Welcome back to the Building Your Author Platform series! I am finally off my hiatus from this subject, and today, I want to talk about some tricks and tips on maintaining a Facebook page that gets engagements. I personally run two pages, the Fluff About Fantasy page and All in the Pantheon’s page. If you know what you’re doing, you can have these pages practically run themselves. Here is my best advice.
Tip #1: Make sure your setup allows for smooth operation.
When you’re creating your Facebook page, make sure you’re taking care of the basics. Fill out your “about” description with a quick summary of either who you are or what your website offers, depending on which purpose you’re designing your page around. Add at least one form of contact information outside of using Messenger (I chose my writing email). Let people know that you’re available to take questions from fans or contact from professionals.
Sync your website to your Facebook page. WordPress allows you to post links and a description of every post you make to your website automatically. It’s a fantastic feature that saves me a bit of time every time I create something new.
Tip #2: Send your page out to as many people as you can.
Now that you’ve created a Facebook page, you’re going to want people to see it! Start by sending invites to like your page out to all your Facebook friends, whether that’s 50 people or 500. Post the link on your personal Facebook and your Facebook story. Get your friends to share it too. Post the link on all of the other social media platforms that you use. Even if you only get 5% engagement from the people who follow you, that’s fantastic. Facebook is a platform that is fairly difficult to build up a following for a page unless you’ve already got a decent amount of work out there in the public eye.
If you’re willing to spend a bit of money, using Facebook Ads to reach more people can be incredibly useful for branching outside of your immediate and secondary circles. While I haven’t put out an ad myself, I have played around with selecting an audience for an ad. And let me tell you, you can narrow the focus down as much as you want to by age, location, and common interests; to name a few. I’ve got a saved audience for young fantasy writers to target once I’m ready to put out my first ad.
Tip #3: Create new content.
As I mentioned before, Facebook is notorious for making pages difficult for others to see without you throwing it in someone’s face via yourself or ads. However, one technique that I’ve noticed does get you a little more reach is creating new content. Content that can’t be found on your website or any of your other social media platforms.
On the All in the Pantheon page, I conduct interviews with each of the gods to dive deep into who they are, what they stand for, and how they feel about the mortal scribe writing for them. It’s an added touch that breaks up the monotony of getting a stream of blog post after blog post. People like to see something new and different, and they love to think that they’re the only ones who are seeing it or the first ones who will ever see it. I’m working on coming up with ways to bring interesting things like that to spruce up the Fluff About Fantasy page. I’m open to suggestions!
At the end of the day, a Facebook page is easily manageable with just a little bit of effort per week. Add to your repertoire. You won’t regret it.
Happy writing!
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