Social Media: The Poor Person's Publicist

I call social media the “poor person’s publicist” for its ability to reach a broad audience at no cost, other than your time. The major social media sites include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. That’s a lot of social media to interact with! Clearly Facebook is the winner, though each site serves a particular niche. Posting status updates and promoting your book via social media is known as “microblogging.”

For my first book, I was often asked (mostly by publicists), Who is doing your public relations? I suspect this was because they wanted me to take them on under retainer, but my budget was so small I couldn’t afford a publicist. For a book tour, some authors hire a publicist to set up events, attract publicity and set up interviews. For a two or three-month promotion window, this can cost you $10,000 or more.

My advance was so small that I simply couldn’t afford that. Instead, I relied on my own marketing skills for generating word-of-mouth marketing, while working with the publicist at Rutgers University Press. As Rutgers was my first publisher, I got to use her services for free. The third leg in the chair was the director of sales and marketing, to whom I passed all my sales leads. And the fourth leg was social media, primarily Facebook (I’ve since started using Twitter as well). It was there that I set up events and broadcast them out publicly via the book’s Facebook group, where I could hit a large audience.

Admittedly, Facebook can be hit-or-miss. As much as you encourage your friends to invite people to an event and spread the word, so often they simply reply Attend, Maybe, or Decline, and nothing else. Likewise, many people don’t treat a Facebook RSVP with any commitment. If someone says they’ll attend an event, they’re just as likely not to come. And if someone RSVPs Maybe, they probably won’t attend. So take the Yes people and subtract between a quarter and a third: that’s how many people will in fact show. I’m not being a pessimist – this is just based on my experience. I call this “Facebook math.”

Facebook used to be stronger at events, but now that everyone knows about it, I find that it is weaker. We are all drowning in events – it seems every week that I get invited to at least a half-dozen events. So many events just makes you want to ignore Facebook events entirely.

Sometimes good old-fashioned e-mail is a better way to invite people to an event, rather than relying on social media, where it may go into a black hole. I say use both. You can certainly use social media to alert people to events – such as simply updating your status with details about the event, rather than creating a formal event that most will simply ignore.

Twitter is another key social media tool that is especially popular among public figures and brand advocates. A downside is that you can only post 140 characters. I broadcast all of my events there and update my status regularly, but frankly don’t use it for what most people seem to: getting the latest news. Rather, I spend most of my social media time on Facebook, as that is where my friends hang out.

Some people have their feeds linked so that when they update Twitter, Facebook is updated as well. This can be annoying to Facebook users, as all those hashtags (#bourbon) and names (@bobjones) and tiny URLs don’t really translate to Facebook and make for uneasy reading.

So when is the ideal time to post? We live in a 7x24 era, yet posting late at night or really early in the morning will miss much of your audience, which is asleep. Post during the daytime, ideally during working hours (and not commuting hours). For blog posts, mid-week is ideal. Forget Fridays: people are busy trying to finish their work and get out of the office for the weekend. Your post will blithely pass them by. Despite the 7x24 news cycle, much social media traffic is generated during working hours and early evening.

By the way, you can follow me on Twitter (@garrettpeck), or subscribe to my updates on Facebook (garrettpeck). Or better yet, please “Like” the Facebook fanpage for The Potomac River.

Garrett Peck

www.garrettpeck.com