More than 1.7 billion people are active on Facebook. Fifty-three percent of them are female. The average Facebook user in the U.S. was 40.5 years old. These statistics help explain why it is one of the most popular social media platforms used by authors to engage with readers. But what happens when Facebook explodes with news about political scandals, natural disasters, celebrity deaths, or sports? Cutting through the noise with a status update about your new book isn’t easy. And sometimes you need to recognize it isn’t the time to even try. Knowing when it’s the wrong time is as important as knowing when is the right time to use Facebook for building your audience platform. Having a strategy for your social media efforts as an author will get you a greater return on your investment of time and energy. When is the best time to post a status update on Facebook? It’s helpful to know 50% of the U.S. population is in the Eastern Time Zone. Eastern and Central time zones combined represent almost 80% of the U.S. population. It might surprise you, but you will find most people online during business hours, 9 am – 7 pm ET. The best time to post is Saturday and Sunday at the noon hour. You will get 32% higher engagement than any other time online, according to 16 studies. Thursday and Friday afternoons are the next best time with 18% higher engagement. And Friday afternoons post funny or upbeat content for…

What should be in your digital toolkit for the business of being an author? Google Suite for your email. Do you wonder why your emails don’t get a reply? It may be they were never delivered. If your account is with AOL, Hotmail, or Yahoo, there is a strong likelihood if you send someone you don’t already have a connection with they will never receive it. And while it is neat to have an email address tied to your website domain, if your webhosting company is one of the bigger ones, it’s likely they also host spammers and scammers which means your address may be blacklisted without you knowing it. In this era when email security is the order of the day, the account of your recipient may filter your email straight to the spam folder. Even with a free Gmail account there is a good chance it won’t be delivered. For professional and business email, I recommend the Google Suite which is $5/month. WordPress for your website and blog. I strongly recommend WordPress.org because it is open source code, can be installed easily with one click on most webhosting platforms, and works best for blogging if you want your work to get found. It is not to be confused with WordPress.com, a site that gives you free webhosting, but you’re renting and don’t own your real estate on the internet and they can place their ads on your site. WordPress is used by professional website designers for its versatility…

When your writing is published, expect to go public. Positive engagement with your audience is critical to the success of your book. Readers want to connect with authors. And writers like to hear feedback from their readers. During the last decade publishers have come to expect authors to create and manage their online personas on various social media platforms to promote and market their books. Few authors relish the time they spend on social media and most are uncomfortable with the loss of privacy. Shortly after novelist Elena Ferrante’s identity was revealed in October by an Italian journalist, author and journalist Marie Myung-Ok Lee wrote an essay for The Millions about the end of privacy for writers. She wrote about feeling the need to buffer or filter her public image when selecting a new author headshot. Instead of a photograph, her official avatar is a sketch by artist Kate Gavino. Women are judged because of their looks. Not too old. Not too young. Not too serious, but serious enough. Author headshots matter for men, too, however, the quality of their writing is not assumed to be reflected in their physical appearance. When you go public, you make yourself vulnerable to cyberbullying. When your book is published, you have no control over what others will say in customer reviews on Amazon. If you share a link to your blog or your book on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn, you are expected to reply to comments. When you put your book out…