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5 Completely Avoidable Author Website Mistakes That Cost You Fans (And Simple Ways to Fix Them)

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5 Completely Avoidable Author Website Mistakes That Cost You Fans (And Simple Ways to Fix Them) | YourWriterPlatform.com

Your author website is the cornerstone of your writer platform and media presence, and it’s the one piece of real estate online that you can (mostly) control. In this guest post, David Loy (Co-Founder and CEO of Leverage Creative Group) outlines 5 mistakes writers often make on their sites that undermine their ability to build an active and supportive community around their work. He also includes simple ways to fix these mistakes. Enjoy!

Let’s say you’ve just read an amazing book or watched a captivating speaker.

They’ve drawn you in, and you want to learn more about them.

So, with high hopes and anticipation of more great content, you go to their website. [Read more…]

How to Get Traffic to Your Author Website: 30+ Tips for Discouraged Writers

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Sure is quiet out there.

I mean seriously, with a gabillion people online these days, wouldn’t a few even accidentally stumble across your website?

Isn’t it statistically impossible (or at least, improbable) that you should have so little traffic to this darn blog that you’ve spent hours coaxing into existence, one precious post at a time?

What? Offline rejection isn’t enough, now writers have to be rebuffed online, too?

😉

Don’t be discouraged, dear writer, help is on the way!

Building traffic can take time. It’s not always easy to find the people who are interested in your topic and receptive to your point of view, your voice, and your style.

Plus, you also need to consider the “share-potential” of your audience. Do your readers have large followings on social networks like Twitter and Facebook? Or better, do they have their own blogs or websites?

Or does your audience (or potential audience) have small networks of the usual suspects: friends, family, and a few peers?

Be careful when comparing your growth with the internet gurus. If your target audience isn’t bloggers, businesses, or online entrepreneurs, the share-potential of your readers will be much lower – and your growth, therefore, may be much slower.

Consider changing your goal from quickly growing your traffic, to focusing on ensuring that the traffic you are attracting is right for your author blog. You want the traffic you funnel to your site to be targeted, invested, and closely aligned with your way of thinking.

And the results you seek – increased book sales, a supportive community, authority, and influence in your genre or niche – are not *necessarily* linked to high traffic numbers. [Read more…]

The Writer’s Weekly Wrap-Up: Does Your Elevator Pitch Stand Out? (Issue #30)

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The Writer's Weekly Wrap-Up _ YourWriterPlatform.com

This post is part of a weekly series on YWP, aptly titled “The Writer’s Weekly Wrap-Up”.

Each Sunday, I will endeavour to provide you with a curated list of the best articles I have seen throughout the week that relate to building your platform.

The featured articles cover topics on book marketing and promotion, blogging, social media and self-publishing. (I may even throw in a few inspirational and fun posts, just so that it’s not all work and no play!)

Crafting the Perfect Elevator Pitch

“So, what’s your book about?”

Umm…

Distilling the essence of your book, your author brand, or even your freelance services down into just a few sentences has mentally defeated many a writer.

But, it’s inevitable–and desirable–that people will want to know (briefly) what your work is about, and why they should care.

To help you overcome the stuttering, rambling, discombobulated answer you may be currently giving to the above question, here are a few pointers for creating an elevator pitch that stands out:

Tip #1 Be Succinct

The beauty of having to create a brief, but compelling, elevator pitch is that it requires you to dig deep for the true essence of your book, your brand or your service. In order to concisely share it, you’ll first need to know it yourself. Think sentences, not paragraphs, and keep fine-tuning until you’re certain you’ve captured the heart of your work. [Read more…]

The Writer’s Weekly Wrap-Up: Using Google Alerts to Build Your Writer Platform (Issue #29)

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The Writer's Weekly Wrap-Up _ YourWriterPlatform.com (1)

This post is part of a weekly series on YWP, aptly titled “The Writer’s Weekly Wrap-Up”.

Each Sunday, I will endeavour to provide you with a curated list of the best articles I have seen throughout the week that relate to building your platform.

The featured articles cover topics on book marketing and promotion, blogging, social media and self-publishing. (I may even throw in a few inspirational and fun posts, just so that it’s not all work and no play!)

Get Out Your Spy Gear; It’s Time to Gather Some Intel!

Raise your hand if you’ve heard of Google Alerts.

Raise your hand if you know how you can leverage Google Alerts to easily gather knowledge on what others are saying about you and your work online, as well as what they’re saying about other authors, your industry, or your genre.

For those of you with your hands down, I’ve whipped up a quick guide on how to use Google Alerts to flex your secret agent muscle. [Read more…]

14 Things About Building a Blog Audience That You Think Are True (But Aren’t)

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blog audience

A guy wakes up in an unfamiliar hotel room, laying in a bathtub partially filled with ice, and a terrible pain in his lower back.

He’s rushed to the emergency room, only to find that one of his kidneys has been surgically removed–apparently without his knowledge and presumably for illicit sale on the black market.

I’m sure many of us have heard some variation of this chilling tale via a ‘friend of a friend’ which has been propagated by thousands of people, but with dubious conformity to any facts.

An urban legend, or more accurately, a contemporary legend, is a kind of folklore that gets passed around in third, fourth or fifth hand accounts, modifying as it circulates and accruing credibility (at least by some listeners) as it spreads.

Some well-known ‘truths’ about building a blog audience are like urban legends.

If they go unchallenged, the truth becomes ambiguous, or worse, these inaccurate concepts become the conventional wisdom of the day, passed as fact from one rookie blogger to the next.

Let’s dispel some of these non-truths, so that you can begin to build a blog audience without folklore getting in the way.

Myths of Building a Blog Audience (and Some Truths You Should Follow Instead)

 

1. If You Build it They Will Come

There are well over 164 million blogs online, and that number is growing daily. Can you even fathom the statistical odds of your sparkly new blog being found online? The odds of someone reading one of your posts? To the end? And actually taking the time to leave a comment?!

It’s staggering. Yet many writers pound out a few blog posts and then wonder–impatiently–why their posts aren’t being shared wildly and their comment section has only one comment:

“Great job, Honey! Love, Mom xoxo”

Even great content needs distribution. And sharing your posts with the few followers you’ve managed to scrape together on your social media accounts doesn’t really count. [Read more…]

Authors with Platforms Sell Books.

It’s that simple.

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