Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Frances Caballo/@CaballoFrances
“Social media is no longer an option for writers–it is a required element of every author’s platform.” Frances Caballo
I am very pleased to feature author social media strategist Frances Caballo in this Wow!Women on Writing book tour for her new book, Avoid Social Media Time Suck: A Blueprint for Writers Who Want to Create Online Buzz for Their Books and Still Have Time to Write.
I know this is a very timely topic as many of us are struggling to find our own way through social media channels and still have time to write. Frances has graciously agreed to give away a copy of her book to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing.
My reviews can be found on Amazon and Goodreads.
Welcome, Frances!
What Does a Social Media Manager Really Do?
Do you find that Twitter and Facebook are zapping your energy and infringing on your writing time? Or are you afraid to establish profiles on the social web because you fear that social media will drain time from your already busy day?
If you answered yes to either of the two questions, then it may be time for you to consider hiring a social media manager.
What Is a Social Media Manager & Why Would I Need One?
Whether you work full-time, part-time, or you’re retired, it can be difficult to wedge writing into your schedule. And if you’re published, you not only have to keep writing, you also need to work on marketing your books too.
A social media manager is someone who can help you with your online marketing. When you first contact a social media manager, she will ask you these questions:
1. Who is your audience?
2. What are your goals?
For example, if you write for the YA market, you need to use Tumblr and Twitter. If your novel is about a woman CEO, you need to use LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter. If you write a memoir, the general topic of your book will determine which social media networks you need to use. In addition, give some thought to your budget and how much you can afford to pay someone for marketing your books.
Finally, plan on mailing your books to your social media manager.
Once you discuss your audience, goals, and budget, a social media manager will send you a proposal and recommend the best social media networks for you.
Once the profiles are set up, you can expect a social media manager to:
- Balance information about your books and blog posts (this will comprise 20% of your tweets and updates) with information-rich posts pertinent to your niche.
- Find you new followers on Twitter and maintain the follow/unfollow balance.
- Thank Twitter users for retweets and an occasional Fave designation.
- Post 3 or more tweets daily for you, depending on your budget, and reply to comments.
- Post updates regularly – preferably every day – on Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.
- Share information from your fans, followers and connections.
- Handle your advertising on Facebook and Twitter.
- Create a business account for you on Pinterest and repin images from your followers as well as pin images directly from your blog, website and Amazon.
- Create a profile for you on Tumblr and add your posts.
- Create an author account for you on Goodreads, add your books, list your books on Listopia, and handle your giveaways.
It’s fine if you only want your consultant to handle one or two social media profiles. Or, perhaps you only need her to grow your following on Twitter or take over Pinterest. You need to determine which networks are taking too much of your time and hand those off to a marketing expert.
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Thank you Frances for addressing a very important need for anyone who wishes to publish a book and establish an online presence. You have provided us with practical tips on how to gain control over our time and still do what we love best- to write.
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About the Author: Frances Caballo is a social media manager for writers and author of Avoid Social Media Time Suck: A Blueprint for Writers to Create Online Buzz for Their Books and Still Have Time to Write, Social Media Just for Writers: The Best Online Marketing Tips for Selling Your Books and Blogging Just for Writers. Presently, she is the Social Media Manager for the Women’s National Book Association-SF Chapter, the San Francisco Writers Conference, and the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+.
Synopsis: Social media is no longer an option for writers–it is a required element of every author’s platform. If you’ve been avoiding Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social networks because you think tweeting and posting will take large chunks of time out of your day and leave you with little time to write, think again. Using social media to market your books doesn’t need to be time-consuming. And with the four-step formula you’ll find in this book, it won’t be.
Whether you’re a seasoned or a newbie social media user, this book will introduce you to posting schedules, timesaving applications and content-rich websites that will help you economize the time you spend using social media to promote your books. You will learn:
- How to create and perfect your author platform.
- Where great content exists on the Internet and how you can use
it to further your brand within your niche.
- The importance of being social and applications that make this task easy and fun.
- Tools that enable you to track and measure your success so you
can better understand the return on investment of your valuable time.
