Social Media Tips & Tricks
Many thanks to Hannah Walcher and Elena Eustaquio, both from Books Inc.
Social Media Tip:
If you’re looking to advertise and promote your store and events, create accounts for your store on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They all have their strengths and weaknesses which we’ll explore bi-weekly!
The Pros and Cons of Advertising on Facebook:
Pro: You can create a general page for your store and individual event pages. You can also see the views and interactions that you’re generating with each post. You can also share posts from Instagram and Twitter.
Con: Facebook has an algorithm that decides what it shows people depending on what you post and how often, so some things get viewed more than others for no particular reason (to us).
How to Get the Most out of Facebook
Facebook is a great way to stay connected to your customers. The key thing is to remain active. Create event pages for each of your author events and/ or story times. Share pictures of past events (with permission) and gush over your newest book obsession. Share posts about literary things but don’t forget to mix it up with an occasional picture or article of adorable animals. Trust me, they’ll be your biggest views!
If you’re promoting an event, either with a post or event page, don’t forget to tag the publisher and author in it so more people will see it!
Finally, when creating a general store page, make sure to add the option for a “Sign Up” button that will allow people to automatically sign up for your newsletter, via Facebook.
On to Twitter!
Twitter can seem a bit daunting since you only have 140 characters, including spaces, to get your message out there. But once you get used to the brevity, it’s a really useful tool for advertising. It’s also where the term “hashtag” was coined! Here are some pros and cons of Twitter:
Pros:
-Easy to connect directly with authors, bloggers, and even customers. Use direct messaging or tag them in tweets.
-Authors are much more active on twitter. If an author re-tweets one of your posts, it usually gets a larger boost of viewers.
-You can gauge interest in events with how much interaction you get.
-Use consistent hashtags and check to see which ones are trending to draw a general audience to your profile
-Can attract attention faster with certain groups since it's shorter and very accessible
- You can "pin" one of your posts so it will always pop up at the top of your profile (good for events coming up or linking something important)
Cons:
-Limited space. You have to be careful when adding links, hashtags, or tagging authors in your post because they take up that valuable space.
--->Use https://bitly.com/ to shorten your links and save more characters
-Tweets get lost in constant updates to the website.
-No edit button. Be mindful of spelling and grammar, mistakes stick and they will come back to haunt you if you don’t delete them fast enough. Trust me. (Grammarly is a good app to have for this)
*Word of warning, stay fairly neutral on Twitter. There are a lot of opinions flying around and it’s best to stay out of heated discussions, unless you’re prepared for a serious case of provocateurs.
The best way to utilize Twitter is to post often. Just like Facebook, make sure to tag the author and publisher and use hashtags when you can.
Since Twitter is such a busy place, we suggest using an image to catch the reader’s eye. It can be something as simple as the book cover, or an image you created for your website. It could also be an event poster, or GIF* Twitter has recently updated so that you can now add up to 4 images and tag up to 10 people in the images. Tagging people in the images versus in the text saves a good amount of those precious 140 characters.
Also, don’t be afraid to “retweet” your tweets. Like I said, Twitter is a busy place, so it’s easy for a tweet to get lost, retweeting it might get a whole batch of new eyes on it.
Finally, Twitter is also a great way to connect to authors. They’re very active on twitter and often interact with their readers. It’s a good way to gauge the interest people have as well as to contact them via private messaging.
*What’s a GIF?
A GIF is a moving image and often used to portray a reaction, especially when words fail you. I often use them to describe how excited I am for something. You can use them with text or without. Twitter made it nice and easy by giving us a “GIF” button, right next to the “Image” button. Just click on it, type an emotion or show and it’ll give you a lot to choose from. It’s much more time efficient from the old way of doing things that often left you in a black hole of searching for the PERFECT GIF on a separate website. Have fun with it!
We’ve talked about Facebook and Twitter, now we’re going to move on to Instagram. All three of these social media outlets are great for advertising. They also work really well together.
-Memes also make up a large body of social media today, so don't be afraid to utilize funny memes to engage your audience (book themed or not!) You can also create your own memes using websites like memegenerator.
If you’re looking to advertise and promote your store and events, create accounts for your store on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They all have their strengths and weaknesses which we’ll explore bi-weekly!
The Pros and Cons of Advertising on Facebook:
Pro: You can create a general page for your store and individual event pages. You can also see the views and interactions that you’re generating with each post. You can also share posts from Instagram and Twitter.
