In Part I of our guide to social media marketing for self-published authors, we talked about choosing social platforms to market your book and build your author brand. You don’t have to be on ALL the platforms or post ALL the time. You can choose your social media activity based on what you like doing and how much time you have. Wild concept, right??

But now that you’ve picked your social platforms, what do you actually say on them? You’re a writer; you’ve got words. But as a marketer, you’re brand new to all this stuff. 

Not to worry. Let’s talk about how to use social media marketing to connect with your readers, tease a new book, and build your author brand.

Get to know your readers on your social platforms

Social media is meant to be social. Use it to connect with your fans and ideal readers! This doesn’t mean talking at your audience, but instead, starting conversations. Encouraging engagement. Getting people interested in what you have to say.

First, we recommend following people you know who have read your book or that you’d love to read your book. You can find these folks by looking through Bookstagram and BookTok hashtags. Look for BookTok reviews of your books. You can also browse the followers of a similar author in your genre.

Next up, look at what your readers are sharing and engaging with. This’ll vary based on the social media platforms you’ve picked, but take note of what’s popular and why. Is it a viral romantasy hit like Fourth Wing, or are people obsessing over hot morally gray characters? Is it a meme where you share your favorite book, or is the trending audio being used? 

Finally, if you’ve already shared some content, check your insights on your platform to see what has performed the best. Take note of the format (video or image), when you posted it (day or night, day of week), and the topic or idea (book teaser, behind-the-scenes, character detail). Try to replicate your success with more of that content.

Which means it’s time to…

Brainstorm content ideas that’ll engage your audience

Time to come up with some content! Before you flip out and worry about writer’s block — we’ve been there, trust us — we’re gonna walk you through it, so don’t sweat. You’ve already got some notes about what your audience is liking, sharing, and engaging with!

Here are a few prompts to get you brainstorming:

• How can you make people fall in love with your character in 1 to 2 sentences?
• What should people know about you as an author that would make them want to read your books?
• What threads of your story can you pull out and talk about in small snippets?
• If you have an upcoming book, can you share sneak peeks? Timelines? Behind-the-scenes glimpses?
• Is there a social media trend you want to try that would align with your books or author brand?

Make a list of all of your ideas. And we mean all of them. Don’t filter what you’re writing or second-guess yourself. This is the place to brain-dump all the ideas swimming around your head, and then we’ll fine-tune them.

Use a content calendar to plan your social media content

Got your content ideas? Sweet. Now, we’re going to narrow down your list to the topics and ideas that best fit your goals, and then organize and schedule them in a content calendar. That’s right, it’s spreadsheet time.

If you’re launching a new book, map out your book release timelines and events already on your calendar. It helps to plug in your book launch date and work your way backward. Maybe you’re planning to do a meet-and-greet at your local bookstore or talk to a local romance book club about your book. Input all those dates.

Then, think about your capacity. Can you record one Reel and one TikTok a week while sticking to your publishing schedule? If not, space your content out more. You don’t have to publish a post every single day!

With your capacity in mind, start scheduling content in your calendar. Prompt out your calendar as much as you can without writing everything, which you’ll do later. Don’t know what to start with or what to share? Following certain themes for posts can help you eliminate overwhelm and get over analysis paralysis. 

For example, you might highlight the hot male characters in your books on Monday (#ManCrushMonday, anyone?), share behind-the-scenes writing on Wednesday, and a reader review or fun fact about your books on Friday. 

Create your content in batches

As busy writers who love efficiency and hate missing deadlines, we always recommend creating content in batches and scheduling it in advance. This takes so much pressure to “keep up” with social media off your shoulders. If you’re ahead of the game, you don’t have to keep up.

Make time in your schedule to write content in batches. Here’s our recommended process for content batching in pieces so you’re not doing it all at once, with no time for writing your book:

1. Batch write content like blog posts, social media captions, podcast/video scripts, and reader reviews.
2. Batch design anything you need, like a graphic or a simple screenshot of a review. You can review and make edits to all your content here, too.
3.  Batch schedule what you can, preferably a month in advance.

Not everything can be created and scheduled in advance. Instagram Reels and TikToks may need to be done the day of if your idea is timely or trending. You can leave space for Instagram Stories if you want them to be more off-the-cuff.

Wait… and then check your data

Once you’ve scheduled your content and they start publishing automatically, give yourself a break. Let sleeping dogs lie…but for like, a week. Then check your insights to see how everything performed. (If you do this too early, you might get discouraged and never want to create a social post again. So trust us; wait it out!)

Look at your data to see:

• What your reach was like
• How the engagement was
• What got comments
• What got saved and shared
• Which links got clicked (for YouTube vids or links shared in Stories)
• What your video retention rate was (for TikTok or Insta)
• How many followers you gained

Congrats, you now have a starting point for collecting data and seeing how your traction grows! Remember, people who go “viral” immediately are either lying or super rare special unicorns. It may take at least a month to see your work pay off. And that’s totally fine!

Launching a book? Grab our FREE book marketing calendar

Now that we’ve broken social media marketing down, it’s not so scary, right? All it takes is some research, some unfiltered brainstorming, a little planning in advance, and creating content in batches. Et voilà! You’ve got a social media plan.  

But say you’re still wary about creating content for your upcoming book launch. And not just social media content, but everything else a successful book marketing plan takes, like email marketing, advertising, influencer marketing, pre-sales…basically, the whole enchilada. What about all that?

We got you, boo. Grab our FREE Book Launch Marketing Checklist! From two months before your book is published to two months after, it has everything you need to build hype and boost your sales. You’ll know what to post and where every single week for four months. And it’s free. That’s a hell of a deal. Get your checklist HERE!