How to Increase Facebook Engagement Without Paying a Buck #WWow #WritingAdvice

So, you've probably noticed all the restrictions Facebook has on authors pages. As a newbie to the social network realm, I decided to do a little research. I'm still in the research phase, but wanted to share what I've done to try to figure it all out.

Mind you, I'm not a statistician or a numbers person. I am a people person and I'm analyzing the interactions I've had on social networks. 

First, I had a few questions. I spend a lot of time on social media and I wondered which place is more valuable. I could spend MONTHS researching this question alone, but I've come to this conclusion (as many of you have). It's all about FACEBOOK and how we utilize it. 

I've also found that Facebook is the place to connect with readers, whereas Twitter is the place to connect with other authors/publishers/agents.

Here is an interesting info-graphic about the average amount of minutes spent on social media. (Taken from The Wall Street Journal)

This made me sad, as I've really taken a liking to Google+. Again, you can see Facebook is where it's at.

So, with this information, I've learned that we need to engage ourselves more on Facebook. BUT how do we do that when Facebook controls who sees our posts and when? 

Based on what I've heard from other users, I tried some experiements out in one week. 

A little about my Author Page. As of this post, I have 856 followers. Not bad for a newbie author. What IS bad is the amount of views my posts get. With that many followers, I have an average of 25 views per post. NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

In ONE WEEK, here are my most important variables:

The post with the most engagement was a Picture/Quote/Oustide Amazon Link receiving 68 views and 1 share. SHARING seems to be what's important here, because normally a link to an outside source brought down the views.

 Post by Melinda Dozier.

Just as a side note, the second most engagement was a PICTURE of a sexy man. Yeah, yeah, I can't help myself. I have noticed that sexy man pics tend to get a lot more views, though, so that's why I'm including it.

Post by Melinda Dozier.

Other top views included: 

A simple post with only a comment (43 views)

Sharing a FB link (45 views)

Funny picture (45 views)

Also noticeable was that all my higher viewed posts were "liked' or "commented" on. 

The post with the least engagement was a share of a friend's post with a resounding SEVEN views.

As a final experiment, today I asked my followers to comment on a post as part of a FB experiment. After 7 hours, I've had 28 comments & 6 likes. With this post, I've had 473 views and expect more. So, COMMENT, PEOPLE, to help each other out. 

OVERALL ANALYSIS:

To have more engagement/views:

More comments = more engagement (duh!)

Use pictures (don't just link to the picture)

Others share your post

Share interesting posts from other FB users

MORE ANALYSIS to come!

Melinda Dozier is a contemporary romance author who loves to spend time on social media. Her two books, BREAKING THE RULES from Crimson Romance and LOVE AND OTHER GAMES from Swoon Romance have been category best sellers on Amazon. You can find her at www.melindadozier.com. 

WWoW! Use Tweepi!

Tweepi is my favorite tool to use with Twitter.

Tweepi helps you make sense of your Twitter social graph with stats. You will be able to learn about the number of people you haven't followed back, the number of people who aren't following you, search people who your friends follow and much more. It makes it simple to manage your account by doing the following things much easier than manually through twitter...

FLUSH UNFOLLOWERS

This tool allows you to unfollow users who aren't following you back.

RECIPROCATE

This tool helps you find all the users that follow you, but you don't follow back. Then you can follow them back with a click of a button.

CLEAN UP INACTIVE FOLLOWERS

This feature allows you to unfollow users who no longer keep active twitter accounts. It's likely that you're following more than a few hundred people on Twitter. You must've noticed that many of these users either don't engage in conversations, never retweet anybody, or simply just ramble about nonsense stuff all day long (no links to useful content whatsoever!). You can use Tweepi cleanup tool to filter these people out and unfollow them. The Clean-up tool enables you to filter out those inactive and unwanted tweeps by letting you check out their details and decide for yourself!

FIND NEW FOLLOWERS

This feature gives you a resource for finding users with similar interests. The most common way to find and add people with the same interests as you, is to find a popular user within your area of interest and add people who follow these known users.

Tweepi helps you analyze and filter tweeps out -the geeky way,

with numbers in a table- based on their activity and sociability. 

