The Facebook Basics Authors Should Have In Place: Episode 1 in the Facebook Mini-Series

Join me and Facebook expert Stacy Kennedy in episode 1 of our Facebook mini-series, where Stacy breaks down the Facebook basics that authors should know about and have in place when promoting their books. 

Transcript

Aryn: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Rock Your Book Launch. My name is Aryn Van Dyke. I am the host and the founder of BOOK ROCKSTAR, which is a book marketing consultancy which helps authors create strategies that are going to get their books into the hands of more readers. Thank you So I'm very excited. I am about to jump into a series all about Facebook.

So I'm joined by my good friend and former colleague, Stacy Kennedy. Stacy works at a marketing agency out of Nashville, Tennessee called Redbird social. I do quite a few projects with the Redbird team. They are fantastic. I highly recommend if you are looking for. done for you marketing services for your book launch.

Redbird social is a great partner to consider. So I invited Stacy to come chat about all things, Facebook. So whether it's just some Facebook basics, the organic side of Facebook, as well as breaking down some of the different aspects of Facebook [00:01:00] advertising. So Stacy is an expert in this area. She's been.

In the Facebook world for 15, 20 years. So she knows what she's talking about when it comes to the Facebook platform, specifically in regards to authors. So I'm so excited for us to dive into the series together. We've got about five episodes that are just going to be pretty much. And it's a book that is packed with information so that you as an author can, can go and start mastAryng your Facebook strategy when it comes to promoting your book.

So let's dive in with my friend, Stacy Kennedy on Facebook basics.

Hey Stacy. Thanks so much for chatting with me today. I know we've got like a few different Facebook themed episodes that are going to be coming up. I'm super excited to have you speaking to These authors about all things Facebook. So I'm so grateful to have your expertise here. 

Stacy: Thank you.

This is one of my favorite things to talk about. [00:02:00] So I'm excited to be here too. Thanks, Aryn. 

Aryn: Awesome. All right. Well, let's kick it off with just some Facebook basics. Yeah, thinking about this as the first episode in the Facebook series makes sense to start off with what are just some of the basic things that an author is going to need when it comes to a Facebook page or a Facebook brand.

Right. Okay. So if we're going to start super 

Stacy: basic, I will say that a lot of authors that come to our agency and they're just getting started with all the social media things, a lot of them will just have a personal profile. And so one of the most basic things would be to know the difference between your personal profile, And your business page, and they might have the same name.

You know, if you're an author, your, your name oftentimes is your brand. Now some authors like to make the book title their brand and. [00:03:00] That does work if you're in some cases, but I would say that in general, just remember that people connect with people. It's a lot harder for a person to connect with a brand name or a book title.

And so our advice generally is to have your brand be you, if you're an author, if you're a person, make that distinction between your personal profile. And your Facebook page. So you will need to create a page. And when you create a page, Facebook will kind of automatically now make what's called Meta Business Suite.

As part of that package, which is what we call backend, what goes on behind the scenes and fa and Meta Business Suite is where you manage your business. And so back at a business suite, you will want to go way, way back into the settings and make sure that all of the settings back on the business side are working in your favor.

And so [00:04:00] when you have a personal profile, you have a personal ad account. Everybody does on Facebook. Most people don't even realize it. You want to make sure that personal ad account gets moved into the business so that you're running, you ads from the business, even if you're doing everything yourself, maybe down the road, you might want an agency to come in and help you.

And so they won't be able to use your personal ad account to do that. You'll want your ad account set up in your business manager. You'll want your Instagram attached to business. When you attach your Instagram, it needs to be a professional profile on Instagram in order to connect to your page and connect in Meta business suite.

The other really important thing to do in Meta Business Suite is to create a pixel, or what's now called a data set, which is a little piece of HTML code. And that code will go into the back end of your website so that your Facebook and your website can talk to each other. [00:05:00] And that's really important later on when you're wanting to run ads.

When you're wanting to do marketing, being, having the ability to market to people who've been to your website is so important. Yeah. And so just get all of those dots connected. And if you don't know how to do that, you can Google it. You can say, how do I set up my Facebook? How do I, just Google your questions on, making sure everything is set up properly.

Yeah. The very beginning. It's a lot harder if you set it up wonky and then try to go back and fix it. 

