstreet Boys are scheduled to perform in your town.

Once you’ve entered all the necessary info, the site will bring potential friends to your attention. Some of these people you may know, whether it’s your best friend, a long lost friend, or that bully from high school who gave you wedgies. Take a second to glance through their profiles. See? Told you that bully would end up marrying his cousin!

Once you’ve got your profile all set up, you’ll be able to access all the goodies that come along with this Social Networking giant. The most important thing that you’ll be working with to promote your book will be…


Facebook Pages

Facebook pages are like sub-websites within Facebook that users can “Like” with the click of a button. When a user clicks that Like button, their friends will see that they did so and may take time out of their day to check out what their friends are into. Remember, it could be your book!

Since Facebook is anything but user friendly, here’s a quick link to help you navigate to the website where you’ll be able to set up a Page for your new book: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

If you’re setting up a Page for you as an author, click on the big button that says “ARTIST, BAND, OR PUBLIC FIGURE” and choose the sub-category as “Author.” For the purpose of this handy how-to, let’s pretend that we’re making a page for the book itself. Click on the “ENTERTAINMENT” button, and choose the sub-category of “Book.” In the box below, enter the title of your book and be sure to click the check box that agrees to all of the Facebook terms (if you didn’t read the terms then in short they get 5% of your annual salary and the rights to your first born child). Once you’re ready to roll, (Not really) click the GET STARTED button (Okay, kind of).

Once creation is complete, you’ll be prompted to add all kinds of information about your book along with some photos. Take a few minutes to fill out all the fields you can as these will help potential readers find you whether it’s through the Facebook site, or through a search engine that has crawled the page for pertinent information.

You’re able to enter the release date for your book, the genre, a quick tag line about it, a more in-depth description, the publisher, any awards the publication has won, and you can even supply your email address and author webpage address (you do have one of those, right?).

Be sure to take a few minutes to also upload some photos, whether they be of the book cover, the back cover, some inside pages, pictures of fans holding the book, or maybe some author head shots. Remember, you’re selling yourself as the brand as much as your are the book itself!


Status Updates

Now that we’ve got our personal profile online and our Book Page all set up, let’s get along to the heart and soul of Facebook, and the tool that you will use to help promote and sell your hard work: The status update.

Remember that in the current age of technology, everything is about the transparency. Back in the day before the web was popular, people couldn’t get the behind the scenes information that’s available today. Think of the popular outlets: we see set pictures from movies prior to their release, we get information on television shows, and we hear snippets of songs long before a band’s album is released. People like to feel as though they’re part of the creative process. Like they’re involved. This is what you’ll need to keep in mind as you work to promote your book, and these are the same tools that Facebook will give you. Now remember that with great power comes great responsibility. 10 points to anyone who gets that reference.

There are actually several different kinds of status updates that you can use to get some attention, the first of which is the…

Status Update
If you’ve been on Facebook for any length of time, you’ll be very familiar with the status update, since that’s where your friends are usually telling you what they had for lunch, or why they are currently sad. Maybe that’s just mine. Anyway, a status update is a simple text entry that will be seen by anyone who has “Liked” your book page.

Use these sparingly as not to overload your current or potential audience. Short excerpts from the book are good, or something fun so they feel like they get to know the author as a person. Since I write humor, I can always drop in a one-liner quote from one of my essays or just say something short and silly since that’s what they’d expect from me. If your novel is a mystery, try dropping a line from one of the pages that might reel potential readers in. If you write non-fiction, jot an interesting fact about our subject!

Photo Update
A photo update is similar to a status update except it has a photo attached that you’ve either uploaded from your digital camera, gotten from somewhere online, or taken with your webcam. Fun ways to use this feature to promote your book are when fans send you photos with your book, pictures of you doing your first book signing, your book on a store shelf, or perhaps just you opening your first box of books from the printer! Those are all big moments, so be sure to share them with the people who helped make them possible!

Link Update
Like the photo update previously mentioned, choosing this option will give you a small box to copy/paste a weblink into, and will give you room to type a blurb along with it before going off to your friends and fans. If you have a separate author site or maintain a blog, just drop in the URL of your latest post to share it with your supporters, or if you’re online and fine another great website that you’d like to share, this is the place!

