How Many Social Media Profiles Do Authors Need?
EPISODE FIFTY NINE
It can be difficult to know how many profiles an author should have on social media. Do you create a new profile for each book? Do you have multiple accounts if you write in different genres? We cover that and more in this episode.
Podcast episode cover image photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash.
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Transcript
We live in a very busy and noisy online world, and many times it can be a struggle for authors to figure out how to actually make their profile on social media seen and to make their voices heard. So I thought that I would address three of the biggest questions that I get in order to actually boost your visibility.
My name is Jenn Hanson-dePaula, and I'm the co-founder of Mixtus Media. And the purpose of this channel is to empower and educate authors with the best book marketing, social media and newsletter information available. I'm really good at helping authors simplify the book marketing process and to help them find their readers specifically online. So if that sounds good to you, be sure to hit like unsubscribe. I share new content every Friday and be sure to download our free Book Marketing Blueprint. It's going to help you get started with everything that you need to start to see success with your book marketing. So let's get started.
One of the biggest questions that I get from authors is how many profiles should I have on social media? Should I have a personal profile? Should I have one dedicated to my work? What should I do? And this really is a very personal question that you need to answer for yourself.
I honestly have two different accounts. My personal account is for family and friends, and I have that account set to private specifically on Instagram. I don't necessarily like to share a lot of pictures of my son. I like to keep some personal things, personal and business, things business. And so that is really my line in the sand. And because I know that I have a rather large following. I don't know everyone that follows me and I don't know what their story is. And sometimes I just want to keep the information that I share directly with authors regarding books and not necessarily my personal life.
And so this is really a decision that you need to make if you feel like you want to keep some of your personal information private, then have a personal profile that is set for just family and friends. And you can make that profile private specifically on Instagram. But if it's something where your family and your kids are part of your writing and a part of your book, and you want to include them in your posts on social media, then you can keep that as a part of your business profile. But that is really a personal decision. But I would encourage you to think ahead. Think about all of the people that you might connect with later on down the road, that you might not want to necessarily share pictures of your family or share personal things with. So just think ahead and make that decision for yourself.
Then the second question that I get a lot is do I need to create a new account for each book that I write? No, you don't. What you want to have is one centralized account for your writing for you as an author. Even if you write in multiple different genres, you can have everything centered around your author account. So don't feel like you need to create new accounts for every book or each genre that you write in. Keep it all under one account under your author account.
And what this does is it helps not only centralize your messaging, but it helps readers to easily find you and your books. It's going to help them discover other books that you might have written before, or it's going to help you to even promote your past books when you're promoting your new book. We want to make it as easy as possible for people to find you the author, rather than trying to find each individual book. So when you can have one account for you as an author, it's going to simplify the process and it's going to make you easier to find online.
The third question revolves around if you write different genres and you feel that each book has a different ideal reader. So this kind of falls under the same answer as the previous question, because again, we want to make it as easy as possible for people to find you. And we need to also remember that even though some readers might favor one genre over the other, it doesn't mean that they only read one genre exclusively. What we want to do is to expose your readers to other books that you've written, other genres that you've explored, and let them see everything that you have to offer. When we craft an ideal reader, this is mainly for you to use as a filter to speak through.
So when you say that your ideal reader for one genre is completely different than another genre, this does not mean that you are going to be excluding anyone. It's going to be showing what each book has to offer. And so if you're worried about crossing lines within the genres that you write in, don't be, because it's all going to feed one another and it's going to expose and show your readers all of the different things that you write.
Ultimately, what that enables you to do is to connect in a deeper level with your readers, because when you have multiple different genres and you're able to connect with people on different topics and different themes and different discussion points, it's not going to exclude those readers. It's actually going to bring them into the conversation and let them get to know you more as a writer as well.
So to sum things up, how many accounts should you have as an author? That's really a personal decision, and you can make that one for yourself. Second, do you need to have separate accounts for each book? Absolutely not. Keep them all in one place. And third, do you need to create different accounts for different ideal readers? If you write in multiple genres. No, you don't. You can keep them all under one account.
The key here is to remember to make things as easy as possible for readers to discover you and to find your content online. We want to keep everything in one specific spot, and when we are fractured and all over the place, it's going to cause confusion. It not only causes confusion for you for maintaining and keeping track of everything, but it causes confusion for your readers as well. So work smarter, not harder, and come at everything from the perspective of your readers. Think about the process and the journey that your reader is taking to discover you and to actually find more about you and your books.
So if the entire social media process or the book marketing process, or even figuring out how to incorporate newsletters into your marketing is something that you really struggle with. I would invite you to check out The Author Circle. It is our monthly membership that empowers authors with everything that they need to successfully market their books, and it is affordable. It's a wonderful community and it's everything that you need to easily learn how to best market your book, how to use social media, and to incorporate newsletters into your overall plan. If you'd like to learn more about The Author Circle, visit mixtusmedia.com/circle. And as always, if you have any questions, be sure to leave a comment or send us an email to let us know. We would love to hear from you and help you out.
(Automatic transcript by Adobe Premiere Pro’s Speech to Text)