Social Media - Author - Frances Caballo

Today I'm welcoming author, Frances Caballo.  Frances is currently on tour hosted by Goddess Fish Promotions.  The tour is for her latest book, Social Media Just for Writers.  I've gotten a chance to read the book and found it full of invaluable advise for anyone trying to get a handle on social media.  But my review comes later, first let's introduce the author.

Frances Caballo

Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers.  She's a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference.  In addition, she's a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com and blogger and Social Media expert for BookWorks.  She's written several social media books including The Author's Guide to Goodreads and Social Media in 30 Minutes a Day.  Her focus on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books.  Her clients include authors of every genre and writers' conferences.

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The intent behind her book:
"You wrote your book and sold copies to everyone your know.  But you have goals that extend beyond the dozen copies you sold.

How do you achieve your dream of selling books around the world?  With social media, you can build your platform and reach readers in locales you never imagined possible before.

In this book you'll learn how to:
-  Create a Facebook fan page and actively engage with your readers.
-  Optimize your LinkedIn profile.
- Tackle Instagram, Tumblr, and SnapChat.
- Build and optimize Pinterest pinboards for SEO to maximize exposure of your books, blog, and other landing pages.
- Improve your blogging.
- Excel on Twitter.
- Create images for your blog and social media posts.

The second edition of Social Media Just for Authors is both a primer for authors new to social media
and an advanced study of platforms that weren't widely known four years ago.   Whether you write romance, historical fiction, young adult or steam punk novels, you'll find help in reaching your online audience of new dedicated readers.

An excerpt:

Chapter 1

Not sure how to approach social media.  CARE about your readers.

Among all the rules you'll find online- the 80/20 rule (only 20% of your posts should be about your books or blog posts while 80% of your posts should contain content from other sources), the admonitions against using social media as a bullhorn, the warnings about over automating - there's also an unspoken tenant.

The tenant isn't a rule that comes up on the blogosphere.  Instead, it's more of a system of approach and an acronym that I created while preparing for the San Francisco Writers Conference.

If you follow the approach I'm about to explain, you can be sure that all the time you spend on social media will generate the type of engagement with readers that you want to have.

Once you start to use social media, be prepared to CARE about people.  I know that it seems evident to care about people online but give me a moment to break down the acronym.

• C - Communicate with your readers.
• A - Answer your readers' questions.
• R - Relate to your readers.
• E - Educate with stellar content.

And most of all simply care about people.

Joanna Penn devised the term social karma.  If you want book sale, buy books.  If you want book reviews, write reviews for all of the books you read.  If you want people to like your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter, like your readers' and friends' Facebook pages and follow them on Twitter.

Reciprocate actions.  And just as you might offer money to a homeless stranger, smile at a person walking down the street, or invite a new family from your church over for tea or dinner, take the types of actions online that will help you to get to know the people who follow you and want to connect with you.

In other words, be kind online.  Be inquisitive.  Be open to meeting people and revealing parts of your life.

Let's look more closely at CARE.

(end of excerpt)

My review of Social Media Just for Writers:

Social media plays a large role in promoting for today's author.  But are you using social media as efficiently as you could? Are you using the right sites?  If you're an author, unless you're a social media guru, this book is for you.  The most popular sites, from Facebook to Snapchat. Goodreads, Twitter and more, are laid out, analyzed for their advantages and disadvantages - what works best and what might not work at all.  The author reveals invaluable nuggets of information such as the 80/20 rule where twenty percent of content posted should be about your books, the other eighty percent from other sources.  Shorter is better and of course, then there's the pictures.  On social media, pictures rule!  Referencing such terms as social karma, the author explains how your actions directly affect your sales and goes through the step by step process from setting up to wielding the sites like a pro.  It is a clearly written manual that will help you connect with your readers easily and efficiently.  Well written, well researched - well thought out.  This book is a must have!

Reviewed by Ryshia Kennie

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Frances can be found:     http://www.socialmediajustforwriters.com/
                                   

Frances will be awarding a $50 Amazon/BN gift certificate to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

To enter:  

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Ryshia

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Check out the remaining tour stops for the rest of May here:

May 15: Hope. Dreams. Life... Love
May 16: Readeropolis - review
May 17: Notes From a Romantic's Heart - review
May 18: The Avid Reader
May 19: Straight From the Library
May 19: Mixed Book Blog
May 22: The Reading Addict - review
May 23: Books Direct - review
May 24: Edgar's Books
May 25: Booklove - review
May 26: Laura's Interests