But how do you build a fanbase? As with many social media tools, useful content and patience are required. But also more joined-up thinking: are you linking to your Facebook page from your website/blog/Twitter page/etc? The easier it is for people to find you on other social media sites the better. Use a ’social media cloud’ on your main website or blog, like the one in the sidebar of Publishing Talk, linking to us in various other places.

A recent article on Mashable – a blog that I urge you all to read – proposes 5 Elements of a Successful Facebook Fan Page, and has some useful case studies and principles to bear in mind:

1. Network with other platforms
2. Create a resource
3. Create contestst that include participation
4. Empower pre-existing pages
5. Target the proper demographic

The article concludes with the following good advice:

Creating a Facebook fan page is simple, but getting it to work well takes time, dedication, and some planning. Don’t expect to create a page and then have a huge following instantaneously. Build good content, make it easy to share, and let people know about it, and over-time the community will grow.

Read the full article…

Most of your staff probably already have their own Facebook profiles. A lot of your authors probably do too. That’s a good thing, because you need to have a presence in the social media space if you want to use it authentically. Being active on Facebook gives you ‘permission’ to be there and promote your wares to interested people. But be careful how you use it. Facebook is a community, not a shopping mall.

Here is my top 10 Facebook checklist:

1. Profiles are for people, not products.  There’s no reason why your author shouldn’t use their book jacket as a profile picture, at least around publication. But don’t create a profile for a book or a company. Real profiles, real people, real names are the order of the day. Both publishing staff and authors can – and should – have Facebook profiles in order to start using Facebook marketing.

2. Groups are for communities of interest. Groups are great. People like to join groups. Easy to set up and manage (almost no maintenance time involved), they allow people to have forum discussions, post images, videos and links, write on your wall. Make sure you include your web address, and fulfill a genuine area of interest by providing some useful resources that will draw a community. You might set up a group as a ‘fan club’ for a book, or maybe a blog linked to a book. These things can work well when they’re a few steps removed from the actual product.

3. Pages are for products. Have you become a ‘fan’ of something on Facebook lately? You become a fan of a page (as opposed to a member of a group). Pages can be for people – usually celebrities – or businesses or products. They have similar functionality to groups, such as a ‘wall’ where people can write things, areas to post links, pictures and videos, and discussion forums. But you can also add applications to pages, as you can to profiles. That allows you much more flexibility – such as pulling in postings from your blog using an RSS feed, or adding a ‘reviews’ application.

4. Events bring people together. So much for online networking. Why not meet your fans in real life at an event? Events are easy to organise in Facebook, and are ideal for book launches, mini-conferences, or other real life happenings. Events can be created by people (i.e. profiles), groups or pages.

5. Be findable. In Facebook, people search for things that interest them, so think carefully about the title of your group, page or event. Think keywords and search terms. For example, if you do a search for ‘publishing’, you’re likely to find the Publishing Talk group.

6. Post in other groups. Join groups that are relevant to your book or area of interest. Don’t spam them with a marketing message. Do write on their wall if you have something you think will be of genuine interest to the group – whether it’s a new book, a conference or other event, with a link. If you’re a marketing exec for a publishing company (for example), it’s OK to say so.

7. Don’t be afraid to use your own profile. This depends on how compartmentalised you like your life to be. A friend of mine once tried to set up several Facebook profiles, for work, personal, etc. No, no, no. How on earth would people know which version to connect to? If you must, use (e.g.) MySpace for personal, LinkedIn for work, Facebook for something else. Better yet, recognise that authenticity matters, and well-rounded self-mediated people do well online. Whether you’re an author or publisher, it’s fine to plug your book in Facebook, so long as you do it in an authentic way.

8. Applications help with viral marketing. So long as they’re not too annoying, and you don’t make people invite all their friends before you can use them. Pan Macmillan have launched a few of these this year, including This Application Will Change Your Life (linked to the book This Diary Will Change Your Life 2008).

9. Internal groups engage staff. Some publishers have internal blogs, behind the firewall. This is a good use of blogging to facilitate discussion within a company, especially a large one with many staff and international offices. It is possible to use Facebook groups internally too, by making them private, secret and invite-only. But please be aware that one of the controversies around Facebook is that it legally owns all your content! So probably not so good for anything confidential you want to discuss.

