Expert Round-Up Topic: What is your favorite social media outlet and how do you use it to engage your audience?
SANDY YONG
My favourite social media outlet is Instagram. I use it by sharing personal finance tips that my audience can use on a daily basis. I also share about my personal experience with investing in the stock market, in real estate, and my journey as an entrepreneur. I think it’s important for women, especially BIPOC, to have open dialogues about money.
Instagram is a great way to share photos, videos (e.g., reels) and stories on a regular basis. I use it to ask questions and field comments from my followers. This way we can have candid conversations about our own journeys with managing our money and building wealth. It’s a great way to support each other and learn from each other’s experiences.
www.sandyyong.com
https://www.amazon.com/Money-Master-Inside-Secrets-Investing-ebook/dp/B082FM1FN6
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandyyong1/
www.facebook.com/themoneymasterbook
www.instagram.com/themoneymasterbook
VINCENT D’ELETTO
One of the best social media outlets for engaging your audience is Twitter. When marketing a book online, it’s a great idea to use a social media platform oriented around text. Instagram is useful, but content on the platform is inherently less shareable and leans more toward photography.
When it comes to piquing the interest of your audience and encouraging them to read your book, Twitter reigns supreme. Twitter users are accustomed to reading short, punchy tweets, and have the option of liking, re-tweeting, and replying if they’re engaged with what they’ve read. This makes it more likely for a quote from your book to go viral, as users can easily feature your tweet on their profile with the click of a button. To enhance shareability even further, you can supplement your book quote tweets with relevant hashtags to capture the audience you’re looking to target. For example, if you’re writing a biography, you could use hashtags like #biography, #history, and #lifestories. This makes Twitter the perfect place for you to engage your audience, attract new interest, and market your book.
https://wordagents.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-d-eletto-94328598/
LAURA RIKE
My main tips are first of all—to use Pinterest. So many people misjudge it as a simple online bulletin board for recipes and inspiration, but it is so much more than that—a powerful search engine with robust ad capability. Additionally, taking advantage of new features on Pinterest and best practices makes a huge difference.
JODI BRANDSTETTER
As a business nonfiction author, my go-to social media channel is LinkedIn. I use LinkedIn in several ways. Here are two ways I use LinkedIn.
#1: Connect with my target audience. I conduct searches to find individuals who fit my ideal reader and ask to connect with them. I typically send a note with my connection request. And I ask them if I can send them content around my expertise. With each connection request accepted, I reach out and thank them for connecting and see how I can help them. And if I found any good articles or posts that they would be interested in, I try to tag them in a comment.
#2 Ask questions: I love putting polls on LinkedIn and asking questions to understand how I can help my audience. This provides me with content ideas as well as new book ideas.
Social Media is only as good as the effort you put into it. Taking time each day to connect via social media helps me as an author stay in front of my audience and learn new ways I can serve them!
CEO: Lean Effective Talent Strategies and Influence Network Media
Bestselling Author, Hire By Design
PATRICIA ROBERTS
I engage my audience by providing valuable insights about planning for higher education expenses and topics more generally related to post-secondary education and I share a bit about my personal journey in having saved in 529 plans for my child’s educational goals. My primary focus when I am on social media is not on my book. When I am quoted in the press in publications like Parents, Forbes, Yahoo Finance and so on or interviewed on air, I often share clips to give my audience the opportunity to learn more about my mission. I also share examples about how my book is being used in various contexts by re-sharing posts of others who have posted about it. For instance, when one company purchased my book in bulk for its employees so that they could learn about saving for college, I reshared that company’s LinkedIn post.
My advice for others: Regardless of the social media platform you are on, provide valuable insight about your topic without the focus being on your book. When you are interviewed and in the press, share the resulting articles or news segments with your audience and when others share on social media information about your book, share their perspectives.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/patriciarobertssolutions/
instagram.com/Route529Mom/
Route529.com
If you like this blog post, you’ll love our Author Toolkit covering websites, blogging and social media for authors. Check it out!
