A Quick Guide to Facebook

Marketing for Authors by Steven Aitchison

V 1.0

I wrote this guide as I am a member of a group on Facebook, which is full of amazing authors who have spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours, writing books and words of wisdom for years. However, authors, are not the type of people who like to push their words of wisdom onto others, and think marketing is a dirty word :)

Well, I have news for you: you are being extremely selfish by not marketing your words. People need to hear what you have written, people need to feel what you have felt and how you've managed to heal your own life with your experience, and your stories, your fiction will help others. It is your duty as an author to share your message as far around the world as possible.

It's time for a different mindset. If I were to say to you 'Listen, I have the cure for cancer, but I don't really want to market it or push it, I like to stay in the back ground and not really be noticed, but I love the research I am doing and the work I am doing helping friends and family.' What would you say? You'd slap me round the face with a wet fish. Honestly your words are gold to someone and they need to be heard.

So marketing yourself, your books and your products is not about being pushy it's about helping others. If people don't want to buy then that's cool, but the people that do buy will become fans for life if you market yourself the right way.

Okay onto helping you use Facebook to help you market yourself.

What Readers want When someone visits your page for the very first time, they may not know who you are, they may have found your post or page from a close friend, or one of your posts went viral and they ended up on your page.

The first thing they see is a ton of posts from you at book signings, your new book, people talking about your book, videos of you being interviewed. That brand new reader is apt to think 'Eh, well that's all very good, she/he seems like a nice person, but what's in it for me?'

That's the question that new readers of your Facebook page are thinking when they come to your page 'What's in it for me?'

Readers want to know a LITTLE more about you, but they also want your thoughts and wisdom. So make sure you are giving them something to think about as soon as they reach your page.

Yes this is all about self promotion, but it has to be done the right way, it has to be a win/win for you and the reader. Make them a fan first and market to them later.

So your page should have bite sized bits of wisdom, something that is going to make the new readers sit up and notice and want to share your posts and by far the best way to do this is through image quotes, but we'll get onto that later.

The 5 second rule

Think about how you visit Facebook. Usually you see hundreds of posts in your own timeline from friends, family and people you have followed. At best you check their posts on your phone, tablet or computer and give it your attention for about 5 seconds. If it grabs your attention straight away, you might clicks on the link and read more, or watch the video that's been shared. So you've got 5 seconds to capture their attention. A photo of you at a book signing is not really interesting to them is it, but a photo with a profound saying or quote is interesting, because it speaks to them. An image quote captures attention immediately due to the image, then captures more of their attention with the quote itself. If that quote can stir emotions in someone or getting them saying to themselves 'yeah, that is so true' what do you think they will do? They will share it with their friends, as it only takes a few seconds to do.

We are a very fickle bunch, and flit from one person to the next without thinking, so make sure your posts capture their attention, and more importantly capture their emotions. Again, more about that to come, but you get what I am saying here, it's not all about you, it's about what the reader gets from your page that counts.

Kerb Appeal In the UK estate agents talk about a house having 'Kerb Appeal', meaning; what does the house look like from the street.

The above photo shows you what I mean here. The house in 2009 doesn't look very appealing, but after a little love and attention in 2014 it looks much better.

So it is with your header and your profile image.

Make them as inviting as possible or as memorable as possible. Remember most of your new readers are passers by, and don't know you, so make your header image inviting. Check some of these for some memorable ones:

These are memorable and really invite you into the page to check out more, why? Because you know the person has taken the time and effort to create a great header, chances are their content will be good as well.

My own header image is not particularly memorable but it tells you exactly what the page is about (well, kinda!).

Keywords and your about page Your about page should have two things:

A link to your money site and keywords that tell Google and the rest of the search engines what your page is about.

In your about section have a link to your money site at the very top, this is the part that will show on your page in the about section.

Also in your about section where you get to right more about yourself and your page. Put as may keywords in as possible so that Facebook knows how to categorize you. For example I have:

About

Positive Affirmations With a Difference => https://www.99PositiveAffirmations.com/

Mission

The main purpose of this fan page is to help people around the world to believe in themselves and know that they can change any aspect of thier life if they truly wish to by changing their thoughts, beliefs, habits and actions. I would like to help in some small way by provifing the tools and resources to help you to achieve that

You have to know that you are remarkable, truly you are, and if I can help you believe in yourself then my mission is complete.

*** Become an Early Riser==> http://advancedearlyriser.com/

Company Overview

Change Your Thoughts was created by Steven Aitchison to help millions of people around the world to better themselves in any way they can.

