In a sea of media, publicity, and social networking sites, we’re in the world of ruthless promotion. There are so many great things you can do to promote yourself, but how do you stand out? What is the incentive for readers to “like” your Facebook page or enter your contest or giveaway? Here are some unique ideas as to how to attract the attention you want.

 

• Offer to sign pre-ordered copies of your book

While this definitely requires a time commitment, it’s a personalized touch that shows readers you value their support for your new release. We frequently hear from readers who ask how to get an autographed book from their favorite author, so we see a great value in offering this little extra.

• Pick something exciting to give away

So often the items offered in a giveaway are books. Why not think of something different, something money can’t buy? For example, you could host a giveaway where the prize is a ten minute skype call with you. How cool is that?!

• Go beyond the blog

Have you considered vlogging? A.k.a. video blogging? Making a short video could be a wonderful and personalized touch to your blog, your GoodReads page, or your Facebook page.

• Welcome your new release

Introduce your new release with a customized app on Facebook. Check out this great welcome app Beyond Novel designed for Tracey Devlyn!

• Let the countdown begin…

Add a countdown widget to your Facebook page so readers keep counting down the days, hours, minutes, and seconds, until your next book!

• Add a personal touch

Let your fans know more about you than just your books. Share something with them about your personality. Check out the recipe app, “Food for Thought,” Beyond Novel designed for Susan Wiggs.

• Show off your books

Let your readers browse your entire collection in a clear and informative way. We couldn’t be more proud of the books app we created for Diane Chamberlain.

Now that Facebook’s Timeline is in full effect, it’s time to make sure you’re utilizing your page to its fullest potential. There are so many things you can do to enhance your page and make it a destination for both your readers and fellow authors. At its best Timeline is visually compelling, informative,

thought-provoking, and entertaining. It’s where your readers go when they have five minutes and a cup of coffee.

 

With Timeline, we can open a window into your publishing career. Maybe you started publishing in the 80′s or 90′s or 2000. Let’s create a timeline of your career. Let’s add book cover images, dates, and memories. Let’s bring both you and your readers back through your exciting publishing career, from your first title to your latest release.

 

The reality of social media is that 10,000 likes or 5,000 friends doesn’t guarantee a connection. Let’s truly connect. Post frequently. Post consistently. Share photos. Ask questions.

 

Another reality is that everything is constantly changing. Give yourself time to figure out the new features. Some common questions we’ve been fielding, have been about pinning posts, hiding posts, and moving apps around.

 

• Pinning A Post: Click on the pencil icon in the upper right hand corner of a given post and select the option to “Pin to Top.” Doing so automatically sends that post to the very top of your wall. Pinning a post is a wonderful way to draw attention to an important post. For example, it would be ideal to pin a post about a new release, a great review, or an upcoming event. Pinned posts highlight important information. They help spread the word. Most importantly, they help your posts be consistently seen. Pinned posts will remain at the top of your timeline for seven days.

 

• Hiding Posts: You have the option to hide or delete a post. You can do either action by clicking on the same pencil icon mentioned in the paragraph above. Deleting a post permanently removes that post from your wall. Hiding a post removes the post from your wall but allows you to search for it again. There are two ways to find a hidden post. Scroll down on your page. On the right hand side you will see a box labeled “Activity.” You can click on the pencil icon in the upper right corner and you will have the option to see hidden posts. The other way to see hidden posts is to go to the “Manage” bar at the top of your timeline. Under “Manage,” select “Use Activity Log.” The Activity Log will provide you with a list of all recent activities. Each activity is listed on the left and has a small circle icon on the right. Click on the circle and you will be able to see if that particular activity is hidden or visible on your wall.

 

• Moving Apps Around: This is really great way to draw attention to your most important apps. To move apps, click on the pencil icon in the upper right hand corner of your app icon. A drop down menu will appear with the option to “Swap” the app’s position with another. Easy peasy. Just remember that the photo app is immoveable and therefore will always appear as the first app.

 

We look forward to seeing where Timeline takes all of you!

