Category Archives: social media for writers

Tips from experts on using Facebook and Twitter

July 14, 2020 · 12:29 pm

Social Media Image and Video Sizes Cheat Sheet 2020 [Infographic] – by Andrew Hutchinson…

Just Wow. What a time saver! Thanks to Chris the Story Reading Ape for this amazing inforgraphic on the size requirements for social-media posts!

Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

on Social Media Today:

With social media feeds getting ever more crowded, winning attention for your business also becomes ever more difficult.

In amongst the thousands of posts, updates and Stories vying for consumer attention each day, you need to somehow make your messages stand out, and a key element in this will be your visuals, which can grab people as they scroll and get them to stop and take notice.

But in order to maximize the potential of thumb-stopping visuals, you need to be using the right presentation formats for each platform. The best header image in the world won’t matter if it looks pixelated and unprofessional. As such, you need to ensure that when you do create visual content, you’re doing so with the right information about what each platform requires, in terms of dimensions and formats, within each specific element.

To help with this, the team from squarelovin

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Filed under blogging, Marketing books, social media for writers, Tech tips for writers

Tagged as Facebook graphics sizes, Instragram graphics sizes, LinkedIn graphics sizes, social media graphics for bloggers, Twitter graphics sizes, visual editing for social media

March 14, 2020 · 10:06 am

If You Do Online Pitchfests—Writer Beware!

Here’s a warning from Victoria Stauss’s Writer Beware about the kinds of publishing predators you may encounter at #PitMad or other digital pitching events. The sponsors of these events always encourage writers to check agents and editors carefully before submitting. Strauss’s example here contains plenty of red flags, but not all may be as transparent.

Thanks again to Writer Beware for keeping our eyes open.

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Filed under business of writing, Finding literary agents for writers, looking for literary editors and publishers, social media for writers, writing novels, writing scams

Tagged as #PitMad, creative writing, fiction, how to find a publisher, how to find an agent, how to get published, online pitchfests, pitching a book, writing, writing novels

June 16, 2019 · 10:38 am

Counterintuitive Advice from Jane Friedman

If you don’t know about Jane Friedman, learn. Her site is full of excellent advice and links. Today, in my email, this article that contradicts what we might all think: that it’s always better to get lots of feedback. Not on this issue, Jane says. All over social-media sites for writers, you find people posting their book covers and asking for advice. But Jane says no: Don’t crowdsource your book cover! Who’d’a thunk it?

I admit I’ve been guilty of asking a couple of friends for feedback. Some of their responses have been telling, but they haven’t really told me how to improve my own “designs.” Since book covers, in my view, are the one component of self-publishing where you can’t avoid spending money, I’ve ended up looking for affordable professionals rather than trying to make sense of all the conflicting opinions myself. While I do think my current covers could be improved, that improvement will be part of an eventual complete revamping of my whole publishing enterprise, not to be undertaken until my infinite revisions of new books are finished.

So if you have advice for me about my book covers, save it for that day. Though I thank you all the same.

You Get Free Book Promotion Every Time You Leave A Comment – by Derek Haines…

Chris the Story Reading Ape regularly shares Derek Haines’s posts. Pay attention! They are always worth a read. Here’s another one I’m going to put to use, starting today!

Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

on Just Publishing Advice:

Blog commenting is the easiest way to promote your book for free

There are hundreds of ways to promote a book.

You can use free and paid book promotion sites, write a blog post every week and offer free books.

Marketing your book to find potential readers is a non-stop effort if you want to sell your book,

If you have published more than one title, you will know how much hard work is involved in keeping the buzz going for your books and ebooks.

Encouraging people to take an interest is not easy and is sometimes counterproductive.

Direct approaches using social media or even your email list often only achieve very low click-through rates, and poor conversions to book sales.

But when people accidentally stumble upon you without you coercing them, the results can be surprising. In SEO speak, it is called organic traffic.

The…

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How to Tweet Like a Pro [Lab]

I’m working on developing these practices. Let me know if you have other tips!

Author Steve Boseley - Half a Loaf of Fiction

Twitter is one tool in an author’s bag that can, if used effectively, be utilised to assist in the building of your author platform, which you hope ultimately will result in book sales, plus it’s a great way to make a connection with influencers or to speak to your readers. But a question that was raised in my mind, was:

How do I compose an effective Tweet?

I recently wrote a guest post for Nicholas Rossis’ blog titled What is the best time to Tweet. Choosing the right time to Tweet is definitely an element of what goes into an effective Tweet. Check out that post (when you’ve finished this one!) for guidance.

But for a Tweet to be effective, it involves a lot more than just publishing at the right time, so read on for the anatomy of an effective Tweet.

Content

According to Twitter, there are…

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