Welcome to the second addition of the marketing series ‘The Importance of…’ I hope you found the topic of branding interesting & the advice beneficial. This time we’re talking about ratios. ‘What ratios?’ I hear you cry – the golden ratio of social media marketing, as I like to call it. I mentioned in the previous article how important it is to get your personality across to your reader. Because after all – you sell yourself first, your work second. This ratio is a little formula to help you use that mantra. If you stick to the ratio, people will see you shine & come to like you, while also seeing bits of your amazing work, without feeling bogged down by it. They won’t feel like you’re forcing your work onto them, & that makes all the difference! Get your personality across to people & they’ll automatically be drawn to check out what your work is all about. This little ratio is one of the best tools I’ve learnt to help market yourself, it only takes a little planning to make it work.
So what is this ratio? You want to make sure that for every 1 post overtly promoting your book. You need to be balancing that with 6 posts that reflect your personality, make people laugh, & help your audience to know you better & like you through that. That means if you’re posting daily, you can overtly promote your book once a week alongside other content. It can be anything from writing memes that you can relate to, to personal moments about your life. You can share pictures of the book you’re currently reading, or blog posts about the writing industry – something about genre, or writing tag lines, whatever it may be. You can still talk about your writing – the progress you’ve made, if you’re stuck, a character you love, as this isn’t overt promotion. This ratio helps to keep the feed focused on you rather than your book, so that whenever you do share things about your book people are pleased to see it, excited to see what you’re doing. If you focus on sharing your personality & providing value to your audience, they are more likely to want to support you. If you’re constantly pushing your book without showing them who you are, it won’t matter how great your book is. They’ll see that it’s about your book again, & won’t even bother to read it.
Obviously if you’re only posting on your platform twice a week then you can have one post for marketing & one for value but it’s best to post to your platform more often (facebook, twitter, instagram wherever) to help build your audience. The more you post, the more traffic you bring to your page & the more likely you are to catch the eye of people who don’t already follow you. You need to be providing value to your audience. People as a species are selfish, they are much more interested in receiving things, than they are for giving. You will gain more followers/subscribers/loyal fans if you offer value to them. I do this through my blog posts mainly, which means that most of my audience are writers themselves, because that’s who gets value from following me.
The ratio doesn’t have to be exact you just have to keep in mind that you offering value/amusement/happiness to people is much more important than pushing your book every day. Save those snippets for once a week, perhaps even start your own hashtag & get people excited that it’s coming up. A lot of writing groups use hashtags for specific days so that their main feed is not overflowing with self promotion. Have your own #MCmonday #teasertuesday or #worldbuildingwednesday etc. through your social media platforms. Not only does it help you make sure you’re not sharing your work too much, but people actually search & follow those hashtags which will then bring more traffic to your platform as well.
What do you share to your platform? Do you find it works for you? Please let me know in the comment below!
S. M. MITCHELL 