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Facebook Friends

Facebook Friends Part 1

I recently ran a campaign to drum up support for for my latest novel, and a large part of that took place on Facebook. However, I only had 1,100 Facebook friends and it soon became apparent that I would need at least double that for a campaign of thirty days. Now, obviously, not everyone you ask to become a friend fancies the idea, so to get, say, 1,500 new Facebook friends in a month, you have to invite at least fifty new Facebook friends a day.

I have had 1,100 Facebook friends for ages, but when I started recruiting in ernest, more and more people asked to become my friend too. It was as if Facebook saw that I was looking for new friends and so promoted me to others via that block on your timeline – People you may know…

However, if it is true that Facebook helped me get new friends, it is also true that they discouraged me from talking to them. In the morning, I would start asking my Facebook friends to check out my book and vote for it if they felt able to, but after about twenty such messages, I invariably received a warning that I was probably violating their TOS.

I was even banned for twenty-four hours once. However, I soon settled into a pattern of waiting for the warning, and then doing ten an hour until I reached my goal of a hundred a day – 3,000 in the month. I fell a bit short because I only had 2,600 Facebook friends, but I will have the shortfall by the time I finish my next novel.

I had 3,220 visitors to my target URL, although KindleScout, the hosts don’t reveal how many voted. My book was deemed HOT for 393 hours out of the maximum of 720, so draw your own conclusions. I think that most people I asked went there, and most of those voted for my book.

Now the fun part. Of my existing Facebook friends, the original 1,100, not many, a few hundred, reported back that they had helped, although that doesn’t mean that the others didn’t. I probably wouldn’t tell a friend that I had helped either. However, well over half of the new Facebook friends told me that they had voted for my book., and I think that I would with a new friend as well.

There were several splinter groups, which are interesting.

There were about fifteen who asked me to return ‘the favour’. When I asked how, they told me to buy their book, read it and write a review for Amazon and Goodreads – about four days’ work, and I would have to but their book, in exchange for their two-minute vote on my cover and blurb! I should coco! Needless to say, they are no longer friends.

Then there were the twenty or so who explained I detail that they were busy professionals with no time for trivial activities. One man wrote me four long emails explaining how little time he had. It would have taken only two minutes to click NOMINATE on the strength of the cover and the 100-word blurb!

There was one man who said that he was very sorry, but he could not access the Internet… he was saying that via Facebook’s Messenger! I don’t know whether he was doolally, or he thought I was.

Then there was a huge group of ‘beautiful women’. This group is the one I found the most interesting. Naturally… but more of them next time 🙂

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Facebook Friends Part 1