How to better use the social reading networks

I am an avid reader and I wish I can spend at least one month the year reading non-stop, with only 5 hours of sleep and one hour of cooking and shopping. It is an utopia, of course, but I try to find as much time as possible to read (almost) any kind of books: literature, travel, cooking, history, self-help, politics, history...You see? Almost everything.

As I also manage several blogs - travel, foodie, social media, and writing - and I am member of the respectable networks of Goodreads and Shelfari and I am always looking to expand my audience and increase my expertise, my book passion can turn into a golden mine for my diversified efforts. Trying to fight with the low social media presence for some of my blogs, I discovered that writing book reviews on my blogs that are later on shared on those social networks plus on Amazon.com could be an impressive free opportunity to raise the awareness about what I am doing as well as a way to attract more readers. 

I am trying as much as possible to have my posts free of a high concentration of key words and to offer honest reviews based of an analysis of the style, information and relevance. Even if I know personally or virtually some of the writers, I always prefer to keep myself at the decent level of evaluation and to not spare any criticism if needed. 

From my point of view, this experience is useful also for improving my writing, my page ranking as well as for preparing the ground for my own books. The motto of my life is to always be ready for challenges and to use my skills for new tasks and opportunities. And there are so many books to read!

Lessons learned of my first Facebook ad campaign + other details

If before officially starting to promote and launch my websites - especially the travel oriented ones - I had the (false) impression that I know enough about social media. In the last two months I realized that I need to dramatically review all my knowledge about how to use various tools for success, not only for fun and entertainment. 

After I've reached a certain threshold of 'likes' on Facebook for my page, I received a coupon allowing me to use a certain budget for increasing my audience. Worth 30 Euro, the coupon expires in around 3 weeks after assignment. Trying to reach an honorable 200 'likes' I considered that it is the right time to have my campaign started during the week-end. 

The main thing I liked about it is that you can shape your target audience, in terms of age and geographical representation. You cut your slice and wait to see what is going on. In the last days, I slowly reached my objective, with a modest budget of 8 Euro the day. My campaign is supposed to end in a couple of hours and for the moment I prefer to work the audience in a different way, trying to offer more content and diversity of perspectives. 

What I was not extremely keen about is the random audience that I reached. Till now, I was joined by people that looked interested in what I was writing and doing, but from now on, it is more a matter of random clicks that of clear interests. On the other hand, I am a blogger looking for audience and I should stop thinking in terms of elitist audience. I am no more in the academic world, remember?

As a general conclusion, Facebook Ads are very efficient and probably if used on a regular basis it helps to have a big audience in a relatively short time. I don't know what to say yet about the price, but as I plan to use such methods only short term, I am not afraid that my budget will be seriously challenged by that. 

On the other end of the priority list, I have a lot to learn about: creating professional YouTube video, how to get a proper Google indexing rate, increasing my Twitter audience and how to play right the SEO cards. For the next days, I will try to offer as much original content as possible and set up Google+ pages, at least for my foodie and social media blog. 

Little by little, the priority list gets bigger and my excitement for the new experiences is pondered only by the careful need to review periodically the stakes and tactics.