Book Marketing Tip #36 – Join LinkedIn, post links to your books

NOTE:  In January 2018, an updated and expanded edition of The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide was released, offering 65 book marketing ideas and new "Deep Dives" sections exploring social media strategy, how to work with beta readers, and how to earn free press coverage. 

To download the new Smashwords Book Marketing Guide for free, here are the coordinates:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
iBooks
Kobo
Smashwords

The new 2018 edition of The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide is also available as a serialized podcast on the SMART AUTHOR podcast, starting with Episode 10.

Click here to access all SMART AUTHOR podcast episodes.






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The information that follows on this page is from the 2013 edition of the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, which will remain here for historical purposes only.


Book Marketing Tip #36 – Join LinkedIn, post links to your books

LinkedIn is a free social network for business professionals.  As a self-published author, you’re running a business.  LinkedIn offers numerous online forums where you can network with, and learn from, fellow authors who are learning to reach readers just like the rest of us.  Once you create your free account, LinkedIn allows you to create a comprehensive, online-accessible, search-engine-optimized personal profile page, and on that page you can list all your books. Here’s my personal profile page at LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/markcoker  At the bottom of my profile, you’ll find links to some the LinkedIn groups I’ve joined.  You might want to join some of them yourself.  Some of the groups offer weekly digest emails so you can still follow the conversations if you don’t have time to participate each day.  LinkedIn also offers other common social media features, like news feeds, and integration with your Twitter feed (so your Tweets on Twitter can automatically appear at LinkedIn).  Entire books have been written about LinkedIn, so I won’t attempt to cover everything.  Just jump in, create a profile, connect to me as a friend, and start learning.

Some LinkedIn Tips:  

1.  How to Add Connections.  When you try to friend someone (they call it “Adding a Connection”) type a note in there about who you are.  If you don’t, the recipient will receive a generic message, and is less likely to accept your connection.  If someone writes a personal note for their connection request such as, “Hi Mark, I’m a Smashwords author!” I’m much more likely to accept the connection.

2.  Never Spam.  Once you create an account and start connecting with people, LinkedIn allows you send emails to all your friends.  I never send mass emails through LinkedIn.  Don’t ever spam your connections with solicitations to purchase your book.  When I get these solicitations, I unfriend the person.  LinkedIn makes it easy to remove connections though their “Remove Connections” feature.