by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
Facebook has always been a platform that I’ve struggled with. I rarely use my personal account, but I do maintain my professional account. I know I have a lot of readers using Facebook.
It’s also a platform where I could have the ability to reach new readers…something I tried harder to do in 2020.
I chose to go through a service to run my Facebook parties last year. Marie McNary of A Cozy Experience did a fantastic job. Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, she is taking a break from running Facebook parties (she has kids she’s having to homeschool, etc), but I hope she’ll eventually come back. A quick search online showed that there are other businesses that offer similar services. You can expect to pay $85–$100. The nice thing about using a service was that they created the images and script for the party and handled the giveaway. Marie posted directly to the Facebook event invite and posted every 5 minutes for an hour. I answered comments and questions that Marie posted. She posted the giveaway winners to the page the next day.
But this isn’t something you have to go through a service for. You can host a Facebook party yourself or join a group of authors doing one. (Joanna Campbell Slan hosted one last March that was a lot of fun. She assigned everyone a different time slot.)
Tips for Running Facebook Parties
Decide on your goal. The goal could be a number of different things: more Facebook followers, more newsletter subscribers, more followers on Amazon or Goodreads, or just visibility in a crowded market.
Plan the party, including images. You can make sure your images are optimized for Facebook by using a free program like Canva.com.
Include giveaways. This is a great way to encourage new readers to discover your books. Be sure to set up parameters for the giveaway…digital copies? Print? Only open to readers in the continental US? It’s also important to be aware of Facebook’s rules for giveaways.
Include an image of books in your series. Make sure one of the posts you run shows your series or book. It’s said that The Marketing Rule of 7 still applies to modern purchases, so you want potential readers to see your covers and get familiar with your books for a possible later purchase.
Include a post including your contact information. This is a great way to get new followers, subscribers, or for readers to be able to reach out with further questions. Including your website address helps readers find out more about your books.
Keep refreshing the page to see new comments. Facebook doesn’t do a good job of refreshing and if you don’t manually do it, you may find that you’re far behind in responding right off the bat.
Respond to and like comments. It may be hard to keep up in real time, but if you accidentally miss a couple, you can go back later to reply. The whole exercise is supposed to be a virtual meet-and-greet, though, so eventually responding to and liking comments is important.
Have you thrown Facebook launch parties or other Facebook parties? How did it go? What other promo activities have you tried out recently?
Tips for Facebook Parties: Share on X
Photo on Visualhunt.com
I guess I’d actually have to have a FaceBook account to do that. Well, I’ve avoided it this long, might as well keep the streak going.
Thanks for the tips on hosting a Facebook party. I think I’d go with paying someone to run it for me. Especially when you’re doing a lot of marketing, having the help could make life easier.
It sure is a lot less-stressful that way!
This is such a good idea, Elizabeth! A lot of readers do use FB, even if they’re not on all the time. And most of us know how to use that platform (i.e. you don’t have to get used to a whole new platform). It’s successful, too. I know other authors who’ve done FB parties, and they say it does get them new readers, interest, etc.. And if you can do it without a big outlay, that’s even better.
So true…a nice way to expand your audience. I’m not a huge fan of Facebook, but too many of my readers are there for me to ignore the platform, ha.
I haven’t done one of these yet. In fact, I just set up a FB author page the other day. These are great tips – and it’s great to know there’s a service you can hire for these! Thanks!!
Hope it helps, Jemi!
I have a tip for this one! # your posts, especially when doing parties within a group. That way it’s easier to search out your posts and stay up with comments. I usually do #eseckman plus the party name or initials
Great tip! Thank you…yes, it can get really confusing. Such a smart way to keep up…thanks!
Thank you. I need to get more of my authors doing these parties.
Some of them are really cool. And it can be free.
Hi Elizabeth – yes I just keep an eye on FB and engage as little as I can. But as for acquiring readers and for selling more books this seems a good way in – especially if there are a few people who are ‘savvy’ and you’re in a group of friends setting each party up – makes a lot of sense – thanks for your insights into one of these – first I’d heard: not unexpectedly. Take care and all the best – Hilary
Having savvy friends is very helpful! Hope you’re well, Hilary.