- Which tools prevent you from accessing the Internet when the time
comes to sit and write that next book.
- Exercises for introverted writers to help you feel comfortable on the social web.
Frances Caballo is also hosting a book giveaway for Avoid Social Media Time Suck on Goodreads during the month of April.
How about you? Have you found a way to balance social media with writing? Do you think you can benefit from the services of a social media manager?
We’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below and good luck on the drawing!
Next Week:
Monday, 4/14/14: ” Your Story or Your Family” by Memoir Author Saloma Miller Furlong, author of Bonnet Strings.
I wish Frances the best, but I have a different viewpoint. It’s true that social media for authors can be daunting and time-consuming, and the idea of hiring someone to do your pins/repins, tweets/RTs, and etc. is appealing. Corporations do it all the time to rep their corporate brand.
But when you hire someone to do it for you as an individual, I doubt they post as “Lynne’s social media manager,” so this suggests the SMM is pretend to be the author. I’m sure it fills a need, but I’m not in love with the concept.
I appreciate your concern, Lynne. To manage accounts for authors, I need to read their books, have conversations about their preferences and goals, and do my best to adopt their voice. It’s an ongoing process that takes time.
Thanks for stopping by Frances and addressing Lynne’s concern. You’ve introduced a whole new concept here about hiring a social media manager. It sounds like the role is similar to that of a ghostwriter, where one has to work very hard to capture another person’s voice. It would be interesting to hear what people who have hired social media managers have to say.
Hi Lynne, thanks for weighing in here. I agree that the concept of hiring a social media manager is new but it is only one of the many options Frances offers in her book. Hopefully Frances will address your comment.
Yes, Kathy, the reason I write about social media for writers is so that authors can manage their social media marketing on their own. My first book was more of a how-to book. This new book addresses the complaint I often hear from writers about not having sufficient time to handle their social media. In writing this book, I explained the process that I use so that social media will be less time consuming for writers. The apps and strategies I describe are intended to help writers manage their time better when marketing their books.
Ah, there are many viewpoints and choices. I’m at the stage where I’m getting ready to edit my book, think about how I want to publish it, and also live my already full life. The social networks are driving me crazy. There are too many emails, too many interesting blogs to read.
Keeping up with it all is overwhelming. Having somebody else do it sounds like a great idea, but I also agree with Lynne about a SMM pretending to be the author. What to do?
Ah, yes, Joan, you are not alone in your quandary. Frances’ book is an excellent guide to finding your fit in the social media world. Thanks for stopping by.
In my line of work (magazine publishing and freelance writing) I see a lot of small businesses and companies that hire social media managers, which makes a lot of sense and can be very efficient, provided that the social media manager is knowledgable about that business. Most authors I know do their own social media, and Frances’ book is a great “how-to” guide to help navigate the waters based on the level of exposure you want to achieve.
Thank you so much for hosting Frances today, Kathy!
Thanks for stopping by, Renee. I agree, Frances’ book is a great resources for writers. It’s my pleasure to host Frances.
Ah, there is much to be said about this issue, and last evening I attended a literary forum sponsored by a local writers’ group to hear a panel of publishing and marketing experts address some of these issues. One of them also serves as a “promotion assistant” and “author support.” When asked what these meant, her response was not unlike Frances’s description above; however, she works with the author to establish a schedule and method that fits in with the author’s writing life and the rest of his/her life. Another interesting concept to be considered.
Frances, truthfully, I’m not stalking you this week. You just keep showing up in some of my favorite places!
Kathy, thanks for hosting Frances today as part of her blog tour.
Hi Sherrey, you bring up an important point that new roles are emerging from this great need to effectively manage our time in the midst of all the “noise” out there. Frances’ book certainly meets this need. Thanks so much for stopping by and sharing your thoughts.
On the blog scene and into Facebook and Twitter for only a year, I see the need to balance writing with social media. Each day I enjoy reading and commenting on others’ posts while managing my FB fans and Twitter tweets. At the moment, I’m writing only two blog posts weekly and my days are full, so I can’t imagine finding the time to write/market a book on top of it all.
