Hey guys, welcome back to Social Media Corner. We're talking about tips and tricks here with Finding Your Indie. I'm Bonnie Paulson, and I'm Mandie Stevens, and we work together as ad managers at Finding Your Indie.
Mandie, this is your expertise. What are we doing this month?
May is National Share a Story Month.
Yes. That's perfect for authors. Sometimes I wonder if authors made up some of these, because there are some good ones coming up.
We have National Share Story Month, what would we do with that?
This kind of thing, when you're asking questions on social media, it gets good interaction. You can ask what their favorite story was. What their mother or father read to them. Share their favorite stories. Share their next book that's coming out. You can go any which way with this. Which is why it's such a good one.
Yeah, it is. It's a great one. You guys can use links. You can do book promos, funnels on this one, all kinds of things that you can do to share a story. One thing that I like to do, is always talk about books I read when I was growing up. I really liked Judith McNaught. A lot of her books are coming out on Kindle Unlimited right now, which is crazy because I thought she was like out. She was obsolete. Her books are very old.
I keep reading it. I'm like, I forgot how much I love these. So, if you think that your books are too old, now is not the time to rethink that. Judith McNaught books came out in the 80s and 90s and they're still good. Your books are never too old to feature.
That's our main monthly theme. Are there any other themes that we have for May that are for the month?
No, but this is something you can share weekly as a reminder. There’re so many different things you can do with it. You can, for example, every Monday share something about it. That's a lot of content.
If you don't have templates or anything started for your social media, you might consider that as you're considering things for your brand.
Mandie likes the monthly themes. I really like daily themes.
For instance, there's Memorial Day, which we know. Mother's Day, what mom doesn't love getting books Cinco de Mayo? I love books and chips and salsa, not necessarily in that order.
There's Armed Forces Day. There's May Day. There are all kinds of days that you can focus on, and really utilize that to draw in your readers. Hey, what are you doing for May Day? What are you doing for Cinco de Mayo? Which is a very popular one. Mother's Day too.
You can start promoting your books ahead of time. I will have signed paperbacks, for instance. You can do that starting weeks ahead. That way people buy your books for mom.
Exactly. A big giveaway might be a fun thing to do. There are all kinds of things that you can do with Mother's Day. Like you said, it's preparing beforehand for those of you who are romance writers. If you're writing military, sci fi, anything that's based on the armed forces, we have Armed Forces Day. So, you can lead up to that as well.
It doesn't have to be just a day thing, but maybe that day might fall on a Wednesday. You can make that whole week about Armed Forces Day and really show our men and women how much we appreciate them with gratitude posts and awesome memes about them.
All kinds of inspiring quotes that also help push your heroes that you have in your books. That's another great way to use that.
We have on here, Mandie, Taurus and Gemini. How could we use our astrological signs in our social media and book marketing efforts?
This is good, especially for romance writers who know what their hero's signs are. It's a good way to push your books.
It's a sexy tourist month. Who doesn't love a Gemini? Twins, reverse harem girls. You know what I'm talking about? A couple of twin sets. There's nothing wrong with that.
The stone for me is emerald. So, if you have anything around an emerald you could use that. For example, if you're fantasy, you might have the mystical prophesied emerald stone.
There’re so many things that you can do with that. This is the month for the emerald stone. Again, I've read some romances lately where they stray away from the diamond, and they do some really great stones for the engagement piece or the romantic gifts. So that's always a good one too.
You can use that and say, hey, here's what my favorite emerald looks like. This is the month for emeralds. What's your birth stone? Great engagement opportunity there. You can also use anything that's not specific to May.
A lot of these are American ones, obviously. So, if you're not in America, look in your own country and see what your national days are. We'll put a link down in our description so you can find what we like to use for a really great resource for us as we're getting social media, ad strategy, and promotion set up for our clients.
Mandie runs an awesome social media course that we have with Finding Your Indie. If you're a part of that, you also have access to a lot of her memes, templates, and her other templates that she has made accessible for us in Canva. Which is our resource feature of the month.
You can use it for free. It's awesome. We like the paid option because we use it so much that we feel like we're not quite sure where the lines are anymore between what the free plan is and what the pro plan is. But, we use it so much with Finding Your Indie with our clients and everything that we do that Canva is just a go to tool that we highly recommend for this, and for ad management or ad strategy.
