In this third and final article on social media marketing, RM Marketing Services director Rachael McDiarmid shares her advice on preparing and scheduling social media posts.

Social media for independent authors can be quite daunting. Writing, producing and distributing your book has been your focus, but now it’s time to look at the social media aspects of your overall marketing plan.

As we mentioned in our first article, don’t leave it until the last minute to start on ‘the socials’ and make decisions about social media platforms that are right for you and your readers. Our second article was about the style of content and ideas to get you started. You’ve now come to the place that many authors find scary, frustrating, or not in their skillset. But don’t worry, they are!

Get ready to explore the wonderful world of social media content and scheduling!

We are fortunate to have a wealth of social media and design tools available to us. If you’re an indie author, chances are you’re going to be watching your sales and marketing dollars. Your marketing budget might extend itself to some services that are more costly and provide the ‘bells and whistles’, but most of you will be seeking a solution that is free or affordable.

Before we begin, I have three recommendations for any serious book marketer:

• Become best friends with Google. Google has the answers to all your social media questions—you can just ask them directly into the search engine. Cast your eyes over the results and refine your searches to get better results.
• Ensure you have a library card. Your local library has a wealth of resources—digital, print, multimedia. Check their catalogue for good social media books and training resources.
• LinkedIn is also an excellent platform for raising your profile and training on a wide range of subjects. Check out their social media and digital advertising resources!

These resources will be helpful as you explore social media marketing.

A smart phone with a good camera and ability to record video is a must-have. Download all the social media apps that are relevant for your book marketing promotions. You’ll probably want one that also re-posts content if you are going to be active on Instagram, plus other apps for video or photo editing directly from your phone. You can post directly from your phone to each social media channel, use web applications from your computer, or do a combination of both.

Remember to set up notifications in each app so you can keep up to date with discussions, tags, and comments. Notifications are helpful for anything time specific, especially on Twitter where you’ll want to participate as something is happening, not when it’s passed!

If you are going to post a lot of content, I recommend having a social media calendar each month that lists what you’d like to post, on what platform, and when. A spreadsheet or Word document is all you need to start. You may also be considering certain posts you’d like to boost with a small amount of advertising spend so highlight those for easy reference! And don’t forget to put in special dates—publication dates, book launches, and other events you are attending—as these will be important for pre and post marketing.

You don’t have to be a graphic designer these days!

These days the savvy author uses Canva. Canva is an Australian graphic design platform, used to create social media graphics, presentations, flyers, posters, presentations, and other visual content. Take a professional subscription—and set up your social media channels so you can prepare and schedule your content in advance—directly from their site. It’s very affordable and a subscription gives you access to video, audio, and photograph libraries on top of all its other features.

You can also—and this, THIS is my absolute favourite thing about the platform—you can RESIZE for any social media site! There are preferred image sizes for each social media platform and Canva makes it incredibly easy to format your image or video to that size.

I recommend you start your subscription, watch some of their training materials, then set up your branding (favourite colours, fonts, logo if you have one) if you’d like to have consistency and easy identification. Follow their prompts to start a design from scratch or use one of their thousands of templates. Edit it with your content, save it, and then save and resize if you want to use it across multiple sites. Then, schedule it. Easy peasy.

Of course, you don’t have to opt for Canva. There are other sites that you can explore like Adobe Express, Vista Create, Snappa, Easil, Stencil. Find what you are comfortable with.

There are also templates available within many social media apps these days to make it easier to prepare content. Follow people who load helpful videos for social media posts. I’d like to do a special shout-out here to Middle Grade Mavens Podcast on Instagram, who did some wonderful reels with tips for authors and bookstagrammars: I recommend you check them out and see how easy it us to produce some fun and engaging Reel content. Reels are short-form vertical videos, now up to 90 seconds, and are much more discoverable than normal image files, and even Stories.

There are lots of ways to schedule your content!

While you can schedule your posts directly from Canva, there are also the direct options.

You can schedule posts in Meta (Facebook & Instagram) by setting up your professional Meta Business Suite account. Their planner will allow you to schedule images, video, and Stories (15 second content posts) in both Facebook and Instagram.

It’s also easy to schedule on Twitter. Tweets can be scheduled in advance by writing your tweet and selecting the calendar icon that appears. This is a handy tool, but Twitter is very much about discussion and debate, so make sure you also engage on the site on a regular basis, and don’t just have one-way posts.

There are lots of scheduling sites—many of which are designed for large corporations and are therefore costly. Sites like Hootsuite, Zoho Social, Sprout Social, Agorapulse and Buffer all have something to offer the social media aficionados. They include lots of bells and whistles for you to assess performance and engagements. Later.com is one of the cheapest available however their free account has limitations which can be restrictive, depending on what your social media content strategy is. The above sites also have some wonderful, helpful, and interesting newsletters—so subscribe to them if you want to keep up to date on what’s happening in the social media world.

Don’t forget to write some good descriptions, use hashtags, and have a call-to-action for more information. Tag people where possible, particularly if they appear in the post, and always tag a bookseller or library if you’ve posted content taken in their premises. And if you’re a small publisher, don’t forget to tag your authors!

By producing good content, you will also make it easier for those who are interested in it to share to their own networks. Comment, share, engage in social media platforms and get discussions happening about your books, your press, and topics of interest to you. Your analytics will tell you if you are hitting the spot, so don’t forget to check in on them to see how people are engaging with your sites.

Social media marketing is just one part of your book marketing plan. Use it to create awareness of your book and to start discussions. The more you spend on social media, the more you will learn, and the more engagement and discussion will happen over time.

Rachael McDiarmid is the director of RM Marketing Services. You can contact RM Marketing Services for a social media consultation, workshop or training via their website or email.