If I had a billboard that could reach every author in the world, this is the message I would share:
YOU. AREN'T. POSTING. ENOUGH.
All caps. Periods for emphasis.
Most authors are thoughtful and conscientious. They have strong reputations built on decades of experience. And when it’s time to promote the book they spent months or years writing, their biggest worry is bothering people with too much promotion.
Hence my billboard: Even if you think you are talking about your book too much, you are definitely not. You are not posting enough.
It’s not just you (the conscientious author). It’s the social channels. They have changed over the last 5 years, requiring all of us to update our mental models of how social media works.
Rachel Karten, writer of Link In Bio (a top newsletter on social media strategy) describes this new era as New Social:
With Old Social, the amount of engagement you’d get on a post felt somewhat predictable, playing within a set of boundaries dictated by how many followers you had. Sure posts would flop or take off, but day-to-day it felt like your core audience would see your content. This era was defined by a follower-based feed.
With New Social, your content either gets seen by no one or everyone.
You can imagine your post as a car pulling up to two lanes. One is slow and one is fast. Old Social had a middle lane—views from your followers—but with New Social it’s gone. If the post isn’t shareable or appealing to non-followers, it immediately signals over into the slow lane. This era is defined by a recommendation-based feed.
Most authors — like most brands — are still stuck in the Old Social mental model. They view social media as a direct channel to their audiences… like it used to be. A time when more followers correlated to more views. A time when your followers saw most of your content.
That’s now how social works anymore.
Today, social media is like television. Most users are fed content from people they don’t know.
Like television airwaves, only the most engaging and interesting content makes it to the feed. Everything else is suppressed. It’s all about getting on the For You page.
New Social started with TikTok. But today, every channel follows the new Power Law: Either your content is seen by everyone or no one. There is no in between.
Here’s what this means for authors:
“Posting too much” is no longer a thing.
With New Social feeds, only your BEST content will ever be seen — it doesn’t matter if someone follows you or not.
So the worry about bothering your followers is no longer warranted. They will only see your best work regardless. The social channel is serving as your filter.
Rachel emphasizes this point in her post:
A big reason why brands previously paid a lot of attention to posting cadence on Old Social was to not show up too often in their followers’ feeds.
With New Social, that is less of a concern. It’s a game of hitting the algorithm jackpot, and, for some brands, taking more shots on goal will be the answer to winning big.
Rachel also shares 3 strategies for brands to win in the New Social era:
Shots on Goal — Post as often as you can in hopes of hitting the Algo Lottery. Like I just said, your bad posts get suppressed anyway, so there’s little worry about hurting your reputation by overposting.
Focused — Find a theme or narrative that your audience responds to and do more of that. Think of this like TV shows: when HBO finds a new show that people like, they order another season. Many brands and individuals are taking a similar approach.
For authors, it’s helpful to envision this approach as “serializing” your book. You share snippets and ideas from your work in small chunks to generate interest. If you do this well, your audience will keep coming back for more.
Waves — Run big brand activations and campaigns to drive huge awareness. Your impressions go up and down like a wave. This is the online equivalent to the PR stunt. Great for big brands and clever startups/authors.
In the book world, this was like when Tucker Max posted billboards of his book, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell and then vandalized them himself to manufacture outrage.
Authors should use all three strategies to promote their books:
Take as many shots on goal as possible.
Start by posting as often as you can. Again, the reputational dangers are not what they used to be. If you post too little, you will run out of time to hit that jackpot. And once you find that thing, you can switch to the next strategy:
Serialize your work.
Once you find the themes and topics that your audience (and the algo) likes, turn it into a series. You can be more intentional about your posting at this stage, crafting each post like the next episode in a television show. This approach is tailor-made for authors and hearkens back to the “serialized novels” that were so popular in 19th century.
(Fun fact: Did you know authors like Charles Dickens released their work in regular installments for newspapers and magazine to gauge interest of their audiences? What’s old is new.)
Use campaigns to drive more impressions.
Plan out big, attention-grabbing stunts to reach large swaths of new readers. Consider creating swag and running a giveaway, or (for non-fiction authors) packaging your BEST tools into a free guide for readers.
All three approaches should be part of your New Social strategy.
So next time you’re worried about bothering your following with yet another post, remember my billboard, planted firmly in your brain.
YOU. AREN’T. POSTING. ENOUGH.