SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY & SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION FEBRUARY 12, 2018
BOOK vs. NAME?
đ&#x;¤”Â
OP-EDS
 The Atlantic
 WIRED NY Times The Cut CNN Vanity Fair
OP-EDS
 Buzzfeed
 Salon
 Vulture
 NY Times The Guardian
ELLEN PAO
ROXANE GAY 
 “INSTAGRAM’S FAVORITE POET� 2.2 Million Followers
 100’s of Illustrations A LOT of really killer outfits
RUPI KAUR 

138,000 Tweets 34,400 Followers
 



BY CREATING A ð&#x;’ª DIGITAL PLATFORM
 AUTHORS CAN: INTERACT WITH READERS CREATE ORIGINAL CONTENT, INSTANTLY
 REACT TO THE NEWS CYCLE MAKE ACADEMIC OR COMPLEX TOPICS/ARGUMENTS ACCESSIBLE
 REFINE PITCHES FOR MEDIA OUTLETS
 ENGAGE WITH OTHER AUTHORS AND INDUSTRY LEADERS
 MAKE THEMSELVES A BRAND
 
 
 (You can relate more to a human than a book!) 

SO LIKE, HOW??
 FACEBOOK HAS 1.9 BILLION MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS, INSTAGRAM: 700 MILLION, TWITTER: 328 MILLION. HOW CAN AUTHORS CUT THROUGH THE đ&#x;”Š??
BY ENGAGING! đ&#x;’? 
 Authors should: Talk to their audience, not at them
 Respond and react by attributing colleagues, sharing other’s work, acknowledging comments AND criticisms. START A CONVERSATION.
BY FINDING THEIR VOICE
 

Always follow 80/20 Rule: Promote your book, send out that CTA, but the author should mostly be themselves, it is good to be MOSTLY PLAY AND SOME BUSINESS

BY BEING CONSISTENT 
 & BRIEF
 If you’re an academic or speaker on a certain topic, or #, keep it up!
 No one should buy into that 280 characters stuff. Keep it under 140 and USE A VISUAL WHEN YOU CAN
 Don’t post 180 things on Monday and none the rest of the week.
BY WATCHING IT!
 Industry and social trends, yes.
 But authors (and all of us) should check our links, language, tags, images (& permissions), & “jokesâ€?‌ Social media is so instant, it is really easy to make a typo. PAUSE. DOUBLE CHECK. THEN SEND.
I AM AN AUTHOR…HOW DO I KNOW WHICH PLATFORM TO USE? 
 AND WHAT TO USE IT FOR? CONSIDER AUDIENCE, GENRE, CATEGORY, AND END GOAL ð&#x;¥…Â

 


 

• F I N D G R O U P S T HAT AL I G N
W IT H Y O U R S U B J E C T M AT TE R • PERSONAL CONNECT ION TO ISSUE OR AUDIENCE
 
 MAKE A FEW FRIENDS!