10. Don’t ban Facebook at work. This was a trend earlier in 2008, when many companies issued a blanket ban on Facebook, thinking it a time-wasting website that ate up valuable business hours. Not so. Staff will socialise anyway, and at least Facebook is an efficient way of doing it. But more importantly, you have to have an authentic personal profile on Facebook to be able to use it authentically to market your books. You must have a profile in order to set up groups or pages for your books or authors. Very many of your customers are on Facebook – so you need to be to.

I’m sure there are other, innovative ways to use Facebook too. Let us know how you’ve used it, and how useful (or otherwise) you found it.

Just a few small changes. Nothing too unsettling. Nothing that warrants a re-brand to New Publishing Talk, or Publishing Talk 2.0. But what about the real social media change this summer? Facebook fans will have noticed the move to ‘New Facebook’ (www.new.facebook.com). Having initially run the two alternative layouts in parrallel, New Facebook is now the only show in town.

People don’t like change. When you’ve integrated Facebook into your social life, a major change can feel like someone redecorating your front room while you’re out without asking you, like a crack squad of home makeover guerillas.  New Facebook has provoked the sort of revolt and fury that social networkers are so good at.

By my reckoning, there are currently around 450 Facebook groups along the lines of “New Facebook Sucks” – and just five in favour. Many groups are protesting at New Facebook being a stalker’s charter. (Why? Why any more than Old Facebook? Have you seen the privacy controls?) Major high street banks have changed their policies over lesser protests.

Call me a contrarian, but I quite like the new layout. I couldn’t bear the clutter of the old Facebook. I like:

• the focus on the news feed: mixing up the mini feed with wall posts and status updates in chronological order
• being able to comment on just about anything, and having little conversations about posted items etc.
• having a little biog under my profile pic
• having a list of my ‘basic info’ and websites under this.

I don’t like:

• the chat feature – so switched it off
• losing some of the Apps from my profile – though the cleaner design outweighs this for me.

I also don’t mind the extra prominence given to ads, because you can ‘digg’ or ‘bury’ them to make them more relevant (and what do you think pays for Facebook?)

But I know from friends’ status updates, as well as from the proliferation of anti New Facebook groups, that this is a minority view.

So who is responsible for the new look? Earlier this month, Robert Scoble interviewed Mark Slee, lead project manager at Facebook, whose team redesigned the site. It’s an interesting insight, and you also get a rare glimpse of the skateboarding, speed-chessing tech geeks in their natural environment at Facebook Towers.

But what do you think? Do you love it or hate it? Does it make any difference to you (good or bad) as a publisher or author? Let us know.

[source]

Here’s a bit of Friday fun that’s doing the rounds at the moment. Joking aside, there are, in fact, two genuine new social networking sites in the UK that are targeting the ‘grey market’: MyChumsClub and Sagazone, which both launched last month. In the US there are even more, including reZOOM, Eons, BOOMj and boomertown, all aimed at the over-50s.

I can’t help thinking that these baby boomer networks are as patronising as all those ‘computing for the over-50s’ books (do you know how old Bill Gates is?). They also seem based on the myth that mainstream social networking sites are for kids.

Yes, Facebook started on US college campuses – and, in fact, until September last year, was restricted to them. But, now that anyone can join, the demographic is shifting quickly. A recent study by analysts comScore, reported in the Telegraph, showed that nearly one third of Facebook users are aged between 35 and 54, and that this group also made up 41 per cent of MySpace users.

The myth of the MySpace Generation is annoying to those of us who are over 35. I get annoyed when politicians use social networking to connect with the ‘yoof’, since I’m a grown-up who’s interested in politics and uses social networks. I’m sure many younger people find that attitude patronising too. But setting up separate digital geriatric ghettos seems just as bad.

My eldest Facebook friends are Yoko Ono (74), who makes extensive use of social media for her peace campaigning work, and Ming Campbell (66), one of the first mainstream politicians in the UK to use social networking. OK, they’re both campaigning uses of the medium – but there are also plenty of older people who use these sites in the same way as everyone else, without needing to install the Werther’s Original app.

