I’m going to be posting this exact same blog entry at The Other Website, so if you subscribe to both my apologies.
https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js
This week I attended a webinar led by Jayne Rylon and Lila Dubois about how authors can use TikTok to promote their work. Normally I’m a little meh about webinars, but this one was funny, effective, and reinforced a lot of stuff I’ve been hearing from authors about how being on TikTok can boost your sales. It also demonstrated some best practices, things not to do, and suggested a couple of tips that surprised me (like wearing crowns in videos. I mean, who would have guessed?).
Anyhoo, on Thursday I took the leap and signed up for a TikTok account. On the recommendation of Jayne and Lila, who said that TikTok readers are voracious and aren’t bound to genre, I decided to use my TikTok account for both my Melanie and Nicola books and came up with the username nicandmelatbelaurient. A little clumsy, yes, but the screen name can be changed as much as you like and I settled on Melanie Fletcher/Nicola Cameron for that, which seems to work. My first video was a cute little pan of all the proof copies I have on a bookshelf, with a voiceover that muses how I really should order real copies of all those books. Did a bit of editing, added on-screen text and a sticker, and uploaded it.
I then joined Authors of TikTok and TikTok for Beginners on Facebook. Right now the Authors group has been more useful because it gave me the opportunity to join in on a daily cross-promotion post where people post their latest TikTok. You can then go and like/follow/comment them, and they’ll do the same for your post and account. Not very organic, true, but TikTok is gamified where you get certain privileges when you get certain numbers of followers, and right now I’m in a growth phase in order to get some of those privileges.
So what’s the point of all this? Well, over the last two days I’ve posted four videos — the panning one of the proof copy shelf, one where I feature Behind the Iron Cross, one where I’m actually on camera saying hello (link at the beginning of this post), and one featuring the Two Thrones series. As of right now I have 85 followers, 73 likes, and I’ve gotten 567 views on the proof vid, 336 views on the BtIC vid, 494 views on the “Hello, it’s me” vid, and 12 views on the Two Thrones post (but that was only uploaded an hour ago). I’ve also gotten two people reading BtIC on KU, which I can only attribute to my TT post. I’m hoping that as I establish more of a presence on the platform I’ll be able to boost my sales even more.
Plus, I LOVE making videos. I’m already a frustrated screenwriter and videographer so to me TikTok is an absolute ball, especially if I can make my videos funny. I already have a series planned where Melanie and Nicola will both be in the videos bickering with each other about stuff (which will require costume changes and a lot of editing, but that’s okay).
And, erm, I may have purchased a ring light with automatic start button for my camera. Hey, it’s a tax write-off.
As you may remember, Bob, I signed up for TikTok last week. As per the webinar’s instructions, I’ve been posting 2-3 videos a day, most of them on the subject of my books or writing but some of them just goofy little filips.