Con: Facebook has an algorithm that decides what it shows people depending on what you post and how often, so some things get viewed more than others for no particular reason (to us).
How to Get the Most out of Facebook
Facebook is a great way to stay connected to your customers. The key thing is to remain active. Create event pages for each of your author events and/ or story times. Share pictures of past events (with permission) and gush over your newest book obsession. Share posts about literary things but don’t forget to mix it up with an occasional picture or article of adorable animals. Trust me, they’ll be your biggest views!
If you’re promoting an event, either with a post or event page, don’t forget to tag the publisher and author in it so more people will see it!
Finally, when creating a general store page, make sure to add the option for a “Sign Up” button that will allow people to automatically sign up for your newsletter, via Facebook.
On to Twitter!
Twitter can seem a bit daunting since you only have 140 characters, including spaces, to get your message out there. But once you get used to the brevity, it’s a really useful tool for advertising. It’s also where the term “hashtag” was coined! Here are some pros and cons of Twitter:
Pros:
-Easy to connect directly with authors, bloggers, and even customers. Use direct messaging or tag them in tweets.
-Authors are much more active on twitter. If an author re-tweets one of your posts, it usually gets a larger boost of viewers.
-You can gauge interest in events with how much interaction you get.
-Use consistent hashtags and check to see which ones are trending to draw a general audience to your profile
-Can attract attention faster with certain groups since it's shorter and very accessible
- You can "pin" one of your posts so it will always pop up at the top of your profile (good for events coming up or linking something important)
Cons:
-Limited space. You have to be careful when adding links, hashtags, or tagging authors in your post because they take up that valuable space.
--->Use https://bitly.com/ to shorten your links and save more characters
-Tweets get lost in constant updates to the website.
-No edit button. Be mindful of spelling and grammar, mistakes stick and they will come back to haunt you if you don’t delete them fast enough. Trust me. (Grammarly is a good app to have for this)
*Word of warning, stay fairly neutral on Twitter. There are a lot of opinions flying around and it’s best to stay out of heated discussions, unless you’re prepared for a serious case of provocateurs.
The best way to utilize Twitter is to post often. Just like Facebook, make sure to tag the author and publisher and use hashtags when you can.
Since Twitter is such a busy place, we suggest using an image to catch the reader’s eye. It can be something as simple as the book cover, or an image you created for your website. It could also be an event poster, or GIF* Twitter has recently updated so that you can now add up to 4 images and tag up to 10 people in the images. Tagging people in the images versus in the text saves a good amount of those precious 140 characters.
Also, don’t be afraid to “retweet” your tweets. Like I said, Twitter is a busy place, so it’s easy for a tweet to get lost, retweeting it might get a whole batch of new eyes on it.
Finally, Twitter is also a great way to connect to authors. They’re very active on twitter and often interact with their readers. It’s a good way to gauge the interest people have as well as to contact them via private messaging.
*What’s a GIF?
A GIF is a moving image and often used to portray a reaction, especially when words fail you. I often use them to describe how excited I am for something. You can use them with text or without. Twitter made it nice and easy by giving us a “GIF” button, right next to the “Image” button. Just click on it, type an emotion or show and it’ll give you a lot to choose from. It’s much more time efficient from the old way of doing things that often left you in a black hole of searching for the PERFECT GIF on a separate website. Have fun with it!
We’ve talked about Facebook and Twitter, now we’re going to move on to Instagram. All three of these social media outlets are great for advertising. They also work really well together.
-Memes also make up a large body of social media today, so don't be afraid to utilize funny memes to engage your audience (book themed or not!) You can also create your own memes using websites like memegenerator.
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We’ll start with the Pros and Cons of Instagram:
Pros:
-People love pictures
-You can now post up to 10 photos at once so it’s like a slideshow- “Swipeshow”?” (Coined by Elena at Books Inc.)
-Basically unlimited space for captions and hashtags
---> Tips for hashtags: If you have a large group of them, sometimes it is better to move them to the bottom of your post so they are not immediately visible/overwhelming the copy. You can do this by copy and pasting a list of bullets before the hashtags.
-You can tag a person/account in photos, which will allow their followers to find you if they see your photo on that person/account’s profile.
-User friendly
-You can create a business account that allows you to look at analytics
-You can link it to Facebook and Twitter so they share simultaneously
-You can toggle between personal and business accounts, versus having to log out and re-log in.
-You can post videos too, though there is a limit!
-You Can Use Instagram Stories. They are a good way to market certain events, collect a survey, repost other content (shout outs from authors, news, etc.) And you can save the story to your profile in specific story categories- example: "Storytime"
-Instagram stories and live stay for 24 hours, are a good way to share other's posts and give smaller updates
-> Instagram is no longer restricted to a square, it can be bigger, but when you look at all posts in the profile you only see a square portion of the images
-> good lighting is SO important for higher quality in your images, avoid shadows and put the subject in natural lighting if possible
Con:
-Must be used on your phone, not the computer. You can view them on the computer, but that’s it.
-You can only have a link in your profile. They don’t allow clickable links in captions/posts.
-Image dimensions. Instagram is all about the square. If you’re designing a poster, for example, make sure to save a version using the Instagram dimensions. There are apps that will resize your image for you.
-Beautiful Competition. Some people are super artsy, which is great, but you have to try to compete for attention too. Make it nice! Make it pretty! Make it pop! Or just be funny, that works too…
-If you want to share other people’s posts, you have to download another app. “Regram” is a popular one. You can share things as a private message though.
Have fun with it! Get creative.
-Canva is a great tool to create posts, resize images, and maintain consistent branding.
The best way to utilize Instagram:
If you only have one store location, you can make it a business Instagram, which allows you to view analytics and allows customers to call or email the store directly and get directions, all on the Instagram app.
Make sure to use lots of hashtags so people can find you in random searches.
Similar to Twitter and Facebook, tag authors so they can then “re-gram” your image.
You can showcase staff reviews and easily share them on Facebook or Twitter instantaneously!
Be fun, creative, and consistent.
Take pictures of events and share them!
Instagram also has the live-stream and 24-hour-story option which could add something a little different to your advertising efforts. It also allows you to upload lots of images without overwhelming your followers with a string of images in their feed.
-Hashtags -> if you don't want them crowding your caption you can just write them as a comment and it gives the same desired effect!
Pros:
-People love pictures
-You can now post up to 10 photos at once so it’s like a slideshow- “Swipeshow”?” (Coined by Elena at Books Inc.)
-Basically unlimited space for captions and hashtags
---> Tips for hashtags: If you have a large group of them, sometimes it is better to move them to the bottom of your post so they are not immediately visible/overwhelming the copy. You can do this by copy and pasting a list of bullets before the hashtags.
-You can tag a person/account in photos, which will allow their followers to find you if they see your photo on that person/account’s profile.
-User friendly
-You can create a business account that allows you to look at analytics
-You can link it to Facebook and Twitter so they share simultaneously
-You can toggle between personal and business accounts, versus having to log out and re-log in.
-You can post videos too, though there is a limit!
-You Can Use Instagram Stories. They are a good way to market certain events, collect a survey, repost other content (shout outs from authors, news, etc.) And you can save the story to your profile in specific story categories- example: "Storytime"
-Instagram stories and live stay for 24 hours, are a good way to share other's posts and give smaller updates
-> Instagram is no longer restricted to a square, it can be bigger, but when you look at all posts in the profile you only see a square portion of the images
-> good lighting is SO important for higher quality in your images, avoid shadows and put the subject in natural lighting if possible
Con:
-Must be used on your phone, not the computer. You can view them on the computer, but that’s it.
-You can only have a link in your profile. They don’t allow clickable links in captions/posts.
-Image dimensions. Instagram is all about the square. If you’re designing a poster, for example, make sure to save a version using the Instagram dimensions. There are apps that will resize your image for you.
-Beautiful Competition. Some people are super artsy, which is great, but you have to try to compete for attention too. Make it nice! Make it pretty! Make it pop! Or just be funny, that works too…
-If you want to share other people’s posts, you have to download another app. “Regram” is a popular one. You can share things as a private message though.
Have fun with it! Get creative.
-Canva is a great tool to create posts, resize images, and maintain consistent branding.
The best way to utilize Instagram:
If you only have one store location, you can make it a business Instagram, which allows you to view analytics and allows customers to call or email the store directly and get directions, all on the Instagram app.
Make sure to use lots of hashtags so people can find you in random searches.
Similar to Twitter and Facebook, tag authors so they can then “re-gram” your image.
You can showcase staff reviews and easily share them on Facebook or Twitter instantaneously!
Be fun, creative, and consistent.
Take pictures of events and share them!
Instagram also has the live-stream and 24-hour-story option which could add something a little different to your advertising efforts. It also allows you to upload lots of images without overwhelming your followers with a string of images in their feed.
-Hashtags -> if you don't want them crowding your caption you can just write them as a comment and it gives the same desired effect!