Your Writer Platform

Build your platform. Engage your fans. Sell more books.

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

by

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)

by

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…]

11 Author Website Must Have Elements

by

11 Author Website Must Have Elements _ YourWriterPlatform.com

An author website has a lofty goal: it needs to not just be, but also needs to perform and respond.

No longer just a fancy, static, online business card, it is an author’s ‘homebase‘, a marketing and networking hub and a portal that allows communication to flow between an author and his or her readers.

Visiting an author’s website is one of the leading ways that book readers support and get to know their favourite authors better. The stronger the relationship, the more likely zealous advocates will spread the word about the author to friends, family and peers.

And website visits can translate directly into books sold.

Therefore, even if you are on social media or actively promoting your work offline, operating without a website is just silly. Why invest the time and energy in writing your book, getting it published and developing other marketing strategies only to be absent online? In today’s market, it is a huge drawback and a valuable promotional opportunity missed if your readers can’t easily locate you with a few quick key strokes.

The rub?

Learning how to design a website and incorporating the ‘must have elements’ requires some skills.

[Read more…]

Set Up Your WordPress Blog in Under 15 Minutes

by

Set Up Your WordPress Blog in Under 15 Minutes _ YourWriterPlatform.com

**UPDATED JUNE 2018**

Does the thought of having to set up your own blog or author website make you weak in the knees?

Butterflies in your stomach?

And not in the steamy romance novel good way?

It may seem like a daunting, technology ridden task for a newbie, but just like you figured out how to send and receive an email (you have figured that out, right?) setting up your own WordPress blog is just as simple.

But before rushing in to the set up of your author site, it is important to first get a clear understanding of some of the options available to you.  By investing a little time up front you can save yourself loads of hassle down the road.
[Read more…]

Authors with Platforms Sell Books.

It’s that simple.

Get on the Insiders List to receive the free Quick Start Guide to Building Your Writer Platform, exclusive content via email, and instant access to a growing library of downloadable resources.