What should these profiles say to effectively attract potential readers? 

Twitter Has Only 160 Characters for Your Bio Info

Let’s start with Twitter with 160 characters max for your bio.  Obviously you are going to put that you are a book author (perhaps fiction or nonfiction) and presumably you will have a book website URL for the “more info URL” field in your profile.  What else are you going to say in those 160 characters?  That depends.

Do you have a business besides being a book author?  If so, you may want to put info about that business in your bio.  Or is there a particular hook about your book that you want to get across in your bio?  Perhaps your book is a novel based on a true story.

Your goal in the brief Twitter bio is to make yourself interesting enough (although all true ) that people can find “connections” to you and want to follow you.

This means that you must not leave this bio blank.  If you want people to follow you on Twitter, you have to be willing to share about yourself.

And remember that you can change this info easily.  For example, if your book wins an award, you should consider changing your Twitter bio to reflect that award.  Revisit your bio every couple of months to ensure that it presents the most up-to-date version of yourself.

Facebook Has Much More Space for Bio Info

Now let’s move on to Facebook, which has a longer bio section under info on your profile page with the ability to include as many of your own website URLs as you want. 

Now here’s the often-overlooked extra of Facebook:

You can have a very brief bio section under your photo that people can see when visiting your wall page as well as your info page.  This is a golden opportunity to get the most important points across in a very short space.  Because, honestly, how many people are going to read all those long entries on your info page?  (And for the long entries, do use lists instead of long, dense paragraphs.)

Take advantage of this brief, easy-to-read bio with the info you most want to share with your Facebook friends.  Note that this may not necessarily be the same as the info you choose to share with your Twitter followers, even though in both cases you want to emphasize that you are a book author.  And, again, update this brief Facebook bio every couple of months.

LinkedIn Has Its Own Peculiarities

Now for the third social networking site – LinkedIn.  This site gives you a very brief space to put a few words under your photo along with the opportunity to provide a brief summary of your business.  Book authors should take advantage of both places to convey their most important information.  Then the rest of the profile info on LinkedIn is more job and career-oriented.

There is one important “trick.”  LinkedIn only allows three website links.  But don’t click on “My Company” or “My Website” or “My Blog” before putting in the links.  Click on “Other” in each case.  Then to the right of “Other” put descriptive words such as “Book Blog” or “Book Site.”  You want potential readers to know they can find out about your book(s) at your sites.

As with your other social media profiles, revisit your LinkedIn profile info every so often to ensure that the info is up to date.

In conclusion, don’t make the mistake of thinking that these profiles are unimportant and thus you dash off writing the info.  These profiles provide the information that helps make you interesting to potential readers.  Spend as much time writing and revising these social media profiles as you would spend writing and revising any paragraph or page in your novel or nonfiction book.