I have picked up on Frances’ comment about her book being a how to for authors to manage their social media marketing on their own. It’s probably not time for me to hire a Social Media Manager yet (publicist for authors?), but I need to read this book for tips. I hope I win it!
Thanks, Kathy, for always featuring such helpful topics and authors.
Yes, Marian, Frances’ book is a great how-to resource for all of us. It’s good you are getting acclimated to social media before you reach the book promotion stage. Congratulations on making such great progress in the past year. Good luck on the drawing!
I’m off to Europe for almost 3 weeks and don’t have free time while I’m volunteering in Spain, so I decided to ask someone to help me keep an eye on my social media, Gutsy Indie Publishers FB group, and incoming e-mails for that time.
Once you find someone you like, in one area, they can refer someone they think that will suit your personality. We shall see if this works. Great post and I shall take a look at Frances’ book.
Sonia, that makes perfect sense, especially for someone like you who travels all over the world. Let us know how it works out.
Hi Kathy, You’ve done it again! Found a resource out there in that infinite web world that helps me look at something differently. I will admit first to being ready to stand firm in opposition. “The next thing you’ll tell me,” I heard myself saying, thinking I hadn’t really been writing to you all these many months, “is there’s no Santa Claus.” Then, I decided to reread Frances’ post. Suddenly the thought occurred, “It’s like having my own personal executive secretary.” So, my suggestion is she just change her title. (Insert tongue in cheek here). She lists so MANY behind-the-scenes jobs that I’d LOVE to hire someone to do (like PINNING the rest of my Kazakhstan photos, setting up all the scheduled Tweets and Posts and … All the semi-robotic things I have been trying to fit in.) But then she mentions wisely that annoying thing called a budget. I’m resigned to the fact that I will never earn back all the money I’ve already poured into putting my memoir of Kazakhstan out there. That’s OK; my reason for writing was never to make money. Still, there is a limit. I would have enjoyed having a sense of how she charges (by the hour, percent of royalties, bartering for my duck eggs … the list goes on). Francis, how many duck eggs would it take to Tweet my blog posts, three times a day each week? For that is the part of social media that gets ignored the most often.
LOL, Janet. Of course there is Santa Claus! Like you, I initially thought of hiring a social media manager as being an extravagance but the more we discuss it, the more it makes perfect sense for certain tasks. It’s still important to maintain responsibility for making meaningful connections but having some assistance in organizing it all sounds appealing. I’m interested in the projected costs , too, Frances. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Janet.
Reading this was so good for me! I wish I could keep up with all that Frances suggests, however, I did learn about a couple things to explore for the future, Listopia and of course, Tumbler. The idea of a social media manager is very intriguing, though budget is a concern for me right now, but down the road, I’m going to keep her name on my list. I can see how I could work with her, so it isn’t her posting for me, trying to be my voice. What an awesome idea to get a manager!! Thanks for making me aware of SM managers!!
Hi Louise, I’m happy you found Frances’s guest post on hiring a social media manager helpful. I highly recommend her book, AVOID SOCIAL MEDIA TIME SUCK. Let us know if you follow through on this and if so, hw your experience has been. Good luck!
I came to this site driven by my interest in memoir writing, and I admire Kathy’s life-long dedication to that. However, I feel cheated by the idea of having a social media manager for an individual writer, especially when it is a memoir. Lynne Spreen rightfully pointed it out, but Frances replied that handling the business shouldn’t be an issue, as she engages herself to find (and reproduce??) author’s voice. What’s wrong with it is that I find writing, especially when it’s memoir, to be an intimate, personal, on-on-one affair between author and his/her reader. Shall I send my neighbor wearing my wig to my next date cause I’m running short of time?
Hi Mirella, Welcome and thanks for stopping by to express your responses. In my opinion, hiring a social media manager is an individual choice. That’s the beauty of writing and publishing these days. We have so many options but they have to fit our needs and goals. Frances’ book is an excellent resource for writers who want to manage their own social media. Hiring a manager is just one option.