How to Rock Your Author Social Media Profile
Mainly this post is regarding Twitter, but much of it applies across all social media platforms and will help you rock your author social media profile.
You may not realize how important your author social media profile is to your audience’s expectations, but it gives them a first glance at who you are and in seconds they make a decision about you – just by a glance at your profile. If you don’t have this part of your social media right, unless you’re already incredibly famous, there’s not much reason to concern yourself with your posting quantity or quality.
Get this right and you’re on your way to growing followers, friends, and fans – your audience.
Think about it, when you first glance at someone’s profile on Twitter – what makes you decide to follow them? If you’re just randomly following people then you really need to stop right there. You should be looking at their bio and photo for starters. And other people look at your’s too before they decide to follow you. If you have nothing written for your bio and no profile photo of yourself then chances are you’re missing out.
Some tips to get you started:
Profile Photo:
Your profile photo should always be recent and decent. Ideally this would be a clear head shot showing your smiling face and one that looks like you. Don’t go and get a photo done of yourself that is completely misleading and isn’t recognizable to someone if they saw you on the street, but you should look professional.
Some people say it’s a bad idea to use black and white, or sepia color options for your profile picture and I disagree with that. Sometimes it can look really nice and it also may be relevant to your genre – like a sepia for victorian novels would be cool.
If you take a look at my profile pic, I used sepia. I did this for two reasons. 1. It matches my website color scheme without turning my face blue. 2. I was wearing a bright white shirt with blue stripes and bright red lipstick – I looked like an American flag, …only I’m not an American flag, so I decided on the sepia color to tone it down just a bit. Later on I’ll probably do a better pic, but I like this one for now.
Bio:
Your author social media bio, on any platform, should be clear and concise, describing what you do and who you are so that people can easily understand. On most platforms you only have so many characters to write about yourself, so you need to be able to word correctly. A good way to think about it is that you’re writing a short pitch, it shouldn’t be a pitch for your book, but about yourself, though it shouldn’t necessarily as salesy.
Try thinking of writing a headline and what keywords you might want to use that describe yourself and what you do. Also, you can try playing around with different words to see how it sounds. You can always edit your author social media bio to see what works better too.
On Twitter never use hashtags in your profile bio, this is a common mistake, but if people click on the tag it takes them away from your profile. Many people thing that it’s a good idea so that they get found easier, but it’s not the case. You don’t need hashtags to be found on Twitter or Facebook.
Here is a bad bio:
- Sally Jones
- @SallyJones
- egg-head-photo
- I’m Sally Jones, the author of two kid’s books about a Kangaroo and a Koala.
- See more about my books here: link.to.book.com
Unnecessary words to have in your author social media profile:
I’m – Sally Jones – the – of – two – about – a – and – a – see – more – about – my – books – here
First, we already know you’re Sally Jones, it says so where your name is – wasted characters! The second ‘books’ is unnecessary because it was already used, but do you see all the wasted characters there? For a much better bio, take a look at the example further down.
Your Links:
Your author social media profile should always point back to your author website if you have one. If you don’t have a website, see Why You Need a Website here. On most platforms you can have a link in your bio section and then another link below. On some social media platforms the link won’t be clickable, so don’t bother putting it there. On Twitter and Pinterest it is, so you can use both sections.
If you are able to use a link in your bio section, this is a good place to put a link to your subscription page where you have a free giveaway for people to sign up on your email list. Alternatively, you could have a link to your book/s. Always use a shortened link such as from bit.ly on your profile bio to save space.
Website Link:
On all social media platforms there’s also a specific place to put a link to your website. In this section, if you haven’t already used the bio section to add your subscription page – do it here. If you already have, just use the main link to your author website. On this space you shouldn’t need to use a url shortener, and if you’re linking directly to your main website page you want to make it so people can see the actual link, so they’ll also remember it easier.
So a decent bio on Twitter, for example would be:
- Sally Jones
- @SallyJonesAuthor
- Awesome Bio Pic – showing full smiling face, neatly cropped (use your imagination please)
- Author of children’s books for kids who love to read about wildlife in Australia. Parents love reading Kangaroo’s Pocket & Koala’s Tree – Free Pages – shortened.link.com
- sallyjoneskidsbooks.com
Take a look at the keywords in that, without being repeated – author, children’s books, kids, read, wildlife, Australia, parents, reading, kangaroo, & koala – all with readable sentence structure, a link to a free PDF (where they have to add their email), and in under 160 characters.
Do you see how I managed to get all those keywords while still making it read clearly? That’s the key to good social media profiles, and also good SEO.
So if someone is searching Google for “a kid’s book on kangaroos in Australia” – guess what, Sally Jones’ Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and Website will all come up in the search results. A quick note – your profiles on all your author social media platforms and Amazon author page should not all be the exact same wording – try to mix it up while always conveying the same message – this is better for SEO.
See This Awesome Program to Rock Twitter Today!
Have questions or need help with your author social media profile? Just let me know and I’ll be more than happy to help in any way that I can!
Have an awesome day!
