Author Tech Tips - help for writers timid about technology

Pages, or Fan Pages as some people call them, are one of the best ways to promote your book or cause on Facebook. They are much more flexible than groups and won’t dilute your profile with strangers. Here is how to create a page of your own.

In my experience, authors who “friend” people they don’t know soon hate Facebook.

My recommendation is to use Facebook to connect to friends and use pages to connect with strangers.

4 Reasons Facebook Pages are Better Than Facebook Groups

1. Send massages to fans based on location. Speaking in Detroit? Send a message inviting your Detroit fans to come.
2. Update a status. With each update Facebook puts more and more emphasis on status updates. Groups can’t have a status. Pages can.
3. Have a username. You can’t get Facebook.com/BookName with a group but you can with a page. For instance Facebook.com/AuthorTechTips goes to our Facebook page. It’s easy to share and easy to use.
4. Scale.  Pages handle lots of people better than pages. If you plan on having 100,000 fans you will want a page for sure.

Step #1 Register the Page

To register the page visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php and pick a category and a name for your group.

Step #2 Customize the Page

Once you have your page up you need to add a photo and a description etc. This is fairly straight forward. If you get stuck leave a comment below and we will get you unstuck.

Step #3 Suggest the Page to Friends

Once you get your page ready to go click the “suggest to friends” link underneath your page’s image.

Generally, you only want to suggest your page to friends you think would get some benefit from the page. Why would someone join your Facebook group? What benefit is there to them? The benefits of joining the Author Tech Tips page is that you get notified of events in your area and get updates when new tips come out.

What do you think?

• Do you dislike pages because they are sometimes called “Fan Pages?”
• Did these tips work for you?
• Do you have any questions or need any help?

If this was helpful to you would you consider suggesting the Author Tech Tips page to your friends?