If you’re a Republican, please don’t take offense at what you’re about to read.
If you’re a Democrat, please don’t take offense at what you’re about to read.
For that matter, if you belong to the Green party, libertarian party or communist party… please don’t take offense at what you’re about to read.
But you might want to pipe down a bit when it comes to politics on your social media author accounts.
Unless your books are very specifically about politics and/or that’s the kind of audience you’re courting, keep it to yourself.
Otherwise, if you don’t have an established audience – if you’re still trying to get people to notice what you write – you’re going to limit your ability to effectively reach and keep large swaths of readers.
And if you do have an established audience, you’re going to increase your ability to alienate them. Possibly for good.
Hey, it’s happened before. More than once.
Do you really want to make it happen again?
Here’s what you need to keep in mind when posting on your social media author accounts…
Despite select people being banned from certain platforms over the last year or so, the interactive online experience is fairly diverse.
There are Republicans who use the world wide web. There are Democrats who surf the net. And the same applies to the other groupings we did and didn’t list up above.
It’s kind of an inclusive place, all told. So the more inclusive you can be – without breaking your moral code, of course – the more you can get the kind of positive attention your book or book-to-be needs.
Again, this isn’t meant to be offensive to anyone. But I do have a very specific example of what it looks like when you ignore this advice.
Last year, I met a self-published writer who had built up a fairly large audience for her romance books. For a while there, she was having some significant success, selling books just as fast as she could write them.
But then the elections happened in late 2016. And then the Women’s March happened in early 2017. And apparently, she had some very strong opinions about both.
If she had kept those opinions to her personal pages, no doubt it wouldn’t have impacted her sales as much. But she posted them on her author pages as well. Excessively.
And she lost a good third to a half of her followers as a result.
Look, it’s okay to be loud on your author-specific social media accounts. Just be loud about what’s relevant to the readers you want to get and keep.
The internet can serve as a bullhorn. Don’t use it to blow people’s eardrums out. Use it to exhilarate them into buying what you’re selling.
If you’re a romance writer, post pics and quotes and thoughts about true love or steamy encounters.
If you’re a historical fiction writer, publish bits and pieces about the times and eras you write about: interesting factoids about style or philosophies that your characters might come across.
And if you’re fun and inspirational, as our cover image up above seems to be? Then fill your social media quotes with nothing less than positive encouragements and insights and motivations.
Do it until you’ve got an audience that relies on you for exactly that. And one that will happily purchase your next book when it comes out.
That’s what social media author accounts should be for. Not for unnecessary political commentary.
That kind of thing is a dime a dozen these days anyway. And you want to stand out.