Digital Marketing

Social Media Best Practices for New Authors: Goodreads

Posted on by cassiemdrumm

Many authors know how important social media can be to their platforms, and in turn for reviews, buzz, and book sales for their new titles. In this new series of posts, I’ll be going over the best practices for social media by platform. To start off: Goodreads.

If you’re at all involved in the bookish community, you know how influential Goodreads can be. It’s a place where readers go to add books to their virtual shelves. They can add to the TBR lists as well as record and review the books that they have read. It’s also a place for authors to connect to readers through Q&As, giveaways, and one-to-one interactions. Social media specifically for book nerds!

First of all, if you’re not on Goodreads as an author yet, you should go ahead and make a profile. You can connect your account through Facebook and it will automatically sign you in and give you the option of adding any and all Facebook friends who are also on Goodreads. Below are some steps to building up your presence on Goodreads.

  • Add your favorite books and books that you want to read to your own shelves.
  • Make sure books related to your own genre of writing are included on your shelves.
  • Rate and review titles that you’ve read.
  • Join a few groups and get involved in discussions.
  • Interact with readers who may be interested in your books by replying to comments, reviews, and discussions.

If you’re published already:

  • Claim your profile for the Goodreads Author Program.
  • Update your author profile with correct photos, social links, and bio.
  • Check and make sure that all of your titles link to your profile and have the correct cover, description, and metadata.
  • Run a giveaway for new or upcoming titles (run this by your publisher to make sure that they aren’t already running one).
    • The best giveaways on Goodreads usually run for a week and involve 2 or 3 books (ARCs or finished copies) as the prizes. If you want to go the extra mile, make them signed!
  • Host an author Q&A through Ask the Author.
  • Take out a self-serve ad for your books (again, check with your publisher first to see if they’re already running ads on Goodreads).
  • Start an author blog on Goodreads or import your blog posts from an already existing site.
  • More Goodreads Author guidelines, straight from the source.

I will come back to this all the time, but social media is all about connecting with readers and building a trusting relationship. Goodreads does this by allowing you to interact with readers in many meaningful ways. Users come to the site specifically to talk about the books that they love, so make sure you’re communicating with them in a positive and supportive way! Once your loyal following is built, your followers on Goodreads can become amazing advocates for your work.

Do you have any tips for using Goodreads as an author? Add them in the comments!

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like…

Posted on by cassiemdrumm

Thesis time!

To be honest, I’ve been slowly chipping away at my thesis since the summer, but I’m really starting to lock down and make some progress recently. To complete my M.A. in Publishing, I only have this one 60+ page paper left. It has sounded daunting to me ever since I joined the program, but it’s something that I’m trying to take one book and article at a time. The most difficult part is the topic that I chose. So here goes…

I’m writing about how publishing houses use social media (specifically for YA books) and how they should be using it to get the most out of their time and efforts. When I thought about what I wanted to write about, social media was the most intriguing to me. It really always has been. Looking at what types of posts go viral, what things people latch onto and interact with, it seems that “good” social media practices are hard to define. And the research that I’ve done so far tells me just that. Even books written be supposed “experts” in the field of social media don’t have all of the answers. But so far, it seems the most important thing that I’ve taken from my research is that the general public are the ones who decide what is successful on social media. No company can force a post to go viral. They can put thousands of dollars towards advertising and a hashtag still may not start trending.

So how are publishing companies supposed to know what they should be posting? Part of my research is to survey some people within the book industry and some avid readers and see what they think. Does the general public even care about following publishing companies on Instagram and Twitter? Does it affect their buying habits? Personally, I can say that if a book has a huge Twitter campaign and I keep seeing the cover pop up on my feed, I am definitely more likely to buy it. But what about those who don’t even look at the spine or copyright pages of their books to see who published them? Random House may be a household name, but do readers really know what specific books they have in print right now? What books are on their frontlist? Which of their books are on the New York Times’ Best Seller list this week?

All of these questions I’m trying to answer, plus more. What should publishing companies be posting to get followers’ attention? Is anyone doing that already or does someone need to have a talk with the publishing executives at the Big 5?

So anyway, if you’d like to help me out with the looming task of answering some of these questions, I’ve created a little survey. Please check it out!