How do you start using Tweepi?

It's only 5 simple steps.

1. Go to http://tweepi.com/
2. Choose "login" (to start using Tweepi for free which is all you need)
3. Enter your username/email with your password and click "Authorize app"
4. Create a Tweepi account with your first and last name and your e-mail
5. Start using Tweepi!

The first time you go through your account, it may take awhile but as you then update it every few weeks, it

becomes less of a chore. You'll find it worthwhile to create a SAFE LIST so you never accidentally unfollow someone you want to follow regardless of any stats. For example, you might be following a celebrity who doesn't follow people but you won't want to unfollow them. You might be surprised though at how many people you follow that aren't  following you and vice versa. Tweepi gives you the tools to make your Twitter account be exactly what you want. Make it work for you using Tweepi.

Then, get back to it...

Keep Writing!

Paloma

#WWoW! Just Link It.

Let's talk about LINKING. My rule of thumb is when in doubt, just LINK IT! What am I talking about? Really, everything. All of your social networking accounts, blog, website, tumblr - literally everything - should be linked.  Because then you are doing the work once while your impact is huge. It's that easy.

Are there accounts you shouldn't link? Nope but there may be some more geared towards different types of posts. It's still okay to link them because there is always overlap and as long as you aren't spamming out oodles and oodles of promo, your goal should be to extend your reach (and sell more books).

Now time to get to work!

First and foremost, have your blog connected into your social media sites, particularly facebook and twitter. This means each time a post goes up on your blog, it automatically goes to these programs for you. Here's promo without anymore work than setting up your single post. You can set up these links in the SETTINGS account of your blog. Blogger allows you to link with Google+ also and I recommend you do it even if you do nothing else with Google+ (yet).

Link your blog to Networked Blogs on facebook. You can search for the app on facebook and select SYNDICATE to connect your blog. Here is another way for potential readers to find your blog and follow you. It is becoming more and more popular so jump on it! Doing this also means your blog posts are automatically sent out via facebook. If you have an author's page, you can even choose to have them sent there instead of your profile.

Other TOP TWO places to link your blog (that have a bit more to it than just linking):

Triberr - Build your reach exponentially. See my previous post with specifics on this site. This is a bit more involved than just linking though completely worth it.

Goodreads - Thousands of readers use this site. If you don't create an author's page and utilize it by linking, you are missing a big opportunity for networking regardless of the horror stories we see with reviews on goodreads. Check in about twice a week to see if you have any messages, reviews, etc. Most importantly, link your blog to post to your author page! See mine here.

Another place to link your blog is in search engines that give potential readers more places to find you. Most have widgets for you to add to your blog but some just simply place you into a database to be more searchable. My favorites are: BlogNation - BlogTrain - Blog Lovin' - Writing Blogs - Linky - AuthorsDb. Be sure to set up all your links in each of these - most require your blog rss feed so have that handy - so each time you post in one place, your information spreads out across the web.

Finally, make a list of all social networking sites you belong to or any on-line accounts.

Here are some of the most common: facebook - twitter - google+ - LinkedIn - tumblr - stumbleupon - YouTube - Picasa. Go into the SETTINGS options in each of these and be sure you have linked as many of them together (and with your blog!) as possible. There are other sites you might choose to use and regardless of which ones you choose, just be sure to link them.

Remember every time you link it, you reduce your work in half while doubling your reach.

I don't suggest you spend hours a day on these sites.

In fact, linking your accounts means your time spent on marketing decreases even though you are visible in more places. Once these accounts are established (& LINKED!!), you will need to do little more than your regular blog posts. A few of these places I mentioned take extra maintenance but it's minimal and worth it.

How does this help your business?

You will advertise to a wider audience as you increase your reach. You will write more because your time spent marketing will decrease. It's a simple case of Win-Win.

So, what are you waiting for? Just Link It!

And Keep Writing!

Paloma

#WWoW! Feed140 Maximizes Author Efficiency.

WWoW! Here's a simple recommendation to simplify your on-line life... what more could you ask for?