MAKE SURE TO: • USE HASHTAGS • TAG YOUR PUBLISHER • USE GEOTAGS 
 
 I NS T A I S A G R E AT S PA C E F O R BOOKS ON SPECIFIC LO C AT I O NS , AN D T O P I C S L I K E ART, DESIGN & ARCH ITECT U RE!
GOODREADS
USE: HASHTAGS AND T RENDING TOPICS TO I NSERT Y O U RSELF AN D Y O U R W ORK I N TO CONVOS (OU R FAVE). SHARE: BLOG POST S, OP-EDS, POLIT ICAL COMMEN TARY, AND OF COU RSE--READING LIST S.
GR HAS TONS OF READING LIST S AND COLLECT IONS, ALLOW ING AUTHORS OF ANY TH I NG FROM H ISTOR ICAL NON-F ICT ION TO PERSONAL MEMOIRS TO HAVE THEIR BOOK BE TH E TOPIC OF Y O U R M OTH ER’S N E XT BOOK CLU B.
BUT I DON’T HAVE THAT MUCH TIME… TWITTER IS OUR TOP PICK. HERE IS HOW TO MAXIMIZE IT:
1. FOLLOW THE LEADERS ASK YO SELF: • What fellow authors, activists, and academics inspire you? • Whose work could you share that would align with yours and your platform? How can their “brand” help you find yours? *PRO T IP MAKE A “LIST” OF ALL YOUR TW IT TER MENTORS SO YOU CAN CHECK IN ON JUST THEIR CONTENT WHENEVER!
2. DEFINE YOURSELF, AND YOUR BRAND Show your interests, abilities and passions… SHARPEN THAT PROFILE.
3. CREATE AND CURATE CONTENT
4. ENGAGE OUR FAVORITE WORD! The more you engage with others the more likely they are to do so with you. Be personal, the heart of your brand is you!
Tag media, colleagues, and organizations, ALWAYS INCLUDE A PHOTO OR PREVIEW!
* P R O T I P D O N ’ T B E S O B L AT AN T W IT H T H E HARD SALES: NO “BUY MY BOOK NOW!” OR AU T O M ATE D D M S T O F O LLOW E R S . Y O U WAN T USERS TO SEE Y OU AS A PERSON, NOT A ROBOT.
5 . SEE WHAT WORKS
There is so much content on all of our feeds, use Twitter to see which kind of posts get the most engagement! TEST AND ANALYZE.
SO, SEO … STARTS WITH METADATA • Search engines are just the middlemen (middle-people? middle-computer?)
who work with a slightly different language than we do. • The goal of SEO is to make book information immediately clearer in search,
so Google or or Amazon can more efficiently get the book in front of the right reader. • BASIC METADATA: Book title, subtitle, author, copy, publisher, ISBN, BISAC,
page count, illustrations, pub date. • Metadata goes to distributor, retailers (like Amazon) and sometimes
(manually) author social media platforms like Facebook pages and Twitter bios
SEARCH ENGINES 
 + METADATA đ&#x;Ľ‘ • Search engines ain’t got time to look through book websites, instead, they
scan databases (like Ingram), websites (like nyupress.org), blogs, and SOCIAL MEDIA SITES to assess a titles relevance, authority and popularity! • Amazon is not a search engine, but more of an online retailer search engine,
that scans book information looking for things like actual sales rankings as well as reader reviews (hello Goodreads!) • Being on the first results page on Amazon or Google is crucial for driving
sales, but it is very easy to get lost in the sea of books.
BUT HERE IS HOW TO *TRY* TO GET TO THE TOP Via ORGANIC Search:
• BISAC Codes: make sure you have more than one. These can be specific,
or not specific enough. For example, SOCIAL SCIENCES: GENDER STUDIES does nothing for a book about current trans rights and issues. • Book titles: Are keywords appropriate in the title? What does the
KEYWORDS GIVE ADDIT IONAL CONTEXT FOR A BOOK AND DE TERM I N E BOTH SEARCH RELE VANCE AND SEARCH AUTHORIT Y
competition have? Don’t make it too long. Over 60 characters is a no-no for Amazon.
But mostly, KEYWORDS:
• Keywords and keyphrases are words or incomplete sentences that help
describe your book for the purpose of enabling search engines to easily find it. Add them to your web copy!
• Keywords can be many variations of a book’s topic or theme. For example, a
and “predict crime”. THESE CAN ALL BECOME “SOURCE KEYWORDS” ON AMAZON
book about predictive policing can have keywords/keyphrases such as “modern policing”, “policing and race”, “data and law enforcement”, “police algorithms”, “policing software”, “tech and law”, “PredPol”,
CHOOSING KEYWORDSð&#x;”Ž THINK LIKE A READER:
• Ask yourself who your potential
audience is. What would they search? What would YOU search? • What is missing from the title/subtitle
that is essential to relaying the book’s message/individuality? Is it set in NYC? Is it from a certain time period? Does it have a foreword by some famous chick???

TEST IT OUT: • What does Google’s keyword tool say? 







How many search results?
PUT IT ON TOP: • Google displays the first 156 characters 

of a description, get those keywords in 
 the first few sentences!
SEO + SOCIAL MEDIA = ð&#x;’• DISCOVERABILITY ✨
SEO, SOCIAL MEDIA, AMAZON’S WORLD TAKEOVER: THINGS TO KNOW & CONSIDER: • Search engines are trolling social media as much as you are • The more Amazon sees that their URLs are being shared socially the higher your book will rank • Your Amazon ranking doesn’t have to do with sales, BUT it does mean more people are easily finding your •
• • • •
•
page and staying on it for a while. It also means you are on your way to “bestseller” status. People find books on Amazon in two main ways: • Amazon’s search function • Bestseller list — GET THOSE SOURCE KEYWORDS Also increasing rank is page use/experience. TIME MATTERS, SO DOES HOW YOU GET THERE! AMAZON CARES ABOUT CUSTOMER SERVICE. Their goal is for customers to find “the most relevant and quality product they are searching for” (High bounce rates are a NO!) Amazon reviews carry weight. Not just in quality but in quantity (think 50!) MAKING AN AUTHOR PROFILE ON AMAZON IS IMPORTANT: “Claiming books on Amazon is like collecting chips; empire and making your bio page more robust. Amazon Central is an extension you’re building your little of your author platform and should be tended to as such. Update your photo, bio, and other information as regularly as you would your website.” TELL YOUR FRIENDS: LEAVE REVIEWS! EVERYWHERE AND ANYWHERE!
THANKS! đ&#x;˜Š sarajohnson@nyu.edu @sarasolamae
 @nyupress
 linkedin.com/
 sarasolamaejohnson