In our vaults we have hundreds and hundreds of memes and templates that all our members have access to. Anyone who has bought the social media course has that access.
That's awesome. I was looking in there and I loved it. I saw that you're at like 370 last time I saw, and I was like, Oh my gosh, girlfriend is going crazy.
I have more. I'm uploading some more today and some more templates.
I saw the questions that you had in there too. Those were really inspiring questions. Really great. I was sitting there going, I would totally stop and answer that if I saw that on Facebook. It's perfect for interaction. I've used them for some of my clients and you literally get hundreds of responses. It's insane.
Yeah, that's amazing. One reason we're so passionate about marketing, and for social media, is because we believe that’s the only way you can actually get in front of a reader.
Anymore it’s a pay to play.
With social media, you don't necessarily have to pay to play. That is always awesome, especially as you're increasing your engagement on your pages. Mandie and I both run ads, and the cost to run Facebook ads goes down. The CPC goes down, the more engaged your Facebook page is.
A lot of the big social media guys, Gary V, Alex Camozzi, are saying that right now in 2023 and 2024, the Facebook fan page is important. I'm going to say Facebook is going to be a good focus this year. Remember that Facebook is trying to keep everybody off TikTok. They want everybody on their landing page. So, they're going to be ramping up the things that they do to keep people engaged on Facebook.
You should be utilizing that and putting things up on your Facebook fan page. We're going to be saying this and reminding you of this every time.
We have four things that we want you to keep in mind when you're running your social media. Be consistent, be engaging, meet your reader where you're comfortable, and state a brand.
We'll go into that again a few videos later and you can learn more about the strategies that we use and how to really get into Mandie's head on how to use her social media. She's a huge super brain on that.
I'm always picking her brain. Hey, is this what I should be doing? She's like, no, just no, or yes. Why haven't you done that? So, continue to check out our videos.
Hit subscribe, and we look forward to seeing you guys’ next time. Hit up our newsletter, it's free. Sign up for the newsletter, and we will give you social media content reminders for next month and going forward, and how you can apply them to your books.
We also have a freegroup on Facebook, the link is below. We hope to see you in there. Thanks you guys.
Social Media Corner: May
Hey guys, welcome back to Social Media Corner. We're talking about tips and tricks here with Finding Your Indie. I'm Bonnie Paulson, and I'm Mandie Stevens, and we work together as ad managers at Finding Your Indie.
Mandie, this is your expertise. What are we doing this month?
May is National Share a Story Month.
Yes. That's perfect for authors. Sometimes I wonder if authors made up some of these, because there are some good ones coming up.
We have National Share Story Month, what would we do with that?
This kind of thing, when you're asking questions on social media, it gets good interaction. You can ask what their favorite story was. What their mother or father read to them. Share their favorite stories. Share their next book that's coming out. You can go any which way with this. Which is why it's such a good one.
Yeah, it is. It's a great one. You guys can use links. You can do book promos, funnels on this one, all kinds of things that you can do to share a story. One thing that I like to do, is always talk about books I read when I was growing up. I really liked Judith McNaught. A lot of her books are coming out on Kindle Unlimited right now, which is crazy because I thought she was like out. She was obsolete. Her books are very old.
I keep reading it. I'm like, I forgot how much I love these. So, if you think that your books are too old, now is not the time to rethink that. Judith McNaught books came out in the 80s and 90s and they're still good. Your books are never too old to feature.
That's our main monthly theme. Are there any other themes that we have for May that are for the month?
No, but this is something you can share weekly as a reminder. There’re so many different things you can do with it. You can, for example, every Monday share something about it. That's a lot of content.
If you don't have templates or anything started for your social media, you might consider that as you're considering things for your brand.
Mandie likes the monthly themes. I really like daily themes.
For instance, there's Memorial Day, which we know. Mother's Day, what mom doesn't love getting books Cinco de Mayo? I love books and chips and salsa, not necessarily in that order.
There's Armed Forces Day. There's May Day. There are all kinds of days that you can focus on, and really utilize that to draw in your readers. Hey, what are you doing for May Day? What are you doing for Cinco de Mayo? Which is a very popular one. Mother's Day too.
You can start promoting your books ahead of time. I will have signed paperbacks, for instance. You can do that starting weeks ahead. That way people buy your books for mom.