There is a trend, regularly reported at social media conferences, for more niche social networks based on specific groups and interests, which may overtake the ‘generics’: MySpace and Facebook. I think that, while there is some truth to the trend, Facebook has yet to peak, and niche networks will be based more on specific subjects, professions, and interests than simple demographics.

I can understand social networks that are restricted to children – such as Club Penguin – but do adults really need such protection? One of the attractive things about social networks is the ability to make connections with people who share your interests – regardless of demographics, and without ghettoising the grey (or anyone else).

I’m all for alternatives to MySpace and Facebook, but I’m not convinced that restricting membership to over-50s is the way forward. I may be proved wrong if these sites turn out to be roaring successes; but I tend to think the grey dollar is as much a figment of the ad exec’s imagination as the pink pound.

There’s an analogy with magazine publishing here: yes, there are magazines that segment the market on highly age-based demographics; there are also far more that are subject-specific for readers of any age.

What does this mean for publishers? Well, first of all, don’t write off social networking as a teenage obsession. You can create a community around your content using generics like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, YouTube, and I would encourage that. But there is also an opportunity to join the trend for niche networks, and start your own, built around your subjects. Nature Network is the best-known example of this, and probably the most successful.

What are the advantages of your own network? You have a direct connection to your market (useful for market research); you can promote your products using opt-in permissions-based marketing; and you can attract revenue from highly-targeted advertising. And it’s a game the whole family can play: suitable for all ages.

Many thanks to everyone who has joined, discussed, posted and contributed. We are now the second largest publishing group on Facebook after I work in publishing and am underpaid – which is rather telling of our industry.

More importantly, there’s lots of discussion going on, videos posted, links shared, advice offered and examples shown. An online community is only as good as its contributors, and it’s great to see so much activity going on.

I have been a little slack myself lately, I’m afraid – on the blog and the Facebook Group – but rest assured Publishing Talk will be evolving further in the new year – and Group members will be the first to know about it!

E-marketer reported this week on the most popular websites in the world, ranked by page views. Half of the most popular websites are social media. The other half are search-centric. Leaving aside the four search sites (Yahoo!, Google, Live.com and MSN) – how can publishers – and authors – best tap into the top four social media sites?

MySpace is still the biggest in terms of page views and income. A number of books and publishing companies from HarperCollins to Snowbooks have their own MySpace pages. But I tend to think that profiles are for people, not products. Authors and publishing staff can create trust and engage their readers by being themselves online – while still linking to their books. For example Mitzi Szereto (author and anthologist) and Shiona McDougall (Marketing Director, HarperCollins), to shamelessly pick on my own MySpace friends.

Facebook is still where it’s at, in my opinion. Again, profile pages should be used by people. Authors, publishing staff – or how about book characters? Alison Kervin, author of the recently published The WAG’s Diary, has set up a Facebook profile for her main character, Tracie Martin – with a suitably celebrity friends list. An innovative use of social networking that I’ve not come across before.

But Facebook also makes it easy to create groups, which can be based around individual titles. You can add value with plenty of resources and links on the page – now including video. And you can send regular messages to the whole group, if you want. It’s a ready-made, opted-in mailing list of people who came looking for you – that’s incredibly powerful.

Canadian podcasting guru Leesa Barnes recently wrote a book called Podcasting for Profit, and has used a Facebook group as part of her marketing strategy. HarperCollins Canada (what is it about Canadians and social media?) have created a group called Business And Motivational Book Review – Foreword Thinking, as a fan club for their Foreword Thinking podcast – which is about motivational business books that they publish.

You see how three-steps-removed from books some of this stuff is? Lots of blogs and podcasts have associated Facebook groups, which help facilitate community (yes, including your very own publishing talk group – currently with 307 members). The great thing about using Facebook in this way is that people can find you. Given that the other half of top sites are search sites, this clearly matters. Try typing ‘publishing’ into the search box on Facebook, for example…

Orkut is a new one on me. It’s a Google thing – you sign in with a Google account. I’ll try it out, so you don’t have to (I love spending time on social networking sites and calling it ‘work’…) Meanwhile, if anyone has used this in a bookish way, do let us know.

