Social Media 101: Facebook

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. FacebookAvatar50% 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.

WF_FB_Likes

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.

WF_FB_World

What are some of your best Facebook tips?