One of the best ways to grow as an author is through connecting and networking with fellow authors, publishers, and readers. Growing your presence in the writing community enables you to interact with your peers and industry experts and learn from them. This is what makes LinkedIn a very useful platform for new authors.

Unlike other social media platforms that mix a little bit of everything, LinkedIn is specifically built to help professionals network with each other in their respective fields. As an author who is yet to make a name for yourself, this is a good place for you to start. Through LinkedIn, you will not just connect with like-minded individuals, but you can also use it to reach your intended readers and to drive traffic to your website.

Build Your Profile: Before attempting to market your book, make sure your LinkedIn profile is the very best it can be. Your profile is the face of your author brand, and of your book too, so make sure it is compelling enough. Make your profile as detailed as you can and use your author photo as your profile picture to match all your marketing material. Additionally, make sure your profile has the right keywords so it can easily be found. You can also enhance your profile with videos, photos, infographics, and slideshows to make it more attractive to potential visitors.

LinkedIn Blogs: This is one of the best features on the platform and it works in two ways - you can easily find information on how to market your book, but more importantly for an author looking for a market, you can use these blogs to reach your target audience. LinkedIn has built-in algorithms that ensure that content is delivered to the right audience and consequently that content is shared on other platforms. This is, therefore, a good place to start building your audience.

Join Groups: LinkedIn is specifically built for professionals of similar interests to network. Take advantage of the platform to interact with fellow authors, publishers, and other industry experts. Joining the right LinkedIn groups exposes you to many useful tips on writing, publishing, and marketing to help you keep up with the industry trends. It also helps you get support for your book.

Feature Your Book: Use the Publications section of your profile to attract more attention to your book. This section is designed for featuring books, magazines, newspaper articles and other content you have written or contributed to. Featuring your book in this section is, therefore, a smart move and you can even insert a link to the book's sales page.

Build Relationships: Just like in any other industry, you need to build helpful and lasting relationships for your writing career to thrive. No other platform gives you a better opportunity to do that than LinkedIn. Focus more on creating connections with real depth than just accumulating them. The deeper you connect with them, the higher the chances of them engaging with your content. The relationship with your connections is a two-way street so reach out to them as much as you can by liking and commenting on their posts and sending them messages among other things. 

No other social networking platform does a better job at connecting like-minded professionals than LinkedIn, so be sure to take advantage of all the opportunities it gives you.