Facebook for Romance Writers by Lisa Kessler
In the interest of full disclosure, Lisa Kessler is a member of my RWA chapter and the best mentor anyone could ask for. Every time I turn around, one of the Moon series books is winning an award or being picked for a best seller list. She’s an all-around wonderful person too! http://www.authorlisakessler.com/the-moon-series/
On Facebook, you will find Adult readers. If you are looking for Young Adults or New Adults, you should hang out on Snapchat or Instagram. As I heard elsewhere, Facebook will connect you with readers. Twitter will connect you with other writers, editors, agents, and more. It’s like the office water cooler for writers.
A good way to get those readers’ interest is to use Click Here to See First links. Possibly to a newsletter or website. Maybe include a screen shot to entice people to get to your site. While Facebook is often the anti-social social network, what with freezing people if they like too many things in one day or someone complains about them, it remains the best place to find your romance readers.
Much of this panel involved the basics of Facebook, such as the sidebars and tabs or apps. Facebook makes it easy to hold a giveaway using Rafflecopter or similar services. Be sure your newsletter sign-up is not a blatant BUY MY BOOK campaign. Let fans know when you are doing a blog hop or an author page hop.
Lisa participated in a St. Patrick’s Day blog hop and had a great time, as well as reaching lots of new readers. Here’s one site that participated in something like that: https://straightshootinbookreviews.com/ If you Google blog hop, you’ll see that not just writers like this idea. DIY folks, crafters and stampers, and many others love o get a bunch of like-minded folks together to jump around on the internet. Unfortunately, most people will lose steam and not finish the hop, but if you do, be sure to have the gifts you promised to be available for a drawing. (These details will be set up when you sign up for the blog hop) Here are the instructions for a monthly blog hop, always on the last Wednesday of the month on this writer’s blog. http://www.julievalerie.com/fiction-writers-blog-hop/
Need a writing community that’s not as long winded as Facebook? Here’s a list of Active Twitter Chats about books. https://raimeygallant.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/2017listoftwitterchatsforwriters/
Facebook has a logarithm that basically says, if you get lots of people to your page, they will send more. You almost have to be successful to get a crowd. If you pay to boost a post, you will reach a lot more people. Ads work for a short period of time.
A great way to pull in more readers is to hold a Facebook event, such as a Book Release Party (Bowman’s Inn will be having one on May 11th!) This doesn’t clog up your actual page because you create an Event page and all the comments and so on are posted there. Remind your attendees that they will have to refresh frequently to see the new comments. Post this information in a sticky post at the top of the thread.
There are lots of things you can do for one of these parties. Share songs used in your playlist while writing. Let readers ask any questions they want of the authors. Enlist a street team if you don’t have one already.
I’ve mentioned street teams several times in this series of posts. Basically, we authors borrowed the idea from bands who needed to let fans know they were playing somewhere before the internet made it easy. Authors still need street teams and there are good reasons to join one. Around 90% join to know about book releases ahead of time. They also want the series to continue. They can be asked to name a character, to pick a pet for the main characters, and to read chapters early. Ask a character any question. You can have events in closed groups like a cover reveal. But don’t play games with your street team, don’t have giveaways, let them get to know the real you.
You can ask the street team members to tell you their birth date, then keep a list and celebrate with them. Personal touches like that mean a lot to your readers.
Lisa insists on being friends will all her street team members so that she can monitor what they post about her books. She shares secrets with them, and so far they have been very good at keeping those secrets.
Just a few words of caution, make sure you have a real person, like your husband or best friend, as an admin on your author page if you use a pen name. Facebook might shut the page down due to the page being for a non-person. Told you, they are anti-social. Visit your page at least once per day to make sure it’s up and running.
Thanks for reading, I’ll be back on Thursday.
Romance-ology 
Glad the workshop helped! 🙂
Lisa