Managing your online brand (Facebook and Google +)

Twitter, being the massive time sink that it is, deserved a page to itself, but let’s talk now about two other social media sites, Facebook and Google+.
You probably already have a personal Facebook account. Some authors use their personal Facebook account to interact with their personal friends and their fans alike. Others create fan pages. Fan pages are different from accounts in that people “Like” it, rather than “Friend” it, but otherwise, they’re not much different in purpose. Your posts from your fan page and your account will show up on their Facebook feed.
What makes a fan page different is that more than one person can administer a fan page. When you earn enough as a NYT best selling author to hire a publicist, you can provide him/her with administrator rights to your fan page and have that person do your social media work instead. But for now, you’re stuck with it.
I decided to create a Facebook Fan Page for two primary reasons. I really only accept friends requests from people I know personally and interact with over a sustained period of time, and more importantly, Jade Kerrion is a pseudonym. I wanted fans to find me without having to do extensive research on locating my real name.
To create a Facebook page, visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php. The process is fairly self-explanatory, and you should eventually have a spanking new page. Remember to customize it with descriptions, pictures, etc.
You can build a fan base on Facebook slowly or quickly, depending on your mood. You can invite your friends from your personal account to be your fans. I personally didn’t bother because I figured I could spam them from my account if I needed to. Instead, I’ve traded “Likes” with other authors I’ve met on Twitter or on other writers groups. Eventually, fans found their way to my Facebook page.
I encourage you to get to 30+ fans as soon as possible. Why? At 15+ fans, you can abandon your Facebook assigned link (which has lots of numbers) for something of your own selection, such as http://www.facebook.com/JadeKerrion. Once again, this is a branding opportunity. At 30+ fans, Facebook gives you statistical information about your site, such as how many people actually saw a post. It gives you a better sense of your reach beyond just how many fans you have.
Now, on to Google+. I like Google+. Google allows you to slot people into one or more circles and selectively share your posts. You can message snide comments to your family and sweet comments to the rest of the world, all from the same account. How efficient is that? I have a personal Google+ account, but created another one for my Jade Kerrion pseudonym as well. Once again, the driving reason here is branding. I’m trying to build buzz around my Jade Kerrion brand, and a consistent public image is a cornerstone of branding and marketing. Here is my Google+ page.
To create a Google+ account, visit https://plus.google.com. If you already have a g-mail account (and who doesn’t have a g-mail account), you probably already have a Google+ account–you just didn’t know it. :-) Once you have your Google+ account, you’ll note that it has lots of numbers. You can simultaneously shorten it and brand it for free by going to http://gplus.to/ There, you can enter your Google+ page number as demonstrated in the page, and create your Google+ link, as I’ve done here: http://gplus.to/JadeKerrion
To add to your circle on Google+, just add people… :-) As you add people to your circle, Google+ will make recommendations for people to add. Yes, it really is that simple, unlike Twitter which appears to have follower/following ratios, I have yet to see limits on Google+. People whom you add to your circle may not add you back, but that’s just the way Google+ works.
How often should you post to Facebook and Google?
I post to all my social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, Google+) every time I post a new blog on my website or if I’m featured on someone else’s website. Occasionally, I’ll pop in and share exciting news. In other words, I post at least twice a week on my Facebook fan page and on Google+. Do I ever cross-post on my Facebook account and my fan page? Sometimes, yes. When I’m hosting a free promotion, or have news to celebrate, (things that would be relevant to my real-life friends,) I cross-post on my personal Facebook account as well.
Never, ever link your Twitter account to Facebook. I removed several authors I had previously “liked” from my Facebook feed when their tweets started showing up in Facebook. (Note, you don’t have to unlike them. If you click on the like button, you’ll see a drop down menu with the option of removing them from your news feed.) There are few things in life more annoying than seeing Twitter feeds with their characteristic hash tags and 140 characters show up on my Facebook page. Twitter users are much more tolerant of spam, Facebook users much less so, and many tweets, unfortunately, are spam.
What else can you do on Facebook? You can form groups on Facebook and gather people who share your interests. I’ve never formed a group, but I’ve joined many writers groups on Facebook. Here are some of them:
NEXT: Read Managing your online brand (Website/Blog)

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