{"id":401,"date":"2017-09-25T13:05:11","date_gmt":"2017-09-25T17:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/?p=401"},"modified":"2021-03-23T11:47:11","modified_gmt":"2021-03-23T15:47:11","slug":"fb-release-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/fb-release-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook Release Party Lessons"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bsf_rt_marker\"><\/div><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">About a month ago, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AuthorSonyaJesus\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sonya Jesus<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> invited me to take part in her Facebook release party. I\u2019d heard of them, of course, through open calls to participate on my publisher\u2019s Facebook group. I hadn\u2019t ever participated, though, thinking that they were for people who already had books out. The direct invitation, however, made me curious, and, with a bit of trepidation, I accepted the 5:30 &#8211; 6:00 pm time slot.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For those of you who are unfamiliar with Facebook release parties, they\u2019re a chance for an author to reach anyone in the world by making a public Facebook event page. On the day of the event, the author, as well as any people they have invited to participate, will post to the page with information about available and upcoming books, giveaways, teasers, videos, etc. The idea being that the more people who are involved, the more fans and readers will check out the event, and, hopefully, the book being released.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Research<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because I\u2019d never been part of a release party before, I wasn\u2019t entirely sure of the protocol. So, I did what I always do: I researched. I asked some other authors about typical post content. I attended a couple of release parties and paid <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">very<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> close attention to the posts and engagement. And I made some unexpected discoveries:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You post, at most, once every 3 &#8211; 5 minutes.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some people seem to treat release parties as a chance to outrageously pimp their own books. As in, every post is a link to buying their books with a picture of the cover or covers, with no real description of the books at all. I don\u2019t know if this nets them any sales, but I noticed less interaction with those posts.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Facebook has polls. Yeah, I had no idea about this, and apparently they\u2019re only available on event and group pages, because I don\u2019t have the option to create one on either my personal Facebook page or my <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/authorracheldlf\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">author page<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Preparation<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Armed with some new information, I got to work creating posts. Since I don\u2019t have a book available for sale yet (March 3rd, people *wink*), I decided to go for teasers. Hopefully they would entice people to follow me on various sites and buy my book once it\u2019s available. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I hand lettered some book quotes (if this sounds interesting to you, check out my <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/author_racheldlf\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Instagram<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for #TeaserTuesdays). I also created the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/b7LA6iVbhN0\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">first teaser video<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for *The Most Special Chosen*, as this seemed like a great place to debut it (and hopefully get some views). And, of course, I had to provide a link to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/author-spotlight-2\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sonya\u2019s Author Spotlight<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. A poll (for interaction), giveaway (to get people to stick around until the end of my half hour), and links to my social media accounts rounded out my main posts. And let\u2019s not forget an introduction and thank you post. Those are important, too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I wrote up all of the posts so I could copy and paste them on the day of the party to avoid wasting time, or suffering from writer\u2019s block. I\u2019m very glad I did, as I edited everything a few times to have the best content possible.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Party Time<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As the actual release party got closer, I started looking forward to participating. I expected it to be fun, and I hoped that people would be interested in what I had to post. At 5:20, I sat down at my computer, opened up the document with my posts, kept an eye on the event page, and prepared to have fun and be engaging. I think I succeeded at both.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was fun to read people\u2019s comments (especially the GIFs) and respond to them in return. And I can\u2019t deny it\u2019s exciting to watch the likes, loves, comments, etc. counts go up. My time went quite a bit faster than I expected it to, and I found myself almost sad when it was over. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I will note that I had a hard time keeping track of when to post things as Facebook shows \u201cJust Now\u201d for a few minutes after posting. My solution was to add time labels to the document where I\u2019d written my posts. That way, I just had to ensure that the current time and the time label matched before I pushed \u201cPost\u201d. It made a big difference, and let me focus on interacting with people<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Overall, It was a great experience, and I\u2019m very happy, now, that I accepted Sonya\u2019s invitation. I look forward to joining other release parties in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Final Thoughts<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ultimately, taking part in a release party is to gain exposure. And part of that is reviewing what you did and seeing what did and didn\u2019t work. I think for a first time, I did pretty well, and gained about 10 new followers\/likes on each of my social media accounts, which I don\u2019t find too shabby.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The poll was (surprisingly) my best performing post, when I go by total interactions (comments, reactions, post interaction, shares, etc.). My giveaway post received the most reactions (17), while the introduction post received the most comments (12). So make of all of that what you will. