Every Time You Share A Cat Video, Your Book Sales Die

Well, posting a cat video won’t really kill your book sales. But there are too many cat videos shared on social media.

Before you type a nasty comment, I love cats. I’ve shared a bunch of cat videos myself. My new favorite is the parrot playing peek-a-boo with a cat who is becoming increasingly homicidal.

The problem is, authors are sharing cat videos when they should be posting content that helps them promote their book or their business. So, unless you’re writing about animals, keep the cat video sharing just on your personal Facebook profile, not on your business page.

If cat videos are verboten, what should an author post on social media?

You should be posting planned content that relates to your book and your business. It doesn’t all have to be serious and sales-y, however. AND, it doesn’t have to be all your content!

 Here are 5 tips for posting to your social media:

1. Develop an editorial calendar for your blog, ezine, and social media profiles. An Excel spreadsheet works great. Or use a big wall calendar that you can erase.
2. First off, fill in important events that you’ll want to promote on social media, such as your book launch, signings, and speaking engagements. Now you’ll be able to pinpoint when you’ll want to start promoting those events in advance.
3. Plan your blog posts and ezine articles at least a month at a time. Don’t worry, you can always switch things around. The point is that you have a list of possible posts that you add to on a regular basis that support your marketing goals. HINT: when you publish a blog post, immediately write 3-4 social media posts about that blog post. Then, schedule them on your calendar a few weeks apart. If you do this every time, you’ll soon be promoting several blog posts every month on social media.
4. Write supporting social media posts in advance for your events, blog posts, and ezines. This is approximately 50% of your total social media postings. You can schedule Facebook posts in advance on Facebook or use an aggregator like Hootsuite to also schedule your tweets, LinkedIn updates, and Instagram posts.
5. The other 50% of your postings should be other people’s articles, blog posts, videos, and so on. NOT cat videos and pictures of sunsets with inspirational quotes unless they relate to your book topic and area of expertise.

Your book sales won’t explode overnight if you follow these tips. However, a good solid marketing plan includes a social media content plan to interest readers and get them to check out your book on your website or on Amazon.

Need a little help getting started? Contact me TODAY to schedule a free, 30-minute phone consultation. I’d love to learn more about your book(s) and we’ll see if my services are a fit for you.