Here's another suggestion of an on-line tool to try. It's an application to store a playlist of tweets that are sent out intermittently throughout my day without me needing to actually send them. BOTTOM LINE: Feed140 allows writers to maximize your Social Presence with minimal time investment. I’m telling you about it because it’s another way I save time on promoting. And less time promoting is more time writing!

Feed140 is a “social network marketing efficiency tool that delivers a constant stream of updates to your followers automatically” with minimal effort on your part.

• You create the tweets. 
• You set the delivery schedule. 
• You control how frequently Feed140 publishes tweets from your playlist. 
• You can have Feed140 deliver a certain number of tweets each day from your playlist. 
• You can also add your RSS feed(s) to a general queue so it automatically filters those in daily as well. 
• You can have Feed140 ‘mix in’ updates from your playlist as a percentage of the total updates from your main queue.

However you choose to use it, your promotional messages are delivered automatically while being certain you don’t overwhelm your followers. It’s great! Feed140 lets you create a series of high-quality tweets that are then delivered over time without another thought.

STEP ONE: Playlist.

Spend some time composing High-Quality, Attention-Grabbing Tweets that are Relevant. Creating solid content for your social network updates should take some thoughtful consideration. You will spend 20ish minutes each week to update your playlist of tweets. Here’s some ideas: Provide links. Display your work. Highlight your strengths. Use messages you want to reiterate consistently to your followers. Advertise your books. Promote your blog features. Distribute buy links. Promote your publisher. Link YouTube book trailers or other videos.

The tweets in your playlist can be published in sequence or mixed on shuffle play so your tweets are sprinkled about in random order.

STEP TWO: Queue.

Aside from the one playlist you are allowed with a FREE ACCOUNT, you have a queue. The queue is the direct feed into your twitter account – you fill the queue with both your PLAYLIST and RSS FEEDS.

This means you can add your RSS feeds from your blog, website or any of your Social Bookmarking Accounts (i.e. Digg, Google Reader, StumbleUpon, Tumblr). You can connect any or all of these to Feed140. Then each time you click the Digg button, star an article in Google Reader, or give a site the thumbs-up in StumbleUpon, it will automatically be added to your Feed140 queue and be delivered based on the criteria you chose for delivery. Your queue will fill up fast with interesting and entertaining content for your followers.

THIS IS PRETTY COOL. Pre-load date-specific messages with the ‘Scheduled Updates’queue. You can use the Feed140 ‘Scheduled Updates’ queue to send special promotions and book releases that are date-specific. You simply enter tweets into your queue and select the date (and even the time) you want the tweets to be delivered. Feed140 takes care of the rest. Tada! Your own personal twitter assistant.

THIS IS IMPORTANT. 
This does not take the place of other interactive tweets! Twitter is about CONNECTING, not just SELLING. I consider my Feed140 playlist my baseline – an auto-marketing program that spreads the message of my product (my books) and provides links to my store (my blog and website). Feed140 allows you to deliver a consistent base of content on your Twitter account BUT it is only one-step as it maintains your visibility to your followers even on those days you don’t have time to log in. Your playlists will never replace authentic live interaction, but their value is to provide a solid base of consistent content.

THIS IS NOT SO IMPORTANT... but I thought I should mention it… You can pay for prefabricated playlists but it really isn’t necessary. Creating enough content to keep your audience engaged might be challenging but we’re creative people – you can do it yourself. However, if you should choose to, these playlists are set in categories that give you the edge as a thought leader in a certain niche.

Use your Twitter (plus facebook coming soon) more efficiently. Give your twitter account a base with solid messages to followers with just a few minutes each week. It’s really very simple.

Keep writing!

Paloma

#WWoW! Get Alert!

Today, I want to share two different types of ALERTS. It's techy stuff but the simplest of simple. BOTH are VERY GOOD RESOURCES but for two different reasons. Read on!

First, Google Alerts.
As authors -pen name or not- we are in the public eye. And now that we're there, it's good to know what's being said about us in the cyber-world. You can subscribe for alerts from Google based on criteria you establish. They send you email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your criteria. It takes just a few minutes to enter a search query you want to monitor. Be careful not to make it too complicated. Have an alert for your name, book names or series names. EASY and WORTH IT.

