# Which SOCIAL MEDIA provides the Biggest Responses when Promoting your Books?



## Mikeyboy_esq (Aug 30, 2017)

Which SOCIAL MEDIA platform (e.g., FB, LI, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.) gives you the biggest number of responses when promoting your books?  Also, what kind of books do you write (Fiction, Nonfiction, both)?




I'll go first... 
I get the best results from LINKEDIN, and both of my books are NONFICTION.  I base my answer on: 
1) the number of likes/comments my posts receive, and 
2) the number of times my books' website gets hits from LinkedIn vs. other social media sites.


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## Andrew78 (Nov 1, 2017)

For my works of non-fiction, an italian publications titled "come pubblicare un libro" (how to publish a book) Andrea Mucciolo, definitely FB, and I measure the success by the actual selling. I've been also a publisher in italy, at that time you could still go in Facebook pages and see the followers, so I added people interested in publishing, nowadays I guess it would be harder.


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## moderan (Nov 2, 2017)

Fiction. Facebook by leagues. Twitter gets me reads on my journalistic stuff, as does Linked-In, but doesn't sell a thing. Lee Cullens has been kind enough to pimp my collection for weeks, and nada. Sales _surge into the tens_ when I advertise on FB. I don't do any other social media other than the occasional wordpress blog.
Go a new book coming out in a couple of weeks, and two for Xmas. We'll see if that data applies.


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## Jason (Nov 14, 2017)

moderan said:


> Sales _surge into the tens_ when I advertise on FB.



What type of advertising are you doing on FB?  Are you boosting or going into sponsored ads?


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## moderan (Nov 15, 2017)

Sponsored ads for the most part. I've run ads for books and for my annual Xmas songs, which I peddle shamelessly.
The anthology due out in the next ten days is tied to a gofundme, which spikes sporadically, and which we basically use to collect advance orders (see sig).. We just did the cover reveal and that gained a couple hundred bucks and 500 eyes.
Our break-even is 500 copies -- we're halfway there.


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## creative_mind (Dec 5, 2017)

:hi: I would say that it depends on the target market you are trying to reach, but for sure social media platforms are a must when promoting your products. To have success you would have to explore which platform will contribute most. I came across a piece covering and comparing different social media platforms, which might be helpful to distinguish which platform will be helpful for you. :wink:
My personal experience showed me that the best sources for book ads are Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. At least, these are the main ways I find myself getting influenced by an ad and then buy the book. 
Good luck!


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## tgerencer (Apr 30, 2018)

How big is your FB following? I've heard publishers want to know the size of your social media followings before they'll buy a book, particularly twitter. Yet people on this thread say Twitter doesn't help them nearly as much as FB. Does it make sense to try to build a huge Facebook following? I'm wondering how big your FB following is to be selling lots of books with it.


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## tgerencer (Apr 30, 2018)

And if you're not relying on your own friends list, how many people do you try to reach with each ad?


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## moderan (May 5, 2018)

tgerencer said:


> How big is your FB following? I've heard publishers want to know the size of your social media followings before they'll buy a book, particularly twitter. Yet people on this thread say Twitter doesn't help them nearly as much as FB. Does it make sense to try to build a huge Facebook following? I'm wondering how big your FB following is to be selling lots of books with it.



You're probably not going to sell 'lots of books' through social media. What Facebook and Twitter can do for you is to increase the size of your network, which can help make it easier to find contacts to publish, edit, and so on, the books.

I have around 1200 FB 'friends' and @700 Twitter followers. Most of those are other writers or musicians. That's hardly an ideal target audience, and almost everybody just ignores those aggregators and book ad groups. I've spoken to people with more friends and/or followers, and their experience jibes with mine.
But sales from direct FB ads have in the past doubled my sales for short periods of time, and they definitely impact crowdfunding efforts. Twitter does very little. Once in a while someone writes me that they found out about my things from Twitter, but that seems minor. I advertise there anyway as it's free, and one book sale is one i didn't have before.


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## Ralph Rotten (May 6, 2018)

I've had the best success with discussion forums and Goodreads.
Remember that posts on forums stay for many years, and are viewed by hundreds of people.  
Dunno about Goodreads lately, since they got bought by Amazon.  I maintain a profile, but it doesn't seem like the book-central place it once was.

I don't use FB much for marketing.  I have a few thousand followers on twitter, but as Moderan pointed out, a large portion of those are fellow authors.


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## MatthewSteele (Jun 21, 2018)

Has anyone tried instagram or Snapchat or one of the younger trend social medias? I'm thinking of getting into them but wondering if it's worth it.


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## DeClarke (Jun 22, 2018)

I did a promotion thing for my book of FB once and got about 50 likes, a few laughs (which I assumed to be people who didn't like it) and 5 loves. Twitter, I get two likes, maybe one retweet. So I'm going to go with Facebook for now. If you present something that catches the reader, you will definitely get some responses. When I did that one promotional thing, I only used about 50 dollars and got that response.

I'm curious to see how much of a response I can get with four times that amount.


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## DeClarke (Jun 22, 2018)

MatthewSteele said:


> Has anyone tried instagram or Snapchat or one of the younger trend social medias? I'm thinking of getting into them but wondering if it's worth it.



If you are a picture-taking or picture embedding kind of guy, Instagram might work for you. Snap chat I am completely unfamiliar with.


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## APM1211 (Jul 10, 2018)

Great topic and discussion! Very informative for a new author. I’m going to start on LinkedIn and FB and see where it goes! Thank you!


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## Bayview (Jul 10, 2018)

DeClarke said:


> I did a promotion thing for my book of FB once and got about 50 likes, a few laughs (which I assumed to be people who didn't like it) and 5 loves. Twitter, I get two likes, maybe one retweet. So I'm going to go with Facebook for now. If you present something that catches the reader, you will definitely get some responses. When I did that one promotional thing, I only used about 50 dollars and got that response.
> 
> I'm curious to see how much of a response I can get with four times that amount.



Do you have any idea how many (if any) of those responses translated into book sales?

I think too often we get caught up with thinking that a response to our _promotion_ is what we want, but really, there's only one response that helps us pay for the expense of the advertising. If people don't buy the product, what's the use of the ad?


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## Ralph Rotten (Jul 10, 2018)

Bayview said:


> Do you have any idea how many (if any) of those responses translated into book sales?
> 
> I think too often we get caught up with thinking that a response to our _promotion_ is what we want, but really, there's only one response that helps us pay for the expense of the advertising. If people don't buy the product, what's the use of the ad?




Amazon's advertising actually gives you the sales stats.
But the times I tried it I lost money.


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