What Social Media Outlets Should Authors Be On?
EPISODE SIXTY SIX
A question I'm often asked is, "What's the best social media outlet for authors to be on?" Social media continues to change and grow, so it can be a difficult landscape to navigate. On this episode we will discuss where authors should be online, what they should focus on, and what changes they should be aware of.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Jenn Hanson-DePaula: Hello, and welcome to the Book Marketing Simplified podcast. I'm Jenn Hanson-DePaula.
Marcus DePaula: And I'm Marcus DePaula.
Jenn: You're back.
Marcus: I am.
Jenn: You really didn't go anywhere physically.
Marcus: Didn't I, though? [laughs]
Jenn: You joined us again on the Book Marketing Simplified Podcast.
Marcus: How long has it been?
Jenn: It has been since October of 2022.
Marcus: Feels longer than that, but we've been through a lot since then.
Jenn: We've had a lot going on, and we've had some adjustments, we've had some things that we've been testing, and that's also a part of what we're going to be talking about today.
Marcus: Yes. But we are settled in officially, I feel like, and now I'm back.
Jenn: Yes.
Marcus: What are we talking about today?
Jenn: We are talking about where authors should be online, because a question that I get very often is what social media outlet should I be on? Where do I need to be? Do I need to be on all of them? Do I need to be on just one? Which one should that be? We are going to address that today.
Marcus: Everyone needs to be on YouTube. Clearly.
Jenn: That's something that we wanted to hit on because we made some adjustments within our information delivery where we are at on social media and online, and we thought it would be a good opportunity to show some of the questions and some of the things that you should look at within your own social media and within your own online presence to help you determine where you should be.
Marcus: There is a lot of pressure, I hear, that you need to be on YouTube, and we have tried that, and we are here to say that--
Jenn: It's a lot of work.
Marcus: It is. While it doesn't hurt to be on YouTube, for sure, if that's not your focus, but we'll get into that.
Jenn: Yes. Just to let you in on the decision to adjust our YouTube presence and to adjust some things there. It was a few weeks ago where I came to you, Marcus, saying, I don't know if I want to do the YouTube videos anymore.
Marcus: You probably expected me to go, "What? You're crazy."
Jenn: Because I know, as a marketing professional, that YouTube is a huge search engine. It's the second largest to Google, and that having a presence there can be very, very powerful. The way it started was very simple. I just did it on my own, and then you came in.
Marcus: We had recorded a podcast episode, actually the last one that I was on, and then you went into your office, and I hear you recording your YouTube video, and it's exactly what we just talked about on the podcast, and I'm like, "Wait, this is unnecessary for us to be doing this twice. Why don't I step out of the podcast, and then you do your YouTube video content, and then we also package it so that it's the podcast, too? Because you don't really need me anyway."
Jenn: Oh, stop. When we moved from Nashville to Minnesota, of course, we had a lot going on and just adjusting and getting everything settled in. I just kept putting the YouTube videos and in hand with that, the podcast, just kept pushing it on the back burner. I love the podcast. I love doing the podcast, but it was the YouTube that was just sucking the life out of me.
Marcus: It is so much more work.
Jenn: It is.
Marcus: Even for someone like me who does this a lot.
Jenn: Yes. As someone who does not necessarily like to be on camera, I am an introverted person, I am not always comfortable being that focus or at the front of things, so I just started feeling very overwhelmed with YouTube.
Marcus: I could feel that. It impacted the way you were delivering the information.
Jenn: Yes. I finally realized that I was just trudging through it to trudge through it. I remember sitting down and just thinking, "Why do I keep putting this off? Why do I keep pushing it out?" It was like, "It's YouTube. I don't want to have that be my focus."
Marcus: That's something I hear you say all the time is that if you're not comfortable in having fun engaging in one of these online platforms, then you probably should prioritize one of the other ones, so that's what we're doing.
Jenn: Exactly. We still will have a presence on YouTube. We are going to be using like an audiogram-type format. Then I'm also using YouTube Shorts.