Second, Author Alarms.
You can subscribe for an alarm each time one of your books becomes available. Good way for you to track its availability BUT EVEN BETTER... promote this to your readers and fans. Encourage them to sign up so they will be able to purchase your new releases right away. Then no matter how busy you get, your readers will always know when your next book is ready for them to read.

Now go on and get alert. And then get back to your writing!

Paloma
Paloma Beck is a Romance Author living a life of contradiction... she's a happily married carpooling mom writing erotic romance. It's almost naughty! Paloma writes full-time and has three series in the works with others on the fringes. Her books span both the contemporary and paranormal romance genres. She dabbles in vampires, witches, menage, spanking and bondage - all in her books, of course. 

You can read about her books and also connect with her on multiple social networking platforms. Paloma is always willing to talk about her books, answer questions and hear your thoughts on her characters.


Paloma is committed to helping new writers and demonstrates her commitment as a volunteer staff member of MFRWorg and as a contributing blogger on Writer's Words of Wisdom.

#WWoW! The Ugly Side of Using a Pen Name

The following article was originally posted November 2012 on my Not Enough Time in the Day blog. I've updated it to reflect what had happened to myself and my fellow author friends since then. ~Tammy

The very first post I did for our Writer's Words of Wisdom group was about using a pen name or not. In that article, I pretty much said the decision to use a pen name is a personal one and is made for a variety of reasons. Writing in different genres/subgenres was the biggest reason for me, but for others it was to keep their private life separate from their author life. Unfortunately, for a few authors, having a pen name hasn't given them the protection they desired.

This week, another one of my author friends had her job security threatened by her employer. Apparently the employer isn't too keen on my friend's choice to write erotic romance.  As a writer of erotica and erotic romance myself, I know first hand the prejudice we face so it's no surprise my friend decided to go with another name to do her writing.  The shocker to all of us was that it wasn't enough to protect her from possibly losing her job.

Earlier in the year one of my dear friends also had her job threatened by someone who went out of her way to find her using her pen name to write erotic romance. In fact, this one jealous, vindictive soul took it upon herself to break company policy and use the work computers to do her "investigative" work. That part didn't come out until after my friend had to meet with the board of directors of the company to determine if she was in fact doing anything that would reflect poorly on them or their business. They UNANIMOUSLY found my friend had indeed protected them and kept everything separate. The matter was dropped until they found out the "tattle tale" had been using company time to dig up dirt on my friend. 

The proof was overwhelming against her and after a write up in her personnel file and a counseling session from Human Resources , she decided to quit before they investigated any further in her own bad behavior.  Goes to show you the old proverb is true. "He (or she!) who lives in a glass house shouldn't throw stones."

Thankfully, I have an employer who is supportive of my writing as long as I keep it separate and not promote on work time or post my covers on the wall over my desk. Do a few of my long term client's know about my books? Yes they do and they are happy for me too. Unfortunately, many of my author friends don't have those people in their corners. 

How can you or any other author protect yourselves from this happening to you?  That's a tough one. Writer's these days have to not only crank out the books, they have to promote themselves and their work. This entails using social media like Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. It also means getting your own blog and website. I've talked about this before, but here's another twist. You have to do all of this using your pen name and DON'T promote any kind of link between it and your real name.

Yes, that's the exactly the opposite of what I'm doing right now, but I'm not surrounded by people in my "evil day job" who will complain to my bosses about what I do in my private life.  Other's are not so lucky in their work life or their family lives.

If you write subject matter that can be labeled offensive by your employer, fellow employees, church groups, school, family members, nosy neighbors, the PTA...well...keep your alter egos completely separate. Don't talk about what you write in front of these people. It's not worth the headache, getting kicked out of the social groups, or even losing your job.

There are a hell of a lot more people out there to introduce your alter ego to. So go ahead and create the social media accounts and blogs to promote and share your work. You will build a following and maybe even those folks who publicly ridicule you, will in fact be your biggest fans. That's where you get the last laugh!

Until next week,
~Tammy

Learn More About Tammy

Tammy Dennings Maggy is a multi-published poet and erotic romance author with Siren and Sassy Vixen Publishing. Her writing explores many facets of romance from ultimate betrayal to finding your soul mate. Her poetry serves as a companion to her novels and has inspired entire series all on their own. Tammy and her alter egos Lia Michaels and Stephanie Ryan make up the core authors at Sassy Vixen Publishing and together they've created the shared world series Temptations Resort. Look for the first books in that series to come out later this year.

