Great discussion with a social media coordinator

Yes, there are groups and organizations out there that will manage your social media presence for you, and believe me, it's worth it.

I haven't signed up yet for it, but this guy's giving me a free look-over on my Facebook ads, to see if 1) I'm targeting the right audience and
2) I'm sending out effective ads.

Here's what I learned about Facebook advertising:

- You can have a campaign consist of multiple ads, each one targeting a specific audience with different images, words, etc.  Once these go out, you can use the results to identify your best target audience.  And if you set a dollar limit on your campaign, your ads will accumulate to that limit and no more.

- Broader scope is not better.  You may think targeting 58 million people would be great, and you may jack up your likes to your page, but that doesn't necessarily translate into sales.  Many people like a page just cuz they like it, or they like everything that comes their way, but they're not the ones buying your book.  A broad reach may get you 100 likes on your Facebook page and no sales, whereas a niche target may get you 25 likes but 25 sales.  Likes don't pay.  Sales do.

More to come once I get the feedback from my social media coordinator.  In the meantime, if you have a chance to consider Facebook advertising for your on-line book or self-published book, DO IT.

And most importantly, WRITE ON!

Advertising on Facebook

If you're a self-published author and you're not familiar with advertising on Facebook, you should be.

It's really not that complicated, but ensuring you're getting your money's worth is.  It's easy to set up a daily budget, so you could reach thousands of people on just a buck a day.  However, here are some observations that I've found after four months of advertising on Facebook:

1. Likes on your book's page (and your book SHOULD have it's own page) do NOT translate to sales.  In fact, in some areas that I've targeted (like India), people just seem to like pages at random.  However, it certainly doesn't hurt.  I noticed a definite drop in daily sales when I wasn't advertising.
2. It can get away from you.  Facebook encourages you to set up advertisements that run continuously, which is fine, but if you're self publishing and monitoring your own sales, you should make sure your marketing spend doesn't exceed your sales.  I'm using almost dollar for dollar any money I make via Kindle Direct Publishing to increase marketing spend.  At $30 a week in sales, I'm definitely not in it to be a millionaire.
3. Choose your target audience wisely.  Spreading yourself out to seventy-million people just because they all like eBooks isn't going to translate into sales as much as 6 million people who like your genre.  You may generate more likes for your book's page, but see #1 above.  You may be paying for likes, not links.
4. I have two ads going: one for the book's Facebook page, where my marketing guy writes book-appropriate blurbs and quotes (Brian J. Sheridan, in case you're looking.  Great guy), AND I have a direct link to the amazon page where the book is.  I haven't done enough of an analysis to say which is more effective, but I'd venture to guess the clicks to the amazon site result in more sales than do the likes.

I'll keep posting observations, but if you have any questions, feel free to comment below and I'll let you know what I'm experiencing.  Like I said, this isn't a real scientific study on the effectiveness of Facebook campaigns, but it is a valuable tool for any self-published author.