Book Promotion Tips: Promote Your Book with Facebook Business Pages
Book Promotion and Book Publicity Tips for Authors
Promoting Your Book on Facebook
If you use Facebook (and who doesn’t), you’re probably by now familiar with Facebook Business and Brand Pages. As an author, or anyone with a product or brand, you should familiarize yourself with these pages and learn how to take full advantage of their benefits to increase your visibility, marketing, and publicity efforts.
We’ve put together a few tips to help you get started with the new pages and to kick-start your book promotion and publicity. And if you’re not an author, we think you’ll find this information just as helpful.
The Cover Image
Judging a Facebook Page By It’s Cover
The Cover Image is new to Timeline and gives you a chance to really personalize or create an identity for your page. This is the first thing people will see when they visit your page. Just like the cover image of your book, you can really make or break a first impression here. Give this some thought and create an aesthetic and powerful heading for your page that really illustrates who you are and what you do.
The Cover Image is a landscape formatted image (horizontally long) that stretches across the top of your page. This is a feature you should take full advantage of on your book promotion page, but be careful not to over-promote. You have creative freedom over how you design your cover image, but there are a few “rules” to be aware of.
[UPDATED - 5/22/2013]
- The image can not be Ad-centric. In other words, you can not use the image as an Ad or to directly promote a product or service.
- It cannot include prices or discount information
- It cannot include contact information
- It cannot use calls to action: Visit our site, Download now, Like our page, etc
- It cannot contain more than 20% text
- The image must be at least 399 pixels wide. Facebook recommends 851×351 pixels.
- (NEW rules) All covers are public. This means that anyone who visits your Page will be able to see your cover. Covers can’t be deceptive, misleading, or infringe on anyone else’s copyright. You may not encourage people to upload your cover to their personal timelines.
- Covers may not include images with more than 20% text.
It’s interesting that these changes now seem to allow page owners to use calls to action in a page’s cover image that encourage visitors to perform some specific action (download now, click, share, etc).
You can read all about the “official” rules on Facebook’s FAQ Page and Facebook Page Guidelines
Profile Image
Giving your Book Promotion a Face
In addition to uploading the Cover Image, you may also want/need to upload a new profile image. The Profile image is pretty important and should be selected with care. This image will be used as your visual identity across all of Facebook, appearing next to all of your activity, comments and posts. Be sure to select something that reflects you or your brand. A logo or personal picture are good options. As an author, think about using the same personal photo used in the book sleeve, or a photo of the book itself.
The profile picture is displayed as a square either as 125 x 125 pixels or 150 x 150 pixels, resizing automatically according the the screen size of the viewing device. Facebook suggests that you upload your image using a minimum of 180 x 180 pixels for the best results.
Highlight The Goods
One of the new features of Timeline is the ability to Highlight posts. Activities and news generated through a book promotion or publicity campaign make great pieces to add and highlight on your page’s timeline. This is a great way to include milestones or add emphasis to and make the good stuff stand apart from the usual posts. Normally, posts are reduced to half the width of a page and arranged to either side of the Timeline which runs vertically down the middle. Highlighting a post expands it to fill the full width of the Timeline. Using this feature will draw attention to posts that you want your page visitors to see above all others. The results of a good book publicity or book promotion campaign can produce lots of great events to highlight.
Highlights:
- Posted great interview with media
- Add Links to your articles that get posted on New York Times and other popular sites and blogs.
Milestones:
- Made the Amazon Bestseller List
- Goals Reached: Sold X copies of your book
To highlight a post, hover over it. You will see a small box appear in the corner with a Star and a Pencil inside it. Click the Star and your post will transform, taking up the full width of your timeline.
Pin the Important Stuff
Pinning posts is another new feature similar to highlighting, but with some added emphasis on the “emphasis”. This is another effective book promotion tactic that you can easily include with your strategy. Pinning a post will move it to the top of your page where it will be one of the first things your visitors see. Any post on your timeline can be pinned to the top where it will be visible without having to scroll through the timeline (or at least not have to scroll far). Once pinned, the post will remain at the top of the page for 7 days. After the 7 days has passed, the post will be moved back to it’s original place in your timeline.
This is a great way to inform visitors of upcoming book promotion events, announcements or news. If you have an upcoming book signing, or a scheduled interview appearance, pin the post to make sure your visitors are aware of it.
To Pin a post, follow the same process for highlighting. Instead of clicking the Star, click the Pencil and select “Pin-to-top”.
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Filed under: Featured, PR Tips, The Blog
April 3rd, 2012 at 4:36 pm
Thanks for these helpful tips! What guidelines/suggestions can you offer for the cover image? Any thoughts on what might work best?
April 4th, 2012 at 4:15 pm
Thanks for commenting Sandra. You’re welcome and we’re happy you found the piece helpful. This is a great question. The answer, at least from my point of view, is not so clean cut. It all really depends on what the book and topic is about, and how the author wants to present their work. Is it a children’s book? A Mystery Novel? Biography? You would approach each a little differently.
Some thoughts I have would be
I really don’t think there is a cookie-cutter answer to this that would apply to all books and/or authors across the board.
In the end, it should be something that is relevant and representational of the book or author.
Hopefully, others will comment as well. I’d love to see what they think.
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March 25th, 2013 at 12:57 am
Wonderful info. Thank you. Shared on FB.
March 25th, 2013 at 1:49 pm
Kim, thank you for the comment, and the FB share! We’re glad you found the post helpful.
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