It’s common wisdom today that every author needs a web site. A web site is a lynch pin for any social media strategy, and it is an essential place where authors can build up an audience of readers. Seth Godin tells authors to invest about three years into making a web site successful.
To really make a web site work takes quite a bit of time and effort.
For starters you need to develop a plan for composing posts and learning how to write for a blog. A good place to start includes:
- Writing a series each week on a particular topic.
- Keeping your word count to a lean 200-400 words.
- Focusing on “How to” content to make sure you connect with readers.
Besides this you’ll need to make sure your web site is optimized for search engines, that your posts appear on social media, and that you’re leaving useful comments on the sites of fellow bloggers. Are you feeling a bit dizzy yet? Well, I’m leaving a lot out!
The trouble is that authors can invest a ton of time into their web sites and even draw a nice crowd of readers without necessarily succeeding in selling a lot of books. In addition, a web site can fall on hard times when writing and promoting a book comes into play—especially for writers who have day jobs!
Great content and high numbers of readers are certainly important for any author looking to promote his/her work. Readers need to be able to find you and to learn about your writing based on your site.
However, a web site is not an active marketing tool. Rather, it’s more of a landing and conversion tool. Marketing campaigns need a web site that readers can visit, but having a web outpost does not guarantee readers. Web sites can be designed poorly or marketing can fail to draw in readers.
By all means invest in a web site, but don’t forget there are two other things you can do that may well effectively sell more books in the long run… That’s where we’re going next.
The rest of this series:
A Web Site
Two Thing That Do
A well-written book that is targeted to a specific but wide audience.
A Trusted Name with an Extensive Platform
Ed Cyzewski: Author // Contemplative 
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