How to Promote Your Book on Facebook with a Fan Page
Wednesday, February 2, 2011 at 5:00AMToday for Our Little Books Guest Post Wednesday, we are pleased to present Dana Lynn Smith who is a book marketing coach and author of The Savvy Book Marketer Guides. Drawing on her 15 years of publishing experience and degree in marketing, she specializes in developing marketing plans for nonfiction books and helping authors learn how to promote their books online. One such way is using a fan page on Facebook to promote your book. She is someone to listen to as she knows her stuff! Enjoy.
Promote Your Book on Facebook With a Fan Page
by Dana Lynn Smith
Many Facebook users are confused by the role of Profiles and Pages. On Facebook, Profiles are strictly for people. Facebook's rules require that you register your Profile in your own name and you can have only one Profile. If you set up your Profile in the name of your business or book, you risk having your account cancelled, but it is possible to set up a separate Profile in your pen name as long as you use a different email address.
A Facebook Fan Page (or Page) is designed for business use and it's a great way to promote your book. You can set up a Fan Page for your business, book, or even a character in your book, and you can create multiple Pages. Here are some advantages that Pages have over personal Profiles.
- By using Facebook applications like "Static FBML," you can create customized tabs on your Facebook Fan Page containing graphics, text and videos to promote your book, and even include opt-in forms to grow your mailing list.
- You can specify which tab of the Page that you want new visitors to land on and create a welcome message for new visitors. See the welcome message on my Page for an example, and also notice the "FREE ebook" tab on the Page.
- Facebook users join a Page by clicking on the "Like" button at the top of the Page and there's no limit to the number of fans who can join. With your Profile, you are limited to 5,000 friends.
- You can send messages to your all of your fans, which show up in their newsfeed.
- Pages get indexed by search engines and each tab on the Page has its own URL that you can link directly to.
Click here to create your own Fan Page. When you've got your Page in place, here are some ways to promote your book by building traffic to your Fan Page:
- Once your Page has at least 25 fans, create a personalized URL for your Page.
- Beneath the photo or image on your Page, click "Suggest to Friends" to send invitations to your Facebook friends to join your page. The invitation will appear in the In Box of your friends.
- Write an article for your blog and ezine inviting people to join your Page.
- Invite people to join your page by posting updates on Twitter, your Facebook personal Profile, and on other social networks. It's best to offer a benefit, rather than just asking people to join.
To encourage Facebook users to join your Page, be active in posting on the page, maintain lively discussions, and offer some benefits and incentive for becoming a fan. Even though promotion is allowed, you still need to be somewhat subtle and provide value to your fans rather than just a sales pitch.
You see why we like Dana! And while we are talking about Facebook pages, please stop by the Our Little Books facebook page and 'like' us!
Reader Comments (1)
Hi Dana,
Can you tell us how to create that "Book" app in a fan page, here's an example that somebody did:
http://www.facebook.com/HealingWithWords?sk=app_4949752878
It's some kind of app but how did I do it?