Almost every author has been told at some point, “You gotta get online and promote.” But only a small percentage of authors have actually been coached on social media best practices, so hundreds of authors are misusing social media and turning readers off rather than attracting them.
As authors, your social media followers extend beyond your friends and family. Your followers are your readers, your publishing team, librarians, and booksellers. I see too many authors forget this and post about all aspects of their life, from photos of their breakfasts to complaining about writing and publishing. You are a public figure; your social media content should reflect that.
We’re all looking for ways to save time, but this isn’t one of them. If your Facebook posts automatically aggregate to Twitter, you’re not using either platform effectively. Facebook posts tend to be long and meaty, tweets are short and pithy. If your lengthy Facebook content is tweeted, those tweets will be cut off with ellipses and followers won’t understand your content. If you post shorter, pithy content to Facebook, that content won’t perform as well. Take an extra few minutes and translate your content for both platforms.
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