*The succeeding article is about Marketing Self Published Books, Online Marketing campaigns, Book Marketing Strategies, and many other useful tips about book marketing.

Joining social networking sites are a cost-efficient yet effective marketing resource for authors to promote their books. An interested author can register for free on most of these sites, and a well-defined marketing plan is required to successfully wage the campaign.

A social networking site account is like having a customized website and a blog page in one setting because the registered author concerned has his own individual homepage with multimedia features, and members can also participate in group discussion forums on the site. Authors who join these sites may also opt to join niche groups of their book genre or join groups similar to his hobbies and interests.

Social networking sites are convenient marketing platforms and resource opportunities that authors can benefit to their advantage. While there are more tedious ways of promoting one’s book, social networking sites offer the promising potential for viral marketing. The goal then, for marketing authors at these networking sites is to successfully connect to their intended target readers. Correspondingly, the aim should be to focus on those specific sites that are genre-relevant.

From a book marketing perspective, social networking sites are just one way by which authors can publicize their works. And considering its structured nature, the marketing author should study carefully the online behavior of his target demographic, including the niche group profile, the quality of their blog, and the substance of their comments.

The book marketing opportunities for these social networking sites include posting book excerpts of an author-member’s homepage, generating Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, creating links to author sites and blog sites, writing articles, and participating in forum discussions. Apprehensive authors may be selective when finding social networking sites that are relevant to their genre. They may post comments in network forums, providing back links to their main web or blog sites.

Authors can adopt a strategy of posting book excerpts or making controversial essays that will surely make online readers react to stir up some "buzz" on the merits of the book.

Authors should realize, however, that marketing with social networking sites requires a long term, interactive commitment. A dilemma exists in having many social networking accounts because these will be exacting and time consuming to respond in the long run. For this purpose, it is better to have one social networking account with many actively commenting fans and bloggers, than to join many networking sites that are difficult to maintain.