Description

If you are interested in Personal Development, Success, Physical and Mental Health, Meditation, Meditation Music, Motivation, Happiness, Wellness, Yoga, Manifesting, Consciousness, Relationships, Spirituality or Law of Attraction then you will love our fan page. Enjoy :)

I am not a therapist and cannot offer advice about your situation or life, and the images and quotes from myself and others are for thought provoking entertainment only. Please do not write to me for any kind of advice about your life situation, as I am truly not qualified and you should seek professional help instead.

Copyright Notice: Most images on our page are licensed for our use. We also attempt to attribute all quotes and comments to credit the authors. If you feel an attribution is required for something in our content, please contact us.

Some of the other images we use are from others websites or Facebook pages. Where this is the case we have done our best to attribute the owners of these images.

If you wish to use any of our images please feel free to download them for use on your own page or website as long as attribution links are kept intact.

You can see I have put all my keywords in the description section of the page. You don't need to do that and instead can liberally sprinkle your keywords throughout your about section.

How to edit your about section

Dead easy, just hover your mouse pointer over your about section on your page and you'll see a little edit symbol, actually it's a little pencil (quite clever of facebook eh!).

When you get on the edit page you will see a list of little descriptors to edit.

Make sure you fill these in as much as possible and don't leave out the important ones.

In the Short Description field, enter your money site web address, this could be a link to your best selling t-shirt, your book on amazon, your grannies favourite recipe, anything you want.

In the long description field enter your keywords and more about yourself and your products.

Mission - I think this is important and should be filled in. What do you stand for, what do you wish to acheive by sharing your page with the world - do tell all.

Products - List every single product you have here with a link to all of them

Website - Your second money site. Facebook will show both your short description and your website oin your main page, so this is important, it could be a link to your blog.

okay time to get to what to post, when to post and why to post.

Your posts Your posts are crucial if you want your page to grow organically, and it will if you have great content. So what are the best types of posts?

Check this out from socialbaker.com

That immediately tells you that photos are by far the best types of posts to put on your page. Why is that?

Well, we live in a society where we only have a short time to take new information in and we want as much information as possible. We spoke about this in the 5 second rule section, you only have 5 seconds or less to grab someone's attention and the best way to do that is by using a photo.

Photos immediately tell a story and have the ability to capture your heart, your mind and more importantly your attention.

Status updates are great for your personal page as your friends really care about you, but they're not good on your page. People don't want to take the time to read on your page. So what to do: combine an image with a good quote.

That image stirs an emotion deep inside and the quote also stirs an image. So the rule is capture their hearts and emotions with the image first and then deepen that connection with a quote. That image takes about 3-4 seconds to take in, so it's got everything you need to capture a passer's by attention.

So image quotes are an amazing way to get more readers, get more likes, and get more comments and really blow your page up.

How do you make the images?

First get an account with somewhere like DollarPhotoClub, there's a ton of places where you can get stock images. I used to use istockphoto.com and fotolia.com, but they kept putting their prices up and their subscription charges up, DollarPhotoClub lets you deposit money and you just buy the images when you need them, no time limit, which is great. (BTW, that is an affiliate link I have, however would NOT recommend them if they weren't any good. I have spent over $3000 on images online and they are by far the best for value).

Secondly look for great quotes. I love socialbakers.com for finding images, but now facebook has given you a great tool for checking out others facebook images.

Go to your 'insights' on your page > at the bottom you will see 'Pages to watch'. Just add up to 10 great pages you like yourself and that are in a similar field as yours. When you added a page you can click on that page inside your 'pages to watch' and their best posts for the week will be shown. Pretty bloody awesome if you ask me.

Then when you have found some great images with great quotes. Copy it. I know that's a dirty word, but we all do it and it's no different for authors, we all get our inspiration from somewhere. As long as you give attribution to the person who made the quote then you're cool. I am guilty of not putting attribution links on all of my quotes as I sometimes can't find the author, but that is going to change as I have been pulled up a few times about it. However, it's good practice to put the authors name in the quote on your image.

http://mbsy.co/8FdQBhttp://mbsy.co/8FdQB

What you are doing here when you are looking at someone else page for great image quotes is seeing how it connected with their readers. Look for posts that have higher than average shares for that particular page, then you'll know it connected with their readers at a deeper level. You're not stealing as the person you're copying from has already used a quote from someone else, you're just seeing what captured their readers emotions. As an example the image quote above has been copied hundreds of times across hundreds of pages:

If you have written several books, then take quotes from your books to post on your page, that is by far the easiest way to do it. A great example of someone doing this is Annie Kagan who wrote the book 'The Afterlife of Billy Fingers'. Here are some of her image quotes:

Annie's page is actually a good example of how an author should promote their page, so please check her out to get ideas for yourself at:

https://www.facebook.com/AfterlifeBillyFingers

To make the images you can use an online photo editor such as picmonkey, fotor.com and others, there's lots to choose from. I use Adobe Fireworks for mine, but I wouldn't purchase that just to make image quotes, you can get great results from the online ones.

https://www.facebook.com/AfterlifeBillyFingers

Having a strategy Your Facebook strategy includes, posting schedule, advertising, promotion, launches, list building.