Marcus: Which is repurposed content from your TikToks, right?
Jenn: Yes. We'll still have a presence there, but it's a bit more edited down.
Marcus: Before we sat down today, I actually looked at the analytics to make sure we weren't making some big mistake. I pretty much knew what I was going to see like, yes, this last audiogram video that we did for this previous episode got less views, but it was not a significant amount of people. It's definitely worth investing your mental bandwidth and your creativity into the platforms to get the most return. For us, YouTube is just not it right now.
Jenn: Yes. With that, and paired with the questions that I get a lot from authors about where you should be online, I thought it would be a good idea to outline some things that you should look at and consider because it is not the same for every author. I know a lot of authors, especially over the past few years, have seen a lot of traffic and a lot of engagement and significant sales through TikTok. But does this mean that is always going to happen for every other author? No, it doesn't.
Marcus: That it's going to continue to happen.
Jenn: Exactly, exactly. The first tip that I would give you figuring out where you should be online is, especially if you already have a social media presence, let's say you have dabbled in all of the social media outlets, going and looking to see where you might see the most engagement. Meaning, are people leaving comments? Are they DMing you? Are they sharing your content? Are they liking what you're posting? That is so much more important than the number of followers. For example, Twitter or X or whatever it's called now.
Marcus: Is it still even there?
Jenn: I don't know. Back in the day, I think I had 13,000 or 14,000 followers, but absolutely no engagement. It was nil. Whenever I hear authors saying, "Yes, I have X amount of followers on Facebook, but I see so much more engagement on Instagram, but my audience is smaller there." I say, "Go to Instagram," or go where you are getting more engagement because if your posts are just landing on deaf ears and that no one is responding, that you're not seeing any traffic driven to your website, or seeing newsletter subscribers from that, you are going to get so flustered.
I don't want you to waste your time. I want you to see results. Looking at the analytics might seem a little too scientific, or a little too--
Marcus: Pedantic.
Jenn: Yes. But it's not. It's something that in a very quick glance, you can see, "Oh, this is where I'm seeing the most engagement."
Marcus: You don't have to obsessively check them like I tend to do, but just checking them maybe once a month, once a quarter. What do you recommend?
Jenn: I would start with once a month, just to get into that habit, and to be able to see what's going on. Then, once you have a good feel for it, checking in once a quarter is perfectly fine.
Marcus: Yes. I know for me, personally, the whole threads fad has not paid off for me at all. I very quickly decided not to invest my energy into that platform. I'll post stuff there, but everything I'm posting exactly on LinkedIn and everywhere else, it is not getting the same views, so I'm not opening that app as much.
Jenn: When it comes to new outlets, okay, you can sign up for it, obviously, but to sit back and observe because people thought, "Oh, this is just going to be a replacement for Twitter or X," or whatever it's called. Yes, we saw a huge amount of people sign up for it, but now we're starting to see things dwindle. So when a new outlet pop up, or this new opportunity come along, many times, authors just go, "Oh boy," and they will roll their eyes and like, "Not another social media outlet."
Marcus: Or a new feature.
Jenn: Exactly. Just pump the brakes a little bit. You do not have to jump into it right away. If you want to, great, go for it, but I tend to err on the side of, let's observe, see if this is going to be where A, my readers are hanging out, B, something that will benefit my audience.
Marcus: Something that I could do naturally that feels like something I want to be doing on a regular basis.
Jenn: Yes. And if it is going to completely stretch you way too thin, like if you're already feeling too overwhelmed with what you have going on right now, just observe.
[music]
Marcus: This leads us talking about these new features and new platforms into your last point, which is about not following trends.
Jenn: Yes. I think that trends are okay to be aware of, but so many people on TikTok and on Instagram, I see a lot of these "experts" that are saying this is how you can go viral, use this sound to go viral or do this to go viral. Yes, going viral is great if it's with content that's about your book or something that's driving good attention, yes, it can help propel your visibility, it can help sales, it can do all that stuff.
