Building a Social Network and Following

Last blog Joshua Graham discussed how he built his novel’s readership from first self-published manuscript to best selling Thriller. Joshua talked about building his social network and that this was the key to having his book sell.

So how does someone build their network from their few friends to the broader network needed to sell your book widely?

Best selling novelist, John Locke, talked about conducting searches on Twitter and Facebook for people who might be interested in your types of books. These types of searches might be as simple as searching #mystery, or #romance, or #thriller, or they might be as complex as conducting a search of a topic area, such as #postapocalypticfiction, or #Bahamas (the location of your novel).

It may also involve areas you are passionate about. For me travel and culture were two areas I searched and followed people who seemed to have similar interests to me, or to post information that was interesting to me, e.g. National Geographic Traveler.

A next step is to look at these individual’s twitter pages and identify those people who follow that site who might also be interested in following you. This might be based on their profile, but it might also be based on what they post. Are the people avid readers, or reviewers, or are they passionate about the topic you are writing about such as #afghanistan or #animalrights? When you find people who are interesting to you, then follow them. Chances are they will also follow you, if you also look interesting to them. So how do you do this?

First of all, have an interesting profile on your twitter account. This doesn’t mean make things up, it means telling people what you are passionate about that show who you are. This might include your book, or your hobby, or your family, your pet, or your humor, but show them. This makes you human and they can see things that you might have in common.

Second of all, have a website linked to your facebook and twitter page. Make sure your website is interesting. Have a blog that is also interesting. Make sure your website and your blog are constantly changing (new material) to bring people back again and again.

Offer something to people who come to your website. This might mean value-added material about the characters or the world in which your book is set, or it might include offering contests or something free, like a story, to readers.

Be consistent in your postings to your website and on twitter and/or Facebook become a presence with something interesting to say and people will follow you.

Don’t think you have something interesting to say today? Then find the people with the tweets that are interesting to you and retweet them, because if you found them interesting, chances are others will too. If we’re talking about Facebook, make coments about posts that interest you. Facebook also allows pages for your book, so here is another place to show what you are writing about. With regards to blogs, if you have posted your blogs regularly, people will come to expect that you will keep that regularity up. That consistency allows people to follow you.

A note here. Many social media pundits say you should post a new blog at least once a week. Others have postulated that a quality post could be written less frequently to allow people to be guided to it again and again.

It’s my belief that this will depend on the nature of the post and its intended readers. So think about whether your blog’s readers are people with time to check posts regularly, or are they people who may need a month just to find the time to check your blog? Finally, a challenge for a lot of writers is that they target their blog to other writers instead of their readers. So think about what you are doing with your blog and your social media posts, and make sure it is targeted to who you are really writing for—your readers.

Beyond your own blog and website, you can also build your social media connections a couple of other ways:

1. Identify writers or books that you believe attract a similar audience to that your book should attract. Find fan pages and groups for these writers and books and engage with them.

2. Find other blog sites, like review sites, forums or well-trafficked sites and participate regularly. Share what you know. Share yourself and DON”T USE THOSE CONNECTIONS TO ONLY PUSH YOUR WARES.

3. Join Goodreads and become involved with reader groups. Participate in book discussions. When you introduce yourself to a new group, feel free to introduce yourself as a writer, but don’t push your book. There are other ways established on Goodreads to do this.

Most of all, relax and enjoy the people you meet. The open conversations that occur, make you human and are more likely to cause a person to think that given they like you, they might like your book.

Next week we’re going to talk about book reviews and blog tours.