Aryn: Yeah, absolutely. And then, I mean, in thinking too, even about like the pixel, that's something that we'll be covering in one of our other Facebook series, and we're talking about ads. So if you're an author, who's like, what am I supposed to be doing, with the Facebook pixel and all this stuff, we are going to, we'll be covering that in a future episode.

So, so don't worry. Okay. So Stacy with some of the other like Facebook basics. So if we're thinking about Like branding, [00:06:00] like in profile picture, that type of thing. What should authors be thinking about when it comes to those things? 

Stacy: You should 

Aryn: be thinking 

Stacy: consistency, consistency. So your Facebook page profile picture should Be similar to your Instagram professional Instagram profile picture your Facebook cover photo branding should be cohesive with the branding that you have on your website and so when you have that Brand identity across all of your platforms and even in your posts, then that, the consistency in your colors and your fonts and your imagery.

It just is a subliminal message that one you're a professional and two, when your fans start seeing your posts, it's [00:07:00] like, they know that it's you. I know these colors or this look, this feel is who I'm looking at. 

Aryn: Yeah. And I think it's probably worth throwing in here too, for authors can even use a site like canva.

com that has, you know, Automatic sizing for a lot of these types of things like Facebook cover photos. So you don't need to be a super graphic design expert. You don't need to be spending like hundreds of dollars on getting that kind of stuff professionally designed. So canva. com can be a really great, you know, assistant when it comes to some of the graphic design pieces.

Stacy: Yeah, Canva has templates. They have, branding guides that you can look at. Yeah, my advice when someone is just brand new starting out is to go and look at people that are in your space, that are in the genre that you're in or, you know, Just people that you follow on social media and look for what [00:08:00] you like because usually the things that resonate with you are going to be the things that resonate with the fans that like you.

There's nothing new under the sun. So find different, you know, if you're like, I don't even know branding, we'll go look at how other people brand and then start taking notes about, Oh, I like this. I like these colors. And then. Tweak it to your own style. And Canva is one of my favorite tools to make that happen.

You can actually set up, if you have the professional version of Canva there's the free version and there's professional, you can actually set up your own brand kit. Upload your logo, upload your colors, upload your fonts. And so that way, when you're creating your designs, you can use your brand. Yeah, that's a, 

Aryn: that's what I use the Canva pro.

I think it's something like maybe 120 a year or some, something around there. So it's definitely worth it for an author, who's really like trying to think about themselves as building [00:09:00] building a brand. Well, so I think with some of the other episodes in the series, you know, we're going to be diving deeper into then how authors can be utilizing Facebook on an organic level.

So, not paying for ads, so how can, how can authors be thinking about just the organic side of Facebook for promotion? You know, we're going to talk about ad targeting. So we, you mentioned that a little bit before, I think with the pixel and getting everything set up in business manager and then also add creative ad copy.

So if you are an author who is looking to dive deeper into some of these You know, layers of Facebook and how you can be using it to promote your book. Stick around for a for these next episodes. Stacy, thank you for sharing with us the Facebook basics. You're welcome. My pleasure. Love it.

All right. Well, we are in [00:10:00] the middle of a Facebook series with Stacy Kennedy. So go ahead and check out the other episodes in this series so you can have a full understanding of how you can be using Facebook to promote your book. Now I want to talk a little bit more about the company that Stacy works for, Redbird Social, and they are a marketing agency out of Nashville, Tennessee, and they work with authors on full.

Book launch implementation. So if you are an author looking for done for you services for your book launch, make sure you reach out to the Redbird team. They do a free consultation, which you can book on their website, redbirdsocial. com. So I highly recommend reaching out to them. They do great work.

Excellent work. They understand the whole aspect of the strategy behind book marketing and book launches, which is something that you don't get out of done for you services from other partners. So they really understand the, the best practices and the strategy that's needed. behind book marketing and what it takes to get your book out in [00:11:00] front of readers.

So I highly recommend going to redbirdsocial. com and clicking that free consultation button and talking with someone on their team. I'm so, thrilled that Stacy said yes to doing this this series with me. So let me know. Stick around for more episodes all about Facebook and how you can use it to promote your book.

If you're looking for other book marketing resources, make sure you head to bookrockstar.com for additional book marketing resources and tools.