As you are some of the 36,008 authors on GoodReads, you probably already know that you have the ability to connect with a community of over seven million readers! While that number is amazing, it can also be a bit daunting. Manny authors find themselves wondering where to even begin in finding their audience in such a large pool of readers. In order to ensure that you areutilizing GoodReads to its fullest potential, we wanted to give you a brief overview of the essential points needed for success.The purpose of the Author Profile on GoodReads is to help authors reach their target audience: passionate readers. Your author profile should be a dynamic destination for your readers. You can display your blog on your profile, share book excerpts and writing, and publicize your upcoming events. You can even post videos.As a GoodReads author, you can post an ad for your book. If you’ve seen ads on GoodReads before, you know just how visible and alluring they appear. Posting an ad is an excellent way to both engage and reach out to the entire GoodReads community. This is something we strongly recommend doing for your upcoming releases.   In addition to posting an ad, you can also run a giveaway to generate pre-launch buzz around you new or re-release.   The best advice we can give is to be active on your profile: Lead a question & answer session with your readers. Lead a discussion group, or partner with a group already discussing your books. Be part of the conversation!   It is important to make sure all of you books are listed on GoodReads. If any are missing, you can manually add them. Add your books, and others, to your bookshelves. Let you readers know what you’re reading and plan to read. Give reviews.   We recommend inviting your friends to join you on GoodReads. Be aware that there is a difference between Fans and Friends on GoodReads. Anyone can become your fan, while becoming friends requires a mutual agreement. Do not engage with everyone who had read your work. While you want to be active you, you do not want to be flagged as a spammer. Remember to deal with negative comments gracefully. Do not question or argue with bad reviews.   While we encourage you to maintain an active presence on GoodReads, we understand that there is a lot of work that goes into achieving optimal success.We are here to help and would love to work with you on making your GoodReads presence the best it can be. If you are interested in setting up or expanding any of the above ideas, please let us know.

As you all know, social media is constantly changing. Many of you have already seen the new Timeline format Facebook has introduced for your personal pages. Facebook has just announced that Timeline will also becoming to Fan Pages. So far, changing your page from the current layout to the Timeline has been optional. However, on March 30th, we will no longer have the option to use the old layout, as everything will be using the Timeline layout. We believe that this is a really exciting change for your Pages and will be a fresh and unique way to connect with your fans. Timeline may seem a bit disorganized and hectic at first, so we wanted to outline some basic information that you will need to know in getting started. We are here to help you through the transition and are providing this information for our mutual benefit.Some things you should know about Timeline:Cover Image

• With the Timeline layout, every Page will have a large “cover image” which will stretch horizontally at the top.
• There are a few restriction for the cover image that are important to take note of: cover images are not allowed to include any contact information or call to action. This means, no websites URLs are allowed to be listed in this cover image, and no arrows are allowed to appear, pointing to the “like” button or other links.
• The cover image is intended to provide a clean aesthetic to promote your brand and yourself

Tabs

• Tabs will now be called “Apps”
• You are allowed to have many apps on your Page (up to 20). However, users of your Page will only see 12 apps at a time, including the “likes” app and the “photos” app. Those two are mandatory apps from Facebook. Therefore you can have 10 customized apps. We have created customized tabs (now apps) in the past, such as book lists, contests, blog rss feeds, etc.
• Facebook recommends you list the three most important apps at the top of your page. Those will be the ones most visible for users of your page.
• Apps can and will look almost like miniature websites. There will be greater opportunity for engagement on a single app than having to jump around to multiple apps. This is something to be excited about as it allows for more creativity and flow of information. More freedom with apps could mean creating an app with extra content for your new release, or creating an app for a series you’re writing, what included more detailed updates about the characters.There are so many possibilities!
• There will be not more default landing app as there currently is. With the old page you could choose which page your readers would land on (ie- contest page, wall, etc). This is no longer an option.

Pinned Post

• With Timeline, you will be able to “pin” a post. Pinning a post will make that post stay at the top of your timeline for 7 days.
• This is great for contests as the post will not get lost in the Timeline.
• Returning users will always see pinned posts. This means important posts won’t get lost.

Timeline is Chronological

• Most recent events or posts are shows at the top of your Timeline.
• Timeline will allow you to go in and change the date of events of posts.
• You can add events to past years, even years before you had a Facebook page, or before there was a Facebook. If you have a history that you believe would be of interest to your users, you can go back and add past events. An example of a page that had done this in a really interesting and engaging way is Coca Cola. Coke lists events as far by at 1886! This can be a really fun way to engage your readers.
• We believe that this is a great way to add depth to your page by adding in when books were published. We see this as a really wonderful way to highlight your publishing career. For example, you can go back decades to add your first book and all the books that came afterwards!

We hope this has been a helpful introduction to Timeline. We look forward to helping you make the transition to the new layout. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with questions.