Tip #4: The Many Faces of Facebook

I find it helpful to have separate pages for my personal life and my writing career on Facebook. Currently, I have an author page for Leslie DuBois and a fan page for Priscilla the Great. This way, my friends and family don’t get bombarded by my book alerts. I try to update these pages two to three times per week with progress on upcoming books as well as sales or discounts on books. It's nice to have a personal touch on these pages as well and try to interact with fans as much as possible. In my opinion, being able to interact with the fans is the best part of Facebook. Every once in a while, I also try to have a contest that is only open to Facebook fans. In this way, the Facebook fans feel special and you may also get more fans.

In order to advertise my pages, I used to take out Facebook ads. The good thing about Facebook ads is that they are pay per click. Which means you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. You can also target your ad to specific people that will be interested in your book. So if I wanted to, I could specify that only people who have X-Men listed as their favorite movie will view my ad. Of course, that would severely narrow the pool of potential viewers so I probably wouldn't get that specific. If I was doing a book signing in a certain city, I could specify that only people who live in that city will see my ad for that event. It's very useful that way.

Facebook ads are good for drawing attention to your page and gaining some exposure.. The bad thing about Facebook ads is that they don’t really convert into book sales. If you think of Facebook ads as a way to generate likes and fans to your pages then it can be useful. Later, you can convert these fans into buyers through the content you post.

Tomorrow's post will be about one of the most useful things I've found on Facebook...ever. You don't want to miss it.