Posting schedule:

You should have a posting schedule for your posts e.g. I am going to post 4 image quotes per day, one every six hours.

Make your posting schedule regular as your fans will get to know when you post each day and will unconsciously look out for your posts. If you have an irregular posting schedule your fans quickly lose track of you and don't really bother to look out for you as your stuff gets lost among all the other posts in their own newsfeed.

Let you fans determine the best time for you to post.

Go to your insights tab and click on 'Posts'. Immediately you will see the times that your fans are reading your posts. e.g. mine is:

As you can see above, my best times to post are 2am, and 3pm. So I have a 3 post schedule which is 2am, 11am, and 7pm. This way you are capturing your biggest audiences around the world. I always put my blog link posts up at 11am as that is when people are starting to come onto my page and it builds momentum from there and I capture East Coast America who start getting up at 6am (11am my time) and West Coast America who get up at 6am as well but it's then 2pm my time.

Posting blog posts

I mentioned there about posting up blog posts. I do this every single day. If you have great content on your blog then share it, but only do it once per day so your readers get used to it, and don't post 10 links out per day to different sites, you'll totally lose your newsfeed love from Facebook. Once per day to two or three main sites is good, that way your readers will get to know your blog(s) and Facebook will sit up and take notice that your readers like your content.

If Facebook see that you have posted a link and 100 people click on it, and 100 people come back to facebook after 30 seconds they will know that your link is not good content, so the next linki to that site will not reach as many fans in their newsfeed.

Whereas if you post a link and 100 people click on it from facebook and 100 people stay away from facebook for 10 minutes before returning then facebook will know your content is being consumed. Easy eh!

So what I do is only post my very best content from myself, and the guest posters I have on my blog, the ones that already have good feedback on the blog from. For example I posted this post last month:

Why did this do so well?

Because people want to know how to lose weight quickly. Now, because it got shared and liked and had so many comments, for a link post, Facebook naturally assumed the content was good, so it rewarded me by showing my subsequent blog post links higher up in my fans newsfeeds. But, be careful, your blog post link is only as good as your last one, so make sure you are sending to quality content.

Why send to your blog?

Two reasons: To show you as an authority in your field and to make money from Google adsense. I only started posting to my old blog posts recently and here's what happened to my adsense account:

my average weekly income for adsense without facebook linking was around $80 per week. Now my average weekly income from adsense is around $600, so a very good reason to add adsense to your blog, if you have one. But we'll talk more about monetizing later.

I generally do not post videos or status updates on my page, I leave that to do on my personal page. Videos are shared a lot on facebook, but nowhere near as much as photos, so I would leave sharing videos.

So in essence you need a good posting schedule with great image quotes and links to your blog posts.

Make sure you get your image sizes fro your blog post links correct they have to be 600 x 327 or a photo with the same ration e.g 1200 x 654, but best to make it exactly 600 x 327.

When you add your link into your status you will be shown a photo that facebook will use. If you have a photo on your blog that is the correct dimensions then just leave it at that. If not, just delete that photo in the link and add your own one that you made with the correct dimensions.

Let's get onto to monetizing your page.

Monetizing your Facebook page

This is probably what you wanted to get to in the first place, but you need a foundation, which is everything we've spoken about prior to this section.

So lets get on with how to monetize your page.

This is by no means an exhaustive list and once you start to open your eyes on how to monetize your page your will open up your mind to the new possibilities of facebook.

Build Your List

If you're not building up an email list you're missing out on a huge opportunity. Your email list will be the best thing you can do to keep in touch with your readers, and one of the best ways to make money.

First off you need to sign up for an email marketing service and by far the best one is www.aweber.com and I have used a lot of them. It is very cheap to start with but once your list grows it can become expensive, however when you get to that point you should be making money from your list and the costs will not be so important.

Creating a page to build your list (squeeze page). You can do this easily enough using aweber and using your website to capture leads into aweber or whatever program you use. However you can also use an amazing service called Leadpages.net which creates landing pages for you to capture your emails and links easily with aweber.

