If you’re an author, then social media analytics are your friend. Using metrics for book promotion through social media platforms will allow you to reach the people you want to reach and maybe even more. Let’s look at some social media strategies for authors and how to use data analytics.

What Author Social Media Analytics Shows You

As an author, you need social media for book promotion. It’s the way the marketing and business worlds have gone: You reach your audience on social media. And a good social media presence can help strengthen your author brand. But just how do you know you are reaching the right audience? And how do you know which pieces of content are working best for you?

This is where author social media analytics come in. Social media sites allow you to view analytic data in order to see how people are interacting with your post. This could be as simple as how many likes or comments you get, or even just how many people see your post.

To put it in basic terms, analytics allow you to analyze the reach and response to your content. They also let you know who you are reaching.

As an author, you have a target audience. It could be people who are fans of a particular fiction genre, or it could be people who have a certain hobby or interest. If you want your book to sell, you need to know you are reaching these people, and by using metrics for book promotion through social media, you can ensure you hit your target audience.

Although you likely had an ideal reader in mind when writing your book, you may find that you are popular with other readers too. This is also valuable data, as it allows you to see where your fanbase lies.

Using Metrics for Book Promotion

So just what can metrics show you, and how can they be used to form social media strategies for authors? Well, you have to know which piece of data to look at. On a website like YouTube, you want to see how many subscribers you have and how many views your videos get. On other social media platforms, you may look at both the number of followers you have (and how many of those followers interact with you) and who those followers are. That may sound strange; you’re probably thinking, “My followers are people who follow me, right?” and yes, they are. But who exactly are they? How old are they? Are they male or female? Where are they from and where do they live? What language do they speak?

You can measure these things by looking at social media metrics. Analyzing the data will help you find out who you are and aren’t reaching. You can also use these metrics to discover:

• Popular times of day to post
• The keywords that get the most interactions
• The hashtags that are most popular
• The content that gets the most positive interactions

The last of those points is significant, as you will know what to post about. If your readers want to see your writing process or see videos of you, the metrics will show you this.

You can use social media metrics for book promotion to see what kind of content is best to post and when it is best to post it.

Key Author: Social Media Analytic Data

A crucial piece of data you need from your social media activity involves what other content your followers interact with. Keep in mind that social media platforms use algorithms to recommend content to users. Social media sites want people to stay on them for a long time, and so they want to recommend content that users will like. You want to make sure your content is being recommended alongside content that your target audience is interested in.

If you are writing fantasy or romance novels, you want your content to be recommended alongside posts from authors of those genres. The first step to this is engaging with those authors on social media. Follow them and ask them to follow you; see if they are interested in collaborating and promoting each other’s content. In addition, look at the hashtags and keywords they are using and use them, too.

Social Media Strategies for Authors

Here are six things to include in your social media strategy for author promotion success.

1. Pick two or three social media platforms to focus on. Pick platforms that your target audience is likely to be using. Popular platforms include Twitter/X, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.
2. Post engaging content at least three times a week. Images and videos are particularly good for getting posts seen. Post content that tells a story.
3. Use at least three relevant hashtags in each post. On TikTok, you need to be using #BookTok.
4. Regularly interact with other authors and followers.
5. Thank your followers for interacting with you.
6. Don’t be shy about asking followers to like and subscribe because that helps you get seen more!

And remember to regularly review the data. If you are trying to use metrics for book promotion on social media, then the only way you will know if you are successful is by regularly reviewing the data behind your posts.

Final Thoughts

You don’t have to be an academic genius to understand social media analytics; you just have to know what data you are looking for. Regularly looking over the metrics will allow you to give your posts a boost and reach your target audience.