Facebook is a waste of time! All people ever do on Facebook is share TMI, ridiculous pictures and play FarmWars and VampVille. Serious writers don’t have time for Facebook. What possible benefit can be gained from having a Facebook account? Didn’t you know that Facebook is Forever and people are missing out on jobs because of their Facebook posts!

A lot of people still turn their noses up at Facebook, some are afraid of it. As a writer you need to be open and limitless in your approach to the Internet. Facebook is powerful and necessary if you have something to promote.

As a writer you want to brand yourself and see yourself show up on Google searches. You need to be an egomaniac. I am only satisfied when I can type “Amanda June Hagarty” in Google and receive three solid pages of search results about me. Facebook gets noticed by Google.  Especially Facebook Pages and websites that get shared on Facebook.

More than 800 million people spend 30% of their time on Facebook. Do you not want to reach those 800 million people in the place they spend a third of their time, where they make it easy for you to communicate with them?

Facebook Apps are not just games–there is an App for everything on Facebook. You can create a storefront on Facebook to sell your books.  Your fans can add your book to their “reading list” App. You can put a feed for your blog onto your Page and have it post automatically to your timeline. The possibilities are endless.

Facebook isn’t rocket science either. You don’t even have to be a geek or guru to figure out how to make it one of the most powerful tools in your tool box. For someone new to Facebook it can seem confusing and intimidating, but everything seems that way when you are new to it.  Keep plugging away, ask friends questions, ask Google questions and pretty soon you will be an expert.

To get you started this is just part 1 of a 3 part series.  Stay Tuned to read Part 2 which will address all those concerns you have about the risks and pitfalls of Facebook and Part 3 which will give you some pointers about how to use Facebook effectively to promote yourself as a writer.