Exactly. A big giveaway might be a fun thing to do. There are all kinds of things that you can do with Mother's Day. Like you said, it's preparing beforehand for those of you who are romance writers. If you're writing military, sci fi, anything that's based on the armed forces, we have Armed Forces Day. So, you can lead up to that as well.
It doesn't have to be just a day thing, but maybe that day might fall on a Wednesday. You can make that whole week about Armed Forces Day and really show our men and women how much we appreciate them with gratitude posts and awesome memes about them.
All kinds of inspiring quotes that also help push your heroes that you have in your books. That's another great way to use that.
We have on here, Mandie, Taurus and Gemini. How could we use our astrological signs in our social media and book marketing efforts?
This is good, especially for romance writers who know what their hero's signs are. It's a good way to push your books.
It's a sexy tourist month. Who doesn't love a Gemini? Twins, reverse harem girls. You know what I'm talking about? A couple of twin sets. There's nothing wrong with that.
The stone for me is emerald. So, if you have anything around an emerald you could use that. For example, if you're fantasy, you might have the mystical prophesied emerald stone.
There’re so many things that you can do with that. This is the month for the emerald stone. Again, I've read some romances lately where they stray away from the diamond, and they do some really great stones for the engagement piece or the romantic gifts. So that's always a good one too.
You can use that and say, hey, here's what my favorite emerald looks like. This is the month for emeralds. What's your birth stone? Great engagement opportunity there. You can also use anything that's not specific to May.
A lot of these are American ones, obviously. So, if you're not in America, look in your own country and see what your national days are. We'll put a link down in our description so you can find what we like to use for a really great resource for us as we're getting social media, ad strategy, and promotion set up for our clients.
Mandie runs an awesome social media course that we have with Finding Your Indie. If you're a part of that, you also have access to a lot of her memes, templates, and her other templates that she has made accessible for us in Canva. Which is our resource feature of the month.
You can use it for free. It's awesome. We like the paid option because we use it so much that we feel like we're not quite sure where the lines are anymore between what the free plan is and what the pro plan is. But, we use it so much with Finding Your Indie with our clients and everything that we do that Canva is just a go to tool that we highly recommend for this, and for ad management or ad strategy.
In our vaults we have hundreds and hundreds of memes and templates that all our members have access to. Anyone who has bought the social media course has that access.
That's awesome. I was looking in there and I loved it. I saw that you're at like 370 last time I saw, and I was like, Oh my gosh, girlfriend is going crazy.
I have more. I'm uploading some more today and some more templates.
I saw the questions that you had in there too. Those were really inspiring questions. Really great. I was sitting there going, I would totally stop and answer that if I saw that on Facebook. It's perfect for interaction. I've used them for some of my clients and you literally get hundreds of responses. It's insane.
Yeah, that's amazing. One reason we're so passionate about marketing, and for social media, is because we believe that’s the only way you can actually get in front of a reader.
Anymore it’s a pay to play.
With social media, you don't necessarily have to pay to play. That is always awesome, especially as you're increasing your engagement on your pages. Mandie and I both run ads, and the cost to run Facebook ads goes down. The CPC goes down, the more engaged your Facebook page is.
A lot of the big social media guys, Gary V, Alex Camozzi, are saying that right now in 2023 and 2024, the Facebook fan page is important. I'm going to say Facebook is going to be a good focus this year. Remember that Facebook is trying to keep everybody off TikTok. They want everybody on their landing page. So, they're going to be ramping up the things that they do to keep people engaged on Facebook.
You should be utilizing that and putting things up on your Facebook fan page. We're going to be saying this and reminding you of this every time.
We have four things that we want you to keep in mind when you're running your social media. Be consistent, be engaging, meet your reader where you're comfortable, and state a brand.
We'll go into that again a few videos later and you can learn more about the strategies that we use and how to really get into Mandie's head on how to use her social media. She's a huge super brain on that.
I'm always picking her brain. Hey, is this what I should be doing? She's like, no, just no, or yes. Why haven't you done that? So, continue to check out our videos.
Hit subscribe, and we look forward to seeing you guys’ next time. Hit up our newsletter, it's free. Sign up for the newsletter, and we will give you social media content reminders for next month and going forward, and how you can apply them to your books.
We also have a freegroup on Facebook, the link is below. We hope to see you in there. Thanks you guys.
FYI