As more and more people begin using the internet to communicate, concerns around personal privacy grow by the day. Authors are joining the masses on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, and as they do, they are being asked to share more personal information with their audiences. Twitter and Facebook are beyond useful for generating buzz about a new book or about a personal appearance, but it’s important to be careful to not share too much information, as both are very public forums accessible by anyone, anywhere.
Make sure that you create BOTH a personal Facebook Profile and a public Facebook Page. Facebook requires that people have personal profiles before they can create business pages. If you wish to maintain personal privacy, keep your personal profile private, only “friending” actual friends. When you create your business page, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to share just enough personal detail to hold your audience’s interest.
On your Facebook Page you will be posting excerpts from your books, links to your rave reviews, and anything else you believe your audience wants and needs to hear from you. Photos and videos promote more engagement than plain text updates. You’ll have to decide which personal details you’ll share on your page: are you married? have children? Where did you grow up and where did you go to school? It will be a balancing act. You’ll have to decide what works best for you and your audience.
If you have a personal Twitter page on which you interact with your friends and family, you may wish to create a separate Twitter page just for your business. If you do so, you’ll want to make your personal page a private page, which means you will have to approve those who wish to see your personal updates, which gives you more control. On your business Twitter page you will engage your audience with the same type of content you updated your Facebook Page with, but it will need to be formatted specifically for Twitter.
To keep your audience engaged on both Facebook and Twitter you will want to update at least once daily. This doesn’t mean that you can’t pre-write your updates and have them posted on a schedule (something that we do for many of our clients). While posting scheduled pre-written updates will free you from being chained to your computer, and you’re probably already there, writing your next book, it will not free you from interacting and engaging with your audience. If you don’t engage them, they won’t stick around.
These rules also pertain to the use of LinkedIn, Google+, and any other social media platform. If you update often with real, valuable, free, non-promotional content in your own voice, and engage your audience, you will get a great deal out of your social media investment.
