Do you want to know how to use Author Buzz to generate SEO, book promotion, and buzz generation? I assume you do. After all, you just clicked on this article.

Author Buzz UK Basics

At the heart of a good Author Buzz strategy is a well-defined user account. It pays to take the time to fill out your profile as this will often be a user’s first point of contact with you and your author brand.

If you don’t yet have an account, you can create one for free night now.

Once you have your account, you want to make sure you select appropriate graphics both for your profile picture and account banner. Your profile image will be seen every time someone looks at anything you share, do, or say. Pick an image that strongly connects with your identity as an author.

Interacting on Author Buzz UK

There are many ways to interact with others on Author Buzz. The primary way of interacting is through socialisation. Commenting on statuses, blog posts, and on forum posts.

Author Buzz users tend to prefer to interact with sociable and active users. Throwing up a quick profile and then leaving is unlikely to draw much attention.

The more good social interactions you have with others, the more likely they are to check out your profile, click your links, and follow you.

Subscribing

You can find interesting content to interact with by following authors, fans, and writers who you find interesting. Likewise, others can follow you if they find you interesting.

The content of those you follow form a personalised feed. You can find this feed and many others on the Activity page. There you can filter content by type as well as look only at content from people or groups that you follow.

Your objective should be to create positive social interactions that attract followers. The more followers you have, the more followers you are likely to get. People tend to like to follow people who are already popular.

Get your news on the Author Buzz UK front page

There is more that you can do on Author Buzz other than socialising. You can put your news on the front page and into other people’s feeds.

Your news is collected and placed on the front page by a custom group. Groups are free and easy to set up. Like your profile, groups should be customised with appropriate graphics and descriptions.

You will be taken through the group creation and customisation process step by step and you can always change things later.

To get your news into your group you simply need to add your blog or newsletter RSS feed link. If you do not know how to find your RSS link you should contact whatever community exists for your news or blog website software.

Be aware, your RSS fed news will only update in your group when someone is actively looking at it. This prevents abandoned groups from clogging up the front page.

Get a free blog

Don’t have a blog? No problem. When you set up a group, you will be offered the chance to create an Author Buzz Blog powered by WordPress. You can pick a name and editor status for other users.

Some authors like to be the only ones to write news posts on their blogs. Others have a content team that they work with. One easy way to ensure that your content team can help run your blog, you can set admins, and moderators for your group and assign them with an appropriate editorial access level. Now when you promote a new moderator, you are also adding a new editor to your blog.

If you don’t want your moderators to also be editors, you can manually set editors in your blog’s admin area.

Every post you make will appear in your group and on the front page of Author Buzz UK. It will be added the moment it is published. No group visit required.

Get a forum too

Are you trying to generate a vibrant community around your books? Then adding a forum to your group is a must. You can choose to add a forum at group creation or add one at a later date.

You can appoint moderators to help run your forum. Yes, the same moderators that you can opt to make into editors or contributors for your blog.

Forums are best when you have an active community. To kick things off, you may need to be the one to post new topic ideas every few days. Once the community picks up pace, this will soon be unnecessary.

One way to kick things off is to announce your new forum on your other social media outposts.

A lively and active forum is likely to attract new users making it more lively and more active. On the other hand, a dusty barely used forum is not likely to attract anything other than more dust.

Create a steady stream

No matter how wonderful and interesting your post, eventually it will be chased off the front page by newer content. To combat this, create a steady stream of fresh and interesting news. For example, a gallery of photos from a recent signing event, new book launch news, book sales milestones, and other related news.

Some authors like to write about topics that they explore in their writing. That way, the people who are attracted to the posts, are likely to be the kind of people interested in their books.

Some authors – Neil Gaiman for example – do very well taking user questions and answering them as posts.

TL;DR: The skinny version

Be active. Make good content. Be friendly.

Over to you

What are your tips for growing a community of readers? Do you have a favourite way that you like to use Author Buzz? Do you blog? If so where do you blog?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.