But when I see authors spending hours of their time looking for sounds or going for those trending things, they're so focused on that virality, you lose sense of, "Okay, is this going to best serve my ideal reader?"
Marcus: Let's think about what happens when anyone goes viral. You get this massive influx of attention and potentially new followers. Most of the people I see going viral are people that go viral because they film their spouse doing something dumb or a dog or a kid.
Jenn: It has to do with what you are on there for.
Marcus: Right, so those followers are following you because they think they're going to get more of that thing that you posted that was trendy. So when you start posting the stuff that you're actually about, you're going to be speaking to nobody.
Jenn: There is nothing wrong with wanting to do fun things. That is totally fine, but it's having a strategy and a plan in place.
Marcus: The fun things should reinforce you as the author and how you're connecting with these people that you want to connect with, as opposed to just trying to put stuff out there and see whoever comes knocking.
Jenn: I have seen some authors who post something that happened during their day or something random that happened that doesn't have anything to do with their books and it goes viral, I know some of these authors have really worried about that. Just take it with stride. If something accidentally goes viral, it's not going to completely derail you. Just go with the understanding of, "Okay, my views have gone straight up. They are going to go down, but you can always work with that."
Marcus: Yes. Just like with everything else you say, it's about the intentionality and what you're doing, having a purpose towards your goal, not just being random.
Jenn: That brings it back to what should you focus on within social media, and that is your content. It is what you are actually sharing. Instead of focusing on, "Oh, I need to do X amount of reels," or, "I need to do X amount of TikToks per week," or whatever, focusing on the messaging, the topics that you want to talk about that you want to connect with your ideal readers.
Thinking about those three to five content buckets that you can cycle through week after week and being intentional with it is going to give you that longevity that you need, not only for your own sanity and for you to keep your consistency going, but it is also going to be so much more relatable and something that your ideal readers will identify with and that they will connect with. Because when it comes to social media and marketing, people just want to be seen and understood and they want to identify with what they're seeing on social media.
It's that empathy factor. When you can take those elements into your content and focus on that and make that your intention, it doesn't matter what social media outlet you're on. When you can focus on that, if a trending audio or if something trendy does come along that you say, "Oh, I have this piece of content that would fit really well with that," it's not you chasing after these trending sounds.
Marcus: You're leveraging it for your actual real benefit.
Jenn: Exactly.
Marcus: Time for the Marcus recap.
[laughter]
We started off talking about how we have changed our YouTube strategy and it has everything to do with your first point, which is figuring out the fact that it just wasn't a good fit for us. Your point being that when it comes to deciding where authors need to be online, you don't need to be everywhere, you need to be first and foremost where your ideal readers are, and secondly, where it's comfortable and easy for you to create content that helps you connect with those ideal readers.
Jenn: Where you enjoy because when you enjoy the process, you are more likely to be consistent with it.
Marcus: Exactly. And then along with that, actually looking at your analytics to see exactly where you're getting engagement and that that effort that you're putting into the platforms you choose is actually paying off for you. Then finally, we don't need to be chasing trends and trying to go viral. It's all about the content that you know your ideal reader, because them so well, is going to respond positively to and want to share on their own feeds.
All of these things, it helps to make sure I'm not making it about me. The wanting to go viral and chasing trends and just feeling like you have to be everywhere and obsessing about your follower numbers, that ends up being an ego trip, and it's all about me. Whereas if I'm focusing on who I'm trying to connect with and what they need help with or what they want to hear from me and be entertained by, and what's going to make the time spent listening and watching what I have to say worthwhile for them so that they feel like it was time well spent.
Jenn: Absolutely. To help you put all of this that we've talked about into a bit more perspective and to give you a little more structure and some guidance with that, be sure to download our free book marketing blueprint. It's going to be in the show notes or you can go to mixtusmedia.com.
Marcus: It feels good to be back.
Jenn: It's so good to have you back, Marcus.
Marcus: We will see you next time.
Jenn: Bye.