Yes, I know there’s a “create page” button right there, silly. That is not the problem. The problem is you, or rather your perception of yourself.

Bear with me for a couple of paragraphs.

Have you ever listened to your own recorded voice? It’s a weird experience. Most people will not recognize their own voice and a good majority will outright hate it. That’s because you are not used to hearing your voice with your ears. What you hear is mostly the vibration going directly to your eardrums after traveling around your skull and, in my case, picking up echoes of vast, empty spaces within…

The same happens with more or less everything else about us. We know who we are, but we don’t have the objective, sensory perception others will have of us. That is the main issue when you set off to create yourFacebook page. It should not be a personal page, it should represent your author persona as you wish it to be perceived by others. In order to do so, even before you click that “create page” button, you need to go through a couple of preliminary steps:

Find your brand

What are you all about in your books? Do you feel like you’re continuing the work of a famous author of the past? Are you creating something entirely new? What makes it unique? Do you identify with one of your characters?

The answers to those questions will help you begin to define your brand. The final result can be as simple as getting an author photo dressed as a steampunk vampire or merely adding a tagline, like “Sci-fi, fantasy, fortuitous humor”.  I chose the latter after trying the vampire thingy and deciding it sucked.

The more time you dedicate to defining and perfecting your brand, the easier it will be for you to come up with your image, the combination of logo, color palette and message you want to convey through your Facebook page. This step can be a toughie, so it’s recommended that you proceed to step two:

Find successful similar brands and study them.

Unless you’ve invented a whole new genre, you can safely assume there are other author pages out there which you can check out and draw inspiration from. Do you write noir thrillers? Mark Dawson’s FB page might put you on the right track.  Maybe you’re into historical fiction with a Christian twist, in which case Author J.B. Richards has a page you may want to explore. Do you write science fiction and fantasy mysteries with unexpected humor? don’t even think of hijacking my style because I will cut you. Nah, just kidding. You can check me out too.

Create your brand material

All right. You’ve figured out what you’re all about. You know how you want to appear before your readers. If you can dabble with computer graphics you can probably conk out a decent logo and a convincing Facebook page banner. It’s best if you get someone else to check your work out and, in case, suggest you hire a professional graphic artist. It shouldn’t be a huge expense but it is definitely a good investment. Also, please have a decent author photograph taken. In the end, your face is part of your image and I assume you’ll be wearing it at book signings and  video interviews. You might find a smooth looking mugshot among your selfies, or more probably something taken by your friend or spouse (or both you lucky totterpot). Please don’t settle for “human-looking”.  If you need a professional photographer find just the right light to  bring out your best, get it done.

Set up your FB page

All right! Time to hit that “Create page” button! Go through the steps to create your page. Select the categories which, quite predictably, are “Author” and “Writer”,  and upload your pics and produce your first post, then sit back and enjoy the result of your hard work and try not to focus too much on that “Zero followers” detail. Followers will come, because now it’s time to…

Link to and from your author website.

Because you do have an author website right? If you don’t, do not panic, Setting one up with Wix or WordPress is fairly easy and, as a plus, you already have your brand and image figured out. Make sure your website displays the links to all the social media channels in which you wish to appear as author. Start sharing your author page posts around and be patient.

All, right, you’re not patient. You want followers, you CRAVE page follows like some social media intoxicated Gollum. And that’s when Facebook’s wicked little algorithm sidles up to you and asks you if you’d like to promote your page

Do NOT advertise.

Never advertise a Facebook page. You may want to promote a post, if you really want it to get extra visibility, but most of the time, because of how dispersive Facebook is, you’re wasting money which you could have spent on that profile photo.

Luckily, I have another article where I walk authors through some very effective strategies to get hundreds of engaged, interested followers without spending.

Let me know if you appreciated this article by liking, commenting, retweeting/sharing and generally clicking all the other clickable social thingies for my posts!

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The post How to Make an Author Page on Facebook appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.

You’re an indie author. You heard someone talking about building a reader base and raking in those likes, so off you go and create your author page on Facebook. Facebook, by the way, barely even has a page category for authors. “Writer” and “Author” are there, but there is no way to let people know what genre you write, or even that you write novels and not cookbooks, or road signs.

Anyway.