Here's one I created for a list of my own which was done using leadpages:

This page alone has managed to get me 11,000 leads for my list. You can see the full page here: https://cytmedia.leadpages.net/5classicsch/

How to get traffic to your squeeze page. Well the best way is to take your most shared posts from the last few weeks and add a link to it directly to your lead page at the top.

http://www.aweber.com/?220618http://link.leadpages.net/aff_c?offer_id=6&aff_id=8355https://cytmedia.leadpages.net/5classicsch/

So for example, say you have a post that you posted two weeks ago and you find that it is going viral. Simply click on the post and click on edit it and add something like this:

Only do this with posts that are being shared heavily.

Once you've done that click on the Boost tab to boost your post to the right audience and boost it by $5 per day, or $20 over 4 days. This will get your post shown again and shared. You already know people like it, which increases the chances of it being shared when you use a boost on it, which increase the number of clicks you get to your link at the top of the post.

I would use links that go to a sign up page rather than a product or book page on amazon, that way you can use the autoresponder from aweber to automatically follow up with the readers on your list to 'soft sell' them your book i.e let them get to know you before you sell them anything.

What if I don't get many shares?

We all have this issue when we first start to really build the page. What to do here is take your most shared image and add the link at the top and use the boost feature like we spoke about before. So for example if your posts get shared an average of 4 times and one of your posts is being shared 20 times, then you know that particular post has connected in some way with readers, so it will connect with other readers as well, so it's well worth a boost. If you keep on doing this, pretty soon you will build up a good sized list and get more readers and more comments.

Google Adsense If you have a blog, then get google adsense added to it. If you are using wordpress you can get a great plugin called Ad Injection, although this plugin has not been updated for a while, it still works brilliantly.

So, sign up for a google adsense account which is easy enough, create your ads and place them at strategic points in your blog.

For a little training on Google Adsesne you can check out their youtube channel here

Even if you only make $1 per week to start with, it's a start and $1 more than you would have made without it.

Zazzle.com If you make your own image quotes and have bought the extended rights of your photo you can start selling your own artwork via companies like Zazzle.com. It's really easy to do, however they are quite expensive, so don't expect to make a fortune unless you cut down your share of the profits to a minumum.

Check out the artwork on my page: http://www.zazzle.com/changeyourthoughts

Again use the most shared post linking way to get traffic to your artwork.

Your book If you know you are going to be publishing a new book in the next few months use the 'most shared post' method above to send traffic to a sign up page for information on your new book. For example here:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ad-injection/http://www.youtube.com/user/InsideAdSense/videoshttp://www.zazzle.com/?rf=238322824642122482http://www.zazzle.com/changeyourthoughts

This is a page I use to get subscribers to a new book series I am writing which will be out in a few months time. I have already collected around 400 subscribers. Unfortunately the book was due to be published on Amazon at the end of August but other business totally got in the way, and the editing process is taking much longer than I anticipated. But you get my point, start marketing your book as soon as you know you are going to write it.

Or you can simply write a brand new post and tell your readers that you have a new book coming out, show them the cover and give them a synopsis of it and and put a link to a sign up page, and then start advertising that post with a boost, making sure you capture the right audience.

To capture the right audience just click on Boost Post > Default Audience > Create Audience and choose your ideal buyer. e.g. If you have a book written for women who are ages 40+ and come from the USA then you can put all this information into the Boost Post > create audience profile and your post will only be seen by this demographic - brilliant eh! This makes it easier to reach your ideal audience.

In the interests field just type in the main keywords for your ideal audience

Selling seminars, workshops and products Again using the Book method above, if you have a seminar on in Seattle, create a post advertising your seminar and use the Boost post to reach your ideal audience but this time instead of targeting the whole of the USA just target women, 40+ in the Seattle area.

If you're selling a product then you can do the same. It's really important to know your ideal audience and I'll show you this in a video as advertising can be a little trickier on Facebook if you're not used to it.

Advertising

I thought I would show you a video instead of writing about advertising, so here it is.

Finishing off Okay, this has been a very quick guide but hopefully it will help you with the basics if you are not familiar with marketing on facebook.

If you found this useful please consider a small donation, no pressure, if you thought it was a bag of bollocks, then that's cool no need to donate :)

If you would like to be kept up to date with newer version of this guide please sign up here and I will only send you updates to the guide and with any facebook courses I come out with, which is not very likely as I'm a busy wee bee with my personal development products.

Okay for now, thank you for reading this guide and send me your feedback at enquiries@stevenaitchison.co.uk

Have a brilliant day

Steve

https://cytmedia.leadpages.net/fmfa/mailto:enquiries@stevenaitchison.co.ukhttps://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=L4K85MSPXDNPC

The 5 second ruleHow to edit your about sectionHow do you make the images?Posting schedule:Posting blog postsWhy send to your blog?

Monetizing your Facebook pageWhat if I don't get many shares?