We’ve hit 100,000 followers on Facebook!

To celebrate, I’m giving away a copy of Down the Owlhoot Trail – signed, of course – and a couple of pieces of swag the lads have rounded up.

To enter, simply answer the following question in a comment below:

Who’s the greatest cowboy of all time – either real or fictional?

I’m giving you a behind-the-scenes look at part of my upcoming Western Fictioneers panel discussion on Social Media. Our objective is to corral a herd of grizzled Western authors and convince them that that modern contraption, social media, is a good thing. 50% of marketing works -we just don’t know which 50%

Facebook “likes” and engagement (comments and shares) are two of the things agents look at when evaluating a new author. Facebook has 156.6 million users, with a peak age between 23 and 50, although the senior sector has been growing in the last few years. Most Facebook users are college-educated women.

Best times to post on Facebook: Thursday and Friday between 1-4 pm. Worst times to post: 8pm to 8am on any day.

Here are some specific tips:

• Create an Author Fan Page instead of using your personal page as an author page. Personal pages have a limit on how many followers/friends you can have, whereas fan pages don’t. Also, you don’t really want your readers knowing every little personal detail about your life.
• Create pages for your books – and maybe even your characters! You don’t necessarily have to post regularly on those pages, but you don’t want somebody else to grab the name and run with it.
• Consider an ad. Desktop ads have an 8.1 times greater clickthrough rate than normal web ads – and mobile ads ramp that up to 9.1 times higher.
• Create informative content, share relevant posts and photos, and generally entertain your readers on a regular basis.
• Try something fun once in a while, like setting your language to English (pirate).
• Use Fanpage Karma to monitor your Facebook stats and find optimal posting times for your individual audience.

What are some of your best Facebook tips?

 

HERE’S an interesting article about retargeting your website content to Facebook for marketing purposes.

HERE’S a good article about evaluating your Facebook page.

One of the panels at DragonCon this year was all about social media. Most of the authors agreed that it was a “necessary evil.” What you have to remember is that the more time you spend on any social media, the less time you’re actually spending writing.

Here are some tips I’ve developed for maximizing your time on different social media sites:

• Facebook – I follow a lot of other writing pages, and every day I cycle through the list and share anything interesting. I usually post a link to this blog, and also may add a very short blurb about what’s going on with my author self. I also have a file of writing quotes that I spent a few hours making on one of those “create-a-sign” sites – I can upload one of those if there’s nothing else interesting going on. Facebook usually takes me 15-20 minutes a day.
• Twitter – I post one writing prompt every day, and I post a link to this blog. About once a week or so, I cycle through my Twitter contacts and “retweet” interesting tweets. Twitter takes me less than 5 minutes a day.
• Instagram – Again, I have a file of interesting photos that I draw from. I try to post 2-3 images a day, and I usually do that while waiting in line for my coffee. Instagram takes me less than 5 minutes a day.
• Pinterest – It took me several hours to create a good Pinterest board for Devon Day and the Sweetwater Kid, plus I also have one for general history (Back in My Time). Now, I only post to the board when I find an interesting photograph during my research – pinning a photo to your board takes less than a minute.
• LinkedIn and Google+– I’ll admit that I don’t do much at all with these sites. I have a presence, and I do link to other authors and editors, but I don’t actively post anything because I just don’t hear the “buzz” about these compared with the first four sites.

As you can see, I’ve pared my social media time down to around 30 minutes a day, which isn’t a horrible slice cut out of my writing time.

Other time-wasters I admit to:

• This blog – I try to post once a week with a “real” article, but I’ve started putting in those “short-shorts” giving my readers links to fun and interesting things I find during my research. Short-shorts take about 5 minutes a day, but the big articles can take up to 30 minutes to compose and post. I think it’s worth the effort because of the connection with the readers.
• Western Fictioneers – I have a monthly column (every second Friday), and usually spend 30-60 minutes writing the post. This is more involved than my personal blog because I have to research historical data and locate old photos to include, but I enjoy sharing my research and networking with other Western writers.
• WikiAnswers.com – I’ve been a supervisor with Answers.com for nearly 10 years, so it’s a habit I’m not willing to break myself of. I usually spend less than 15 minutes a day, however, with occasional bouts where I take an hour or so and try to answer some of the older questions that are languishing, or greeting new members.

How much time do you spend on social media? Do you think you spend too much time or not enough?