There you are with your author page, you’ve picked a nice mug shot and, I’m guessing, the cover art from your latest book for page background. A couple memes and a dozen Amazon links.

And of course you invite all your friends and family. And then you sit and stare at your page stats. 38 page likes in one day.

And the number stays the same the next day and the day after that. Damn relatives and friends, betraying you and not inviting the thousands you deserve. So you look at the competition, and see they have followers in the tens of thousands. What do they do that you don’t? Well money, of course! They must be spending shazillions in Facebook ads. You timidly check the promotion options and hey, that’s not so bad…Facebook promises to get your page out to the world and only charges you a few pennies for each actual like!

Ready to start your first page campaign?

Stop.

Don’t even start down that path. I am not saying it won’t work. Believe me it will. I tried it on my first author page and it worked wonders. In a week I had three thousand likes. I felt so famous. Now my posts and especially my Amazon links would reach my trusted readers.

I went on for a few months like that, thinking I would be getting incredible sales anytime now. I didn’t.

None of my posts were getting much engagement. Not even my absolutely hilarious memes. (I have a very high opinion of my sense of humor. The mere thought makes me laugh every time.)

Three thousand followers and maybe five thumbs up for my awesome posts. Not a single link click on “buy my book” posts. Not even when I had a freebie giveaway.

What was happening was that I was not targeting people interested in me as an author or in my books. Despite spending hours refining my audience and reach, I was not reaching the people who click on something they like.

I was reaching a lot of click farms. Click farms are batches of accounts which, through affiliate marketing, get a small portion of money back for liking paid links.

When I realized that, I deleted my page and started from scratch. This time I vowed to never use Facebook page ads again. Instead, I created a second page dedicated to people who like famous authors and genres close to my own writing style. A page dedicated not to buyers, but to fans. I write sci-fi and fantasy humor, so I made a page called “The BookLover’s Guide to the Galaxy” or “BLG2G”. I dedicated some time to that page and watched it grow quickly, from a few dozen to nearly two thousand followers. I never spent a single cent on it.

Oh, and I never invited any of my family members in there either. Those who liked the page simply discovered it because I shared some of the stuff on my personal page.

In the meantime I created my new page, and started sharing some of my material (never buy-me links) to BLG2G. Some followers trickled from there to my author page, where they were able to “discover” my writing style. Just a few dozen, that’s true, but their response to my posts was amazing. Their shares brought a few more likes. I looked at the profiles and saw they were active in many groups dedicated to sci-fi, fantasy and funny stuff.

And here’s the next move: I joined those groups. As my author page where possible.

Whenever I posted something which was in line with the topic of one of those groups, I shared it there. If you are careful and pick the right content, usually a meme, a quote or an interesting link, you have a 99% chance of getting your post approved.

What happens next is better than any Facebook boost: I got likes, hundreds of likes, and next to them, a little button saying “invite”.

That’s right. If you share as your page and someone likes the post, you can invite them to like your page. About 20% – 30% of the people who liked your post will be inclined to accept the invitation. You usually retain 80% of those likes.

I now have about 1,800 page likes on facebook.com/authorlahey, about half of what I originally had with paid likes. But the response is absolutely incredible. Each one of my posts gets hundreds of likes and tens of shares. My average post reach easily hits the thousand mark, and I’ve had a few posts go viral and exceed 300’000 views.

In exchange for this, as a sign of respect for my tribe, I don’t flood them with “buy my book” Amazon links, also because good ‘ole Facebook catches those posts and throttles their visibility. Instead I give insights on my writing, share my absolutely outrageous sense of humor hahahaha, and, of course, some of my free short stories from my author website. As a result, when I’m not reaping invites from the groups I get a steady flow of new followers every day.

In conclusion, fewer is better, get engaged followers, not paid clicks, but make sure your content is worth their attention. Your tribe will reward by liking, sharing and, yes, actually buying your books.

If, while doing all this, you actually remembered to write some.

hahahahahaha.

The basis for this article comes from the Rule 300 concept. You can find more about Rule 300 here.

Don’t forget you can get a free short story just by signing up to my newsletter. You will also be invited to virtual book fairs and get the opportunity to promote your book for FREE and even win a $25 Amazon gift card.

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The post Paying Facebook for page likes? appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.