4 ways Facebook can help you promote your writing

Facebook is a marketing power house. Constantly receiving press attention, although not all of it good, Facebook is a must use social media platform for marketing. Various reports show an increase in the use of social media sites and also clearly that, in particular, Facebook's growth in the digital universe is expanding.

So how can you, as a writer, use Facebook to promote your work and gain superfans?

1. Create a profile. Post your status updates about your work process, links to interviews and other features you do, post samples of your writing, press releases etc using the notes application, add your promotional video trailers for your books using Static FBML or extended info (or other such application), Feed your blog updates directly to it using the NetworkedBlogs application and add your author events using the Events application. You can also upload your book covers and author photo to your personal photo album on site.
2. Create a Fan Page. About 3.5 million people become a fan of a Facebook Page every day. You can do much the same thing as with a personal profile. The big difference being that people can choose to be your 'fan' and have it show on their profiles for others to see. A nice way to use fan pages is to have one for each of your books. In this case you can list book signings, places the book can be purchased, interviews and other promotional events linked to the book. They also give you the chance to add a discussions tab for increased interaction with your fans. Members can recommend your page to their friends by clicking on the share button. Pages are also indexed by Google and other search engines.
3. Create a group. You can set join permissions on groups so that they are either open to anyone, closed (where users must get administrator approval to join) or secret (invite only). Groups have administrators that manage the group, approve applicants or invite others to join. They don't support applications like fan pages do but are great for creating an interactive smaller group.
4. Create a community page. Initially, your new Community Page will look, feel and function exactly the same as an Official Page. The big challenge, though, is if your Community Page becomes “very popular;” that is, “attracting thousand of fans.” As Facebook says, you will lose all admin rights and your Community Page will automatically be converted into a Facebook-administered, Wikipedia-type Community Page.

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