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A couple side notes to interactive posts. I think everyone will agree that GIF comments are big right now. So I think I\u2019ll look into requesting GIF comments in future posts. Perhaps one of those \u201cpick your answer\u201d posts would be good, too. You know, the ones where you piece together an answer based on your name, birthday, color of your shirt, etc.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My main takeaway from it all is that I should have more interactive posts in the future. I should ask even more questions, and encourage discussions and comments. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That said, do you have any questions for me? Leave a comment below and I\u2019ll get back to you. And if you need an additional participant at your Facebook release party, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/authorracheldlf\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">send me a message<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About a month ago, Sonya Jesus invited me to take part in her Facebook release party. I\u2019d heard of them, of course, through open calls&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/fb-release-party\/\">Keep Reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Facebook Release Party Lessons<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[37,28],"class_list":["post-401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-the-more-you-know","tag-thoughts","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8Z77k-6t","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1511,"url":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/cs-summer-heat\/","url_meta":{"origin":401,"position":0},"title":"Coming Soon: Summer Heat","author":"Rachel","date":"July 1, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Summer Heat With temperatures rising, the sizzling stories of\u00a0Summer Heat\u00a0will have you needing a dip in the pool. We're turning up the heat and you're going to be damp in more ways than one. Second chance romance, a sexy vampire, an irresistible bad boy, dark secrets, and then some? There's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Book Blogger&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Book Blogger","link":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/category\/book-blogger\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Summer Heat","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/summerHeat-246x300.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2415,"url":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/bb-critd-iv\/","url_meta":{"origin":401,"position":1},"title":"Book Blitz &#8211; Crossroads in the Dark IV: Ghosts","author":"Rachel","date":"December 1, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The Crossroads in the Dark IV: Ghosts anthology is now available. All proceeds are donated to aid suicide prevention efforts.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Book Blogger&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Book Blogger","link":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/category\/book-blogger\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"CRITD IV Cover","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/critdiv-231x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1870,"url":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/cr-crossroads-iv-ghosts\/","url_meta":{"origin":401,"position":2},"title":"Cover Reveal &#8211; Crossroads in the Dark IV: Ghosts","author":"Rachel","date":"August 18, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Presenting the cover for Crossroads in the Dark IV: Ghosts, an anthology developed in hopes of bringing awareness to suicide prevention around the world.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Book Blogger&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Book Blogger","link":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/category\/book-blogger\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Crossroads in the Dark IV","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/critdIV-mockup-300x296.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2657,"url":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/review-mistress\/","url_meta":{"origin":401,"position":3},"title":"Review &#8211; Mistress","author":"Rachel","date":"March 5, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Check out my review of *Mistress*, a very adult *Pride and Prejudice* varation story by Sophie Turner.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Book Blogger&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Book Blogger","link":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/category\/book-blogger\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Mistress","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Mistress.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":496,"url":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/author-spotlight-19\/","url_meta":{"origin":401,"position":4},"title":"Author Spotlight: Joseph J. Madden","author":"Rachel","date":"October 19, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Welcome \u2014 or welcome back \u2014 to another Author Spotlight! If you're new and want to know more about how the series got started, go check out the introduction post. Today the spotlight is on\u00a0Sci-Fi\/Fantasy author of The Starhawk Chronicles, Joseph J. Madden. - \u00a0- \u00a0- What\u2019s your most recent\/next\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Book Blogger&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Book Blogger","link":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/category\/book-blogger\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"JJ Madden Banner","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/1500x500.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/1500x500.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/1500x500.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3898,"url":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/review-duel-meryton\/","url_meta":{"origin":401,"position":5},"title":"Review &#8211; A Duel in Meryton","author":"Rachel","date":"February 14, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Read my review for *A Duel in Meryton* by Renata McMann and Summer Hanford","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Book Blogger&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Book Blogger","link":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/category\/book-blogger\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"A Duel In Meryton","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/adim.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":402,"href":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions\/402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}