YouTube is the biggest video sharing site – though there are others. Video is really taking off at the moment – for publishers and business generally – and it’s a topic I shall return to soon. Even if you just want an author-talking-head on your companion website, it makes sense to upload it to YouTube (or other video sharing site) and then embed it on your own site, if only to make it easy for people to pass on. Having said that, some videos are clearly more pass-on-able than others. I’ll review some different styles and approaches in another post.

All these things help engage your readership, build trust, community and two-way conversations. The people who find you on these sites are already interested in your products and what you have to say about them. Isn’t that a network worth joining?

Authors are doing more with social media than publishers.

Some of the most interesting ideas and perspectives at the Google Unbound conference in January, for example, came from authors.

When I worked in publishing houses, the main complaint from authors – rightly or wrongly – was usually to do with marketing. Usually an accusation of a lack of marketing when a book didn’t sell. Which may have been for any number of reasons – possibly including poor marketing, but possibly also including unrealistic sales expectations, and simply publishing in a niche with a small readership, or in an area that was already crowded with competing titles.

Given the volume of titles produced, and finite resources, people and time, publishers must also prioritize. But authors have always had a role to play in marketing their own book, and the more successful ones are proactive about it.

And with the new web tools, it’s now easier than ever before for individual authors to create some word-of-mouth around their book. Even in those niche areas. Niche’s may be small and hard to reach with traditional marketing. But, when you use social media, they suddenly become large and global. It’s the Long Tail of publishing.

One author who uses these techniques himself – and explains them to other authors – is Steve Weber. You can find him on MySpace and on his blog. I regularly recommend his Plug Your Book (UK | USA). I recommend it to authors, for whom it is written, but also to publishers. And to students on publishing courses, because this stuff has to be second nature to the next generation of publishers.

It’s a really useful overview of some of the best ways you can use online marketing to create word-of-mouth buzz about your book – including websites, blogs, social networking, social search, RSS, wikis, online press kits and more.

Yes, publishers should do this too. But they should also facilitate the social media activities of their authors. Too many publishers don’t even know whether or not their authors have their own blogs – much less link to them. Don’t be one of them.

One Marketing Director also punched the air at a London Book Fair seminar this week when, in response to the question “which book campaign has made the best use of online techniques in the last year?”, panellist David Freeman cited The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works, published today by Palgrave Macmillan.

For those page-sniffing book-as-object fetishists, this is a lovely book. But it also has an editors’ blog, a website with audio and video – and a publisher prepared to use social networking sites. Vicky Capstick has been pimping MySpace and Facebook since the Bookseller seminar in March.

One Facebook Group, called 57 Academics Just Punched the Air, has emerged since a line in Dr Who a couple of weeks ago (series 3, episode 2, The Shakespeare Code). It is billed as:

a group for those who believe two things: 1) Doctor Who is amazing and 2) Seriously, Shakespeare was totally bi.

Here’s the context for THAT quote (at about 1:50).

Vicky simply joined the group and posted a link to a relevant posting from the editors’ blog, offering a more academic perspective on Russell T. Davies’s plotline. This works because:

1. it’s providing genuinely useful, interesting information to a niche audience from a trusted source
2. it’s a perfectely legitimate, authentic use of social networks by an individual. It wouldn’t work if a comment was posted by a faceless corporation.
3. it’s not trying to sell something – at least not directly. It would be an abuse of the medium to view social networking sites as a direct sales route.
4. although the group has only 36 members (so far), they are likely to be ’sneezers’ – active consumers who will translate and repeat the message to their friends. Or just click ’share’ on Facebook.
5. how else would you reach that particular audience?
6. it costs nothing.

The great thing about social networking sites is that they bring huge global audiences together around small niche interest groups, who will buy your products if they fit those interests. The key is to participate in those networks yourself, rather than push products out to them. That takes some time and commitment. But who wouldn’t want to make pimping MySpace part of their job?