You Can Create a Facebook (Business) Page for Your Book
Guest Expert: Phyllis Zimbler Miller
Facebook has made a lot of changes since Phyllis shared this post. You can read her updated post on Creating Facebook Pages here.
You are probably already on Facebook (along with 500 million people around the world at the current reported count) with a personal page known as a profile page.
But did you know that you can also create a (business) page for your book?
First, an explanation: Facebook is constantly changing things. Until recently, besides profile pages, there were group pages and fan pages. And these fan pages were for promoting a business or book or cause. Now the “fan page” term has been abandoned in favor of simply “page” (which I call business page to minimize the confusion).
Creating a (business) page for your book can be a good promotional strategy.
To start with, you can create a title for the page of up to 75 characters. This means that you can include keywords in the page title. (Note that once you create the page with a title, the title can’t be changed.)
Here’s an imaginary example:
Let’s say your book is about Northern Italian cooking with the book title of “Eat Well While in Italy.” You could create a Facebook page title:
Eat Well While in Italy by [your name]: Northern Italian Cooking
This way if someone searches inside or outside of Facebook for “Northern Italian cooking,” your Facebook page may appear in the search results.
Or let’s take my novel “Mrs. Lieutenant.” If I create a Facebook page for the book (I created a group page two years ago), I might choose this title, which has 66 characters including spaces:
Mrs. Lieutenant by Phyllis Zimbler Miller: A Vietnam War-Era Novel
This way if people search for “Vietnam War-Era novel” they might find my novel.
Or perhaps I’d rather use this 67-character title:
Mrs. Lieutenant: A Vietnam War-Era Novel About Army Officers’ Wives
The important point is to try different versions of your book’s page title before deciding which one to use. You want to choose a title that is informative and also has keywords in it.
Once you’ve created the page, add another admin besides yourself. This is a good practice for any page you administer on Facebook as you always want someone as backup for access to your (business) page.
Then you can start doing such activities as filling out the information about your book, uploading a photo of the book cover as the page’s image, and deciding whether you want to send your blog feed into the page and whether you automatically or selectively want your tweets to come into this page.
Through Facebook you can get the coding to add your Facebook page widget to your website or blog. For an example of this widget, scroll down the sidebar at www.MillerMosaicPowerMarketing.com
You can also add the FBML (simplified version of html) application to your page and thus add coding to your Facebook page. For an example of using FBML, see www.facebook.com/powermarketing (Inner Circle tab).
Then of course you want to start attracting people to join your page (by clicking on the “like” button at the top of the page).
You can do this in various ways, including inviting your friends, adding the link on your blog posts, and buying Facebook ads to get your book’s page in front of the people who might be most interested in buying/reading your book. (Facebook user demographics enable you to drill down to very specific parameters for Facebook ads.)
One important tip: As soon as you have enough people who “like” your page (this number changes according to Facebook’s whims), get a customized URL by going to www.facebook.com/username (For example, my company has 2 pages: www.facebook.com/bookmarketing and www.facebook.com/powermarketing )
Remember, as for all social media platforms on which you participate, you do not want to solely be pushing your book, business or cause. You want to share information on your book’s Facebook (business) page that is related to your book and that others will find worthwhile.
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of the novel www.MrsLieutenant.com and has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is a co-founder of the social media marketing company www.MillerMosaicPowerMarketing.com You can download her FREE report “Twitter, Facebook and Your Website: A Beginning Blueprint for Harnessing the Power of 3” at www.millermosaicpowerof3.com and read about her newest book, “Four Comedy Screenplays”.
