It’s common knowledge these days that maintaining social media accounts will be a great and cost-effective means of promoting your book business. However, if you find that dozens of well-maintained and popular social media accounts are doing nothing for your sales, you might be unknowingly committing these 5 social media mistakes:
1. Being All Over the Place
Different social networks have different purposes. LinkedIn is for business, Twitter is for microstatus updates about current events and pop culture, Pinterest is image-oriented, etc. If you have a social media account everywhere and you try to promote your book business, it could come off as spammy and out of topic. People who would otherwise be interested in your book could happen upon one of your off topic accounts and get the impression that you’re a spammer, and starts to write you off as a mere spammer.
2. Being Too Negative
It is admittedly easy and tempting to get into flame wars and controversies in social media. Most of the time the trouble is already out there and giving people a piece of your mind only takes a few keystrokes and clicks away. Don’t give in to this temptation if you’re trying to run a book business. Even if you “win” a feud on social media, it tarnishes your brand and will turn off potential readers. Be more positive. If you can’t post something positive or constructive, don’t post anything at all.
3. Ignoring Readers
This is one of the most common mistakes you can do. Don’t bother creating a social media presence if you’re only going to ignore the comments of the readers that are posting messages on your wall. Responding to readers can eat a lot of time but that’s what you have to commit to if you want your book business to thrive. If you turn your social media accounts into a one-way exchange, you’ll find that the readers will migrate somewhere else where they can feel more appreciated.
4. Buying “Fans”
There are many sites out there that offer certain amounts of Facebook “Likes” or Twitter “Followers” or any other social signals for a fee. This can be a tempting offer if you’re trying to build a social media presence for your book business, but don’t give in to the temptation. These fake fans you’ll get are worthless and actually harmful to your image. They don’t respond, they have spammy profiles, and most of the time they are spammers as well and will flood your wall with spam. This will make your social media accounts look unappealing to legitimate fans and turn them off you and your books.
5. Making it Impersonal
Lastly, you have to ensure that you can make your fans feel that you, personally, are in charge of your social media accounts. Don’t automate or depend on templates for communication. If you have to respond to a fan, don’t use a canned response or a template reply. If you make them feel that they’re not special, they’re going to go away and leave your social networks.
Image credit: Nick Allen on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/hv1.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Hiten Vyas is the Founder and Managing Editor of eBooks India. He is also a prolific eBook writer with over 25 titles to his name.[/author_info] [/author]