Facebook Guide for Authors
By Dana Lynn Smith
Web page URL: http://www.SavvyBookMarketer.comDirect link to book page: http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/savvy_book_marketer/facebook.html
Category: publishing/marketing
ISBN – none (ebook)
Originally Reviewed by Nick Daws for Nick Daws’ Writing Blog
The guide is provided in the form of a downloadable, 79-page PDF. My first impression was that it is exceptionally well written and presented. It's printed in a clean, sharp, sans serif font, with screengrab illustrations where appropriate.
I was also impressed that the table of contents is fully hyperlinked, not just to the main chapter headings but to the section headings as well.
Dana starts by talking about online networking in general. This is a sensible approach, as it puts Facebook into perspective with other social networking sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn. The guide doesn't go into great detail about these other networks, but there are nonetheless some good suggestions on developing an overall strategy for promoting yourself and your work. Dana also reveals common mistakes people new to social networking as a promotional tool make.
The next chapter, Get Started With Facebook, is aimed at complete newcomers to Facebook. Dana takes the reader through setting up their personal profile, adding a profile photograph (and other photos and videos), adjusting privacy and notifications settings, how to import blog posts into Facebook, and so on.
Following this, in Network With Facebook, Dana talks about actually using Facebook to build your network of contacts. She discusses making friends on Facebook and responding to friend requests. Personally, though, I found the latter part of this chapter most interesting. This covers the sorts of things authors can post about on Facebook, how to gain added visibility for your updates using "tagging", and steps you can take to ensure that your updates get maximum prominence in your friends' or followers' news feeds. There are some great ideas here that I will certainly be trying out myself in future.
The manual then goes on to discuss other methods of promoting yourself on Facebook, including Fan Pages, Groups (both "Old" and "New"), Events, Questions, and advertising. This is all invaluable, thought-provoking stuff, and bang up to date (I don't even have Facebook Questions on my own Facebook Page yet - Dana says this feature is being rolled out gradually). Again, there are lots of ideas I plan to try out here.
The guide concludes with a list of common mistakes users make, and suggested daily and weekly routines for getting the most from Facebook while not letting it take over your life!
Do I have any criticisms of Facebook Guide for Authors? Well, I might just like to have seen a bit more discussion about how to use Facebook strategically, e.g. whether it's a good idea to have a Fan Page for every title you write, or just have one main author Page instead. Still, I guess this is probably a decision every author needs to make for him- or herself.
Overall, if you want to get up to speed with using Facebook as a promotional tool (and you almost certainly should), I highly recommend Facebook Guide for Authors, especially with its modest $15 price tag. It's definitely going to be my "bible" where Facebook is concerned from now on.
The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :
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