Now happily married to her own Muse and soul mate, she continues to live her dream and act as secretary to all her characters demanding to have their stories told.

Check out:

Tammy's Website

Tammy's Blog

Tammy's Books on Bookstrand, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords,  and iTunes

Sassy Vixen Publishing

Friend Tammy on Facebook

Like Tammy's Facebook Author Page

Friend Tammy on Goodreads

Friend Tammy on Pinterest

Follow Tammy on Twitter

Find Tammy's Videos on Youtube

#WWoW! Let's Get Pinning!

Let's talk about Pinterest. 

It's not just for fun. It can be another FREE social networking tool for authors. Start with the basics... open an account and set up your profile (being sure to add your links). Install the PIN IT button onto your browser toolbar. That's it for set up and now you're ready! That easy? Yep.

Now you get to have some fun but we're going to call it work so... time to get to work!

Create some Boards.

 

Just CLICK on the +Add button along the top. Choose Create a Board. Name it. Categorize it. CLICK Create Board. Some good choices are things that interest you (check mine out for ideas) and that can tell readers more about you as an author and as a person. NOTE that you can always add more boards at any time. Some ideas include a Books Board, Guest Post Board, Features Board and a Review Board. You can even create a board for each of your books or series, published or WIPs. Add a board for important quotes and potential character ideas.

Add Pins.

There are lots of ways to do this. First, you can use that same +Add button along the top to add pins from the web or to upload some from your computer. You can use your Pin It button to add any photos from any website. You can also browse the general Pinterest site by clicking on the word Pinterest in the top center of the screen, browse and re-pin. Put some fun pins on your boards - don't worry right away about perfection.

Be cautious of copyright in regards to photos you pin! It's best to use photos you own or. if not, be sure the original source is listed in the pin's description. You can verify the source link is there by clicking on the pin and viewing the pin's details.

How does this help your business?

You will advertise to a wider audience. Check out this board with more information on the benefits of Pinterest.

AUTHORS who use Pinterest well (& each a bit differently):
Karen Cote   |  Lisa Carlisle  |   Rayne Hall

Here's a Checklist. Be sure to follow these tips:
1. Pin all your blog posts and books with links back to your blog or purchase location.
2. Click that little "tweet" button every time you add an important pin. These pins will get shared -through a vast network- and should bring people back to you.
3. Include the link to your Pinterest Profile wherever you include all other social networking links. It's another outlet for you to get recognition.

Here's a Unique Board -Writer's Resources- with lots of good pins for authors. You can create engaging boards like this too.

So, what are you waiting for? Pin It!

And Keep Writing!

Paloma

Conducting Yourself Online #WWOW

Today I am talking about how to conduct yourself online. This is an older post I did a few months back, but thought I'd share again.

What's On Your Mind, Lacey?

Do you really want to know? Do I really want to say? Wait...which account am I on?

Social media sites want to know how we are, what we are up to, etc. And we want to share this. But before you share, take a moment to really think about what you are in fact sharing.

If you're an author, than you obviously know that you're more than just an author. Maybe you work another

job, married, kids, and such. Yes, you want to connect with you readers. But before you post your political views or strong opinions, take a moment to think about how it might effect your career.

Reader's don't really want to know your views on gun control or which president you voted for. They don't want to know you had a fight with your husband or anything like that. Sure, sharing a cute moment with your kids or a new recipe you're trying will engage them. But those are positive things. Yes, that's the key, stay upbeat and positive, even if you've been on a rejection cycle and you really just want to scream and cry to the world.

I have a personal social media accounts as well as ones for my pen name. I keep things very separate. Since becoming an author, I really think about what I say. Once you hit tweet or post, its there. Someone can copy it in a moment and you'll never know. I find even on my personal accounts, I watch what I say as well.

This isn't to say I might have shared something at some point that might have been questionable, just remember, how you portray yourself can effect your career. And readers are connecting with you because they like your writing.

See ya next week!