It’s important to keep the links relevant to your book and not over-do it. If you write in the Romance genre, share a link to where your readers can purchase that romance novel you just finished reading and loved! If you wrote a how-to book on how to conserve energy in your home, perhaps a link to a list of 5 Way to Go Green is in order! Remember, people are coming to your book page because you’re an amazing author or an expert on a subject. We already have way too many websites devoted to photographs of cats doing silly things. Set yourself apart!

Video Update
If you’re really brave then you can activate your computer’s webcam to post a video update. This will be you talking about absolutely anything your hear desires, but be sure to keep it book related. Talk about an upcoming interview or encourage fans to ask questions and then answer them. You can even talk about where the book idea came from, who the target audience is, or the struggles you overcame in writing a particular chapter or section. Remember, your readers want to feel a part of the process! Once you’re happy with your video, share it with the world!

Question Update
This is a great way to get immediate feedback from your readers. If your book is already out, give them the option to vote on their favorite chapter, character, or section. If your book is in process, post chapter snippets to your blog and solicit feedback on what is good or bad. Your readers will appreciate having been a part of the decision-making process, and you’ll get valuable information for your book. Think of this as a built-in focus group!


Additional Tools

There are some great additional tools built into Facebook that you can use to grow your audience and sell more copies. Here are just a few of them that have proven useful.

Invite Friends
If you’re looking at your own Page, you’ll notice a button called “Invite Friends.” Once you click this you’ll get a list of all of our current Facebook friends. By clicking the checkbox next to their name and photo and then clicking submit, it will send those folks a message from you encouraging them to check out and LIKE your book page. Ideally, they’ll look it over, get wrapped in, and purchase your book, but if they do decide to Like it, it will add to your friend count and give you a few moments of validation.

Insights
Insights are stats based on the people who Like your book page. Check these out periodically to get a feel for who is into your book. It will show you the age ranges, sex breakdown (male vs. female) and the countries, states, and cities that your fans live in. In my opinion, this would be extremely helpful if you’re marketing a young adult novel to ensure that it’s hitting in your demographic.

Advertisements
If you’d like to take your marketing to the next level, you can utilize Facebook’s pay-per-click ad feature. While I’ve never used it, it will allow you to set up an ad that prominently displays your book’s title and brief synopsis, and you have the flexibility to target who can see it right down to their age and location. If you find a great way to use this tool that’s worth the money, I’d love to hear your success story! Here’s a quick link to where you can begin your ad campaign: http://www.facebook.com/ads/create/


In Closing

Social networking is a fairly new craze and the technology is always in flux. Tips and tricks that I’ve listed here could be obsolete with in a matter of days or months. This is the double-edged sword to relying on social networking: it’s always changing, always being upgraded and one needs to keep up to date on the new tools in order to stay on the cutting edge. While the Facebook Page allows you to have a web presence that will show up in Google searches, always remember to update often, even if you are between books.

If you have a new book coming out at the end of the year, remember to involve your readers in the process and keep them up to date. Anticipation is king when it comes to purchases and you’ll sell infinitely more books if your fans know it’s coming and are excited for the release rather than informing everyone a few days before the book comes out and expect them to throw their hard-earned money your way. It’s a new world, and just as it takes time to develop relationships in the real world, allow yourself to develop solid, quality online relationships as well. You never know when Mr. Big Book Publisher will cruise across your Facebook Book Page and like what he or she sees!

Looking for more information on how to promote your book via social networking? Check out my other articles in this series:

Promoting Your Book Online through Social Networking: Goodreads.com
Promoting Your Book Online through Social Networking: Shelfari.com
Promoting Your Book Online through Social Networking: Paperbackswap.com
Promoting Your Book Online through Social Networking: BlogTalkRadio.com

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5 Titles on Book Marketing and Promotion that You Need to Read

Weston Locher is author of the humor book, Musings on Minutiae, which collects 50 hilarious anecdotes about life with frenetic felines, working in the corporate world, living in an urban apartment complex, and much more!

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Last updated: January 3, 2012