In a previous blog titled, The Facebook Advantage: The Importance of a Fan Page, we discussed various ways to maximize your free presence on Facebook, such as building an audience, updating your page, engaging your fans and the importance of analytics.

If you are a Facebook user, you’ve more than likely noticed those boxes to the right-hand side of your profile, the ones that offer promotions or information on various products and services. Those boxes are Facebook ads, and they’re something that could be useful to you in your book promotion efforts!

Now, if you’ve ever wondered how those ads got there, it’s likely that those companies have used Facebook in order to tap into valuable information like your age, your gender and where you’re from, as well as information from your profile, such as pages you’ve liked. It’s this information that better enables companies to reach their target audiences.

Today we are going to explain why advertising on Facebook can be beneficial to you as an author.

1. Expand your horizons – For most newly published authors, spreading the word about your new book can be a daunting task; more times than not, news may not spread as fast as you’d like. That’s why features like advertising on Facebook are available: to help people and businesses alike boost their presence to the general public, and, more importantly, to their target audience. But before you can consider advertising on Facebook, it’s up to you to determine your target audience and what group of people your book will appeal to most.
2. It’s not all about the Benjamins – Despite what you may think, promoting your book on Facebook can be rather inexpensive. Although it will cost you money, there are several types of Facebook advertising, giving an author the opportunity to craft a campaign that’s specifically meant for their target market for an affordable price.

   What’s more, Facebook has announced that they’re changing how they determine what posts users see in their news feeds, with less emphasis being given to what they deem “promotional posts.” So while Facebook ads aren’t free, they may be money well spent if they help you spread the word to potential readers.

3. “X” marks the spot – Reaching out to your right audience is a lot like a treasure hunt, and Facebook ads can help an author find the “X” that they’ve been looking for. You can craft your ads to be served to Facebook users in a certain geographic area, or even as specific as targeting a particular town. From there, you can narrow down to those users who have expressed interest in other topics relevant to your book.

   Let’s say for example, you’re having a signing of your baseball book in Dorranceville. Facebook advertising will give you the opportunity to show your ad to anyone who has listed Dorranceville or the surrounding region as their hometown, and who are interested in topics relevant to baseball.

4. Domino effect – Once your ad is available on Facebook and is directed toward your target audience, if someone “Likes” your ad, it will then show up on their Facebook news feed. This can open your advertisement up to an entirely new audience! Thus, the more likes that your ad gets, the more people that will see your advertisement. This, in turn, creates a domino effect and expands your potential reach.

One point to remember: As with any form of promotion, Facebook ads offer no guarantee of success. But with the right target audience information and the ability to analyze performance, Facebook ads offer a way for authors to really see what’s working when it comes to book promotion.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks to learn more about the various forms of Facebook Ads!