Today’s post is by book marketing industry expert, Kelly Schuknecht.
When it comes to publishing a book, no matter what goals you have, as an author your online presence is important and should be thoroughly reviewed and perfected. Your personal website or blog, your profile on Amazon and any other social networking sites may be viewed by potential customers and should accurately reflect who you are and help sell your book.
If you have a website or blog, you will most likely want to list information about your book. This can include:
- About the book
- About the author
- Testimonials/reviews
- Link to purchase the book on Amazon or other retail sites
Have you ever visited a website with so much “stuff” on it that it made it hard to figure out what you were looking at or where you should go? The ability to navigate a website easily is very important for getting the attention of your viewers. Be sure they can find what they want easily and that all links work properly. If you use other social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or any others, your website should include links to those locations. Also, your “behavior” on those sites should be professional and appropriate for your target audience.
DISCUSSION: Do you consider your target audience when you post something on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or YouTube? If so, why? If not, why not?
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ABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht works as the Director of Author Support for Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog at http://kellyschuknecht.com. |
Self Publishing Advisor 
Kelly —
This is an excellent post about always considering as an author (or as anyone else from a mechanic to an astronaut) what you are putting online. Especially as an author, take that extra moment to proofread and consider what you’ve written before you hit submit or tweet.
And FYI — no matter how stringent you think your privacy settings are on a particular site, assume that someone can get through the settings. Thus never, ever put anything online that you can’t live with the world reading.
Phyllis Zimbler Miller
http://twitter.com/ZimblerMiller