One of the factors that publishers use to decide whether or not they will buy an author’s book is the author’s marketing platform. People often think that traditional publishers are satisfied with using their marketing channels alone. However, this is not true – the person with greater ability to push his books is more preferable. The following are some ways authors can make social media work for them.

You haven’t started? What are you waiting for?

Authors should work to build their marketing platforms as they write their books. It makes little sense to wait until a book is finished to start building a marketing platform. The reason is that a solid platform requires between 9 months and a year to build.

Services should be segmented

There are five main social media services that authors can use. Authors should use every service for the ideal purpose. Facebook should be for people you went to school with, family, close friends and some acquaintances. For perceptions such as “this new show really kicks ass,” use Twitter. Google+ is good for sharing passions such as photography, stamp collecting, programming, writing, etc. Pinterest is for pinning pictures for others to see and have little interaction with. LinkedIn is for creating business relationships. Authors should therefore use social media sites for what they are most suited for.

A great profile sells you to the masses

A profile page should be seen as a place where you advertise yourself for people to think about whether they like you or not. It is supposed to convince people that having you as a connection is a good idea. Profile pages should have good photos of yourself and text areas should humbly tell your story.

Social media stories should be curated, not created

Writing a book is a tough enough job as it is. Authors should therefore not trouble themselves too much with writing for social media sites. This is a job that can be done by other people on the author’s behalf. When an author wants content for social media, he should link like crazy. He should link to other people’s videos, photos, articles, and websites as long as they are relevant. This helps to establish your area of expertise.

Moderation, moderation, and then some

Authors should avoid repeating the same thing time and again – they could become boring for their audience. Although it is good to get the word out about a particular book you wrote, you should use less than 10% of your posts for commercial endeavors such as promoting your book. It is okay to yammer about it all week long after you launch the book. However, you should lift off your foot from the promotional gas pedal after a few weeks.

Eye candy all the way

Social media sites are always very busy. It is therefore difficult to get peoples’ attention if you just post plain text. Every post should have an embedded video from YouTube or Vimeo or a picture of at least 400 pixels wide. This is guaranteed to grab the attention of people using social media sites.