Social Media and Networking Tips For Authors

Hello everyone. My name is Lizzie Chantree and I’m a romance author who has been writing for as long as I can remember. I have now published five books, with a sixth launching next year. My background is in design, innovation and retail, as I ran my own wholesale and retail business for over fifteen years. I now write books that are full of feisty women and exciting men who run businesses that are a little bit quirky and a lot of fun. I hope that my stories make my readers smile as much as I do when I’m writing them, and my journey as an author has been a wild one so far!

I wrote my first book, Babe Driven, after my daughter became unwell and continued to have difficulty with her health for nine years, (she’s fine now). I wanted to stay up to hear her breathing at night, so I decided to write a book full of sunshine to help me through some pretty dark times. The book is about a chauffeur company with gorgeous female only drivers that has just hit the headlines. It’s packed with exotic locations, sexy band members who are out to cause havoc and a business owner who might be out of her depth. Little did I know when I wrote the book, that it would be the start of a career that has led me to become a full time author.

I was offered so much support from the writing community as a new author, that I decided to use my background in business to do the same for others. An author’s writing life can be isolating, so I set up a blog that helps writers with marketing ideas, a Facebook group to share my first experiences of holding virtual and physical book launches, and founded a networking hour on Twitter where creatives could come to share advice, products, books and worries with each other, called #CreativeBizHour Doing this has also helped some of my books to become #1 bestsellers on Amazon.

For me, networking is about being social. It is an opportunity to connect with your readers and to let them know about your personality, writing and brand. I post regularly and don’t repeat the same thing over and over, but I also pop over to my Twitter and Facebook followers timelines and retweet or share their work too. For my networking hour, I talk to people about their lives and jobs and they in turn ask me about my writing. We sometimes have over 1.7 million views on my networking hour, during the hour, and #CreativeBizHour has regularly been one of the Monday top trends over the years. This wouldn’t happen without the people who regularly come by to chat, share news, support each other with retweets and talk about any work worries or fears.

Social media is about connecting with people who like the same things you do, but it isn’t a one way street where you can expect them to do everything for you and not give something back. For me, the most successful social media accounts are the ones that interact regularly with customers, readers, friends and family. An account that doesn’t show the personality of the author, brand or person, is usually one that others unfollow pretty quickly.

My top tips for social media:

1. Post regularly, but do not spam your timeline with too many tweets. Once every 2-4 hours is ample.
2. Make your headers across all of your social media and websites on brand. Add your books, a reader quote to the graphics and keep it on theme for your genre.
3. Use social scheduling tools like Hootsuite or SocialOomph to schedule some of your content, so that you have time to write.
4. Show your personality when posting and networking. Share your writing day with your followers. Tell them how you write, what you write, what makes you smile. This all helps the reader to relate to your stories and understand you as an author.
5. Join networking hours like #CreativeBizHour (Mondays 8-9pm GMT) and tell others about your writing. Remember to retweet others on the hour if you would like them to share your work. This means that your books can be seen by their followers. There are many networking hours on Twitter and Facebook. To join in, just add the hashtag appropriate to the hour and add it to your tweets/posts and replies to chat. That way, everyone on the hour can see your tweets/posts.
6. Make graphics to post on your timeline that fit your brand. You can add your book covers, quotes from reviews and offers you might be running. Free design tools like Visme and Canva have ready made headers, tweets, Facebook posts etc, that you simply download your own book cover images into.
7. Use hashtags that are relevant to each day, Like #MondayMotivation and #TuesdayThoughts and add these to your book tweets. Make sure that the post content is relevant to the hashtag. For example, post some meaningful words about how reading your book might motivate someone for #MondayMotivation. For a Tuesday post, you could say something about your writing day. Don’t forget to add your book links, but you don’t need to use them every time, or it might feel like your followers are being bombared with sales pitches.
8. Most importantly, be social and have fun!

—

Award-winning inventor and author, Lizzie Chantree, started her own business at the age of 18 and became one of Fair Play London and The Patent Office’s British Female Inventors of the Year in 2000. She discovered her love of writing fiction when her children were little and now runs networking hours on social media, where creative businesses, writers, photographers and designers can offer advice and support to each other. She lives with her family on the coast in Essex. Visit her website at www.lizziechantree.com or follow her on Twitter
https://twitter.com/Lizzie_Chantree.

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/lizzie.chantree.3

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/lizzie_chantree/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7391757.Lizzie_Chantree

 

About IF YOU LOVE ME, I’M YOURS…

‘If you love me, I’m yours…’

Maud didn’t mind being boring, not really. She had a sensible job, clothes, and love life… if you counted an overbearing ex who had thanked her, rolled over and was snoring before she even realised he’d begun! She could tolerate not fulfilling her dreams, if her parents would pay her one compliment about the only thing she was passionate about in life: her art.

Dot should have fit in with her flamboyant and slightly eccentric family of talented artists, but somehow, she was an anomaly who couldn’t paint. She tried hard to be part of their world by becoming an art agent extraordinaire, but she dreamed of finding her own voice.

Dot’s brother Nate, a smoulderingly sexy and famous artist, was adored by everyone. His creative talent left them in awe of his ability to capture such passion on canvas. Women worshipped him, and even Dot’s friend Maud flushed and bumped into things when he walked into a room, but a tragic event in his past had left him emotionally and physically scarred, and reluctant to face the world again.

Someone was leaving exquisite little paintings on park benches, with a tag saying, ‘If you love me, I’m yours’. The art was so fresh and cutting-edge, that it generated a media frenzy and a scramble to discover where the mystery artist could be hiding. The revelation of who the prodigious artist was interlinked Maud, Dot and Nate’s lives forever, but their worlds came crashing down.

Were bonds of friendship, love and loyalty strong enough to withstand fame, success and scandal?

viewbook.at/IfYouLoveMe-ImYours

https://www.amazon.co.uk/If-You-Love-Me-Yours-ebook/dp/B07C7HRNG1

https://www.amazon.com/If-You-Love-Me-Yours-ebook/dp/B07C7HRNG1

 

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips