Saturday, January 12, 2013

Tips on Creating a Facebook Author Page

I will be doing a book signing January 19th (more details to follow) and was discussing details with my host when she asked me if I have a facebook page.

Of course I have a personal facebook page, but I had never set up anything specifically for my books. (My facebook friends have always been kind enough to cheer on my writing efforts.)

However, as I prepare to reach out to the community for my book signing, I realized that I needed to make a distinction between my personal page and my author page.

Yes, I should probably have done this a long time ago. I could make excuses as to why I haven’t, but I won’t. Instead, I want to share two things I learned while setting up my author page that some of you may find helpful (if you ever decide to set up your own page).

Choosing a username

I originally skipped this step, because 1) I wasn’t prepared for the question and 2) my first idea was already “taken.”

Facebook usernames are not transferrable, so whatever you pick should be memorable and something you’ll be happy with for a long time.

You don’t have to register a username, but after finding the below facebook information, I decided it was something worthwhile.


Creating a cover

For those of us who don’t have photoshop, creating an attractive cover picture for our facebook page may seem like a challenge. However, a quick search on the web reveals several sites that offer the opportunity to create your own cover.

After testing a couple of them, timelinecoverbanner.com seemed the most user-friendly. (And by the way, it’s free.)

The site offers 90+ pages of creative cover designs for your background. Once you select a background, you can then add text and make other adjustments as well.


One word of caution: There is an annoying pop-up that appears every time you select a new page, asking you to like or follow the site. Hoping to get rid of the pesky pop-up, I liked the site, but it still continued to appear with every new page I selected to view.

Still, it’s a free service with artistic cover background designs, so I’m not complaining. And apparently, this pop-up is working in the site's favor, because the website has over 215,000 likes.

To check out my new facebook author page, visit facebook.com/kristenhogrefe.author.

2 comments:

  1. Hi, Kristen! I checked out your FB page and it looks good. I do agree that choosing a user name and setting up the page itself is important because before reading the content, your name and the cover photo give potential likers the first impression of what you do. Using names and images that are relevant is just as important as the content of your posts.

    -Jean

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  2. Hello, Jean! Thank you so much for your comment and the reminder to choose names and images that are relevant to the content.

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