Being a writer is a business. If you write books or articles, you want people to read them and preferably pay you for it. It would be fantastic if lots of people paid you for writing because then you’d be Stephanie Meyer, but we’ve all got to start somewhere!
So how do you get readers?
One way is to cultivate small groups on niche websites, speak in person, communicate with individuals on social networks and maintain your own quality blog and web presence. All this is definitely important!
But you must also go where the people are.
If you have a presence on the most important sites on the internet, more people will find you. The current list of most influential sites from Read, Write, Web include:
- Wikipedia.org
- YouTube.com
- Flickr.com
- Twitter.com
- Google.com
- MySpace.com
- Facebook.com
- IMDB.com (movie site)
- NYTimes.com
- Apple.com
How do you get on these sites?
The big guns on the internet have been around for years or are celebrities. It’s taken me around 18 months to build a small, but growing, online presence, so don’t expect to get there overnight. But here are some useful posts to read around why and how you can use these influential sites. The brilliant thing is – they are all free!
Wikipedia: Everyone is using Wikipedia now for online research. It has been shown to be as correct as the Encyclopedia Britannica, and a recent interview with Jimmy Wales, the founder, discusses accuracy. Here is a useful article on writing effectively for Wikipedia. I am in the process of trying to write my own Wikipedia page so I’ll do a post on this when I have learnt it myself!
If you doubt social media at all, read this first => Writers need social media, and social media needs writers
YouTube.com: Now you can get a cheap Flipcam or iPod Nano with video, it is easy to get on YouTube. You can also use your webcam for a static picture, or build your own video using stills and music. Here’s a post on how to build your own Book Trailer using free software MovieMaker. I have been doing a series of videos on my NaNoWriMo experience which have just been one take with my iPod Nano. And of course, the poster boy for video is Gary Vaynerchuk, whose 10 book deal for Harper Collins I discuss here. Here’s my YouTube channel if you want to connect.
Flickr.com is a brilliant site for photos that I mainly use for Creative Commons photos for this blog, and my ebooks. However, it is also picked up in search engines and people go looking for photos there for other projects. I have had several of my photos featured in various online articles, which have all been linked back to my site. So it also works as a traffic tool. It is definitely worth creating a page and loading some photos on it, even if it is just your book covers, your promo photos and media appearances. Here’s my Flickr site.
Twitter.com. You may have noticed I love Twitter. It is my primary social network of choice and I am very active on it @thecreativepenn. There’s a good reason too – it is HUGELY popular now and brings traffic to my site as well as enabling some fantastic online relationships. If you don’t know anything about Twitter yet, read this article first. Then go ahead and join up!
Google.com People use Google to find things by searching. If you want people to find you by searching, you need to have a blog that is regularly updated on your niche topic. Here’s how to setup a blog, and here’s 10 tips for effective blogging for authors.
Facebook: How authors can use it for book promotion. You can also join The Creative Penn fan page if you want to connect with some more people!
Apple.com. You can get into the Apple Store in a few ways.
a) Create your own podcast and syndicate the feed to iTunes. Here’s 5 Steps to Make Your Own Author Podcast. You can Subscribe to The Creative Penn podcast here on iTunes.
b) Create your book as an iphone app. Al Katkowsky did this – here’s an interview with him. Here’s an article with 13 Tools for Building Your Own iPhone App. This is definitely on my list for 2010 so I’ll post a how-to article when I have done it!
That may all be a little overwhelming, but the point is that you can be on the top influential websites in the world. There are people there and you need to be part of the conversation. These are all key aspects of author platform building which is what publishers want these days, so you just need to put some time in and it will start to make an impact.
Image Credits: Tome Reader by Ozyman, Apple by Vascellari, Facebook by AJC1, Wikipedia and Google by aahyeah,
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What a fabulous list, Joanna! Thank you for your hard work in putting this list together. I guess I have my work cut out for me!
Funny isn’t it, people wonder how to get more online exposure and don’t realise that so many of the top websites in the world are user generated content that you can add yourself to easily.
Nice piece of research. Are you writing a Wikipedia bio of yourself? I have always heard they discourage that. Several of our authors including Lauren Roche and Tom Budzynski do have Wikipedia bios but written by another party.
Thanks guys.
Beth – I know you have started already!
Paul – so true! It’s amazing how that has changed – now anyone can be on there, you just have to be found.
Sam – I was going to try and do it myself, but perhaps need to find someone else.Thanks for the comment. I shall try DIY first.
Paul, I’m curious abut these blog sites that take user-generated content. Can you tell us more? Thanks!
Joanna, Thanks for your cheers!
Beth
Hi Beth – the user-generated content is precisely the sites listed – i.e. wikipedia is all user generated, not done by a company. So is Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc – so most of these sites do have user-generated content. Hope that explains it!
I also want to add that my friend Sam has told me re Wikipedia that you have to be notable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability
and they need externally verified sources etc. So I won’t be getting on Wikipedia until I am a bit more notorious! Watch this space
Joanna, thanks for the definition. In that case, I LOVE user generated content. I’m on FB and twitter all the time.
I’ll enjoy watching you get notorious from this side of the globe.
Beth
Many thanks for the prompts on all these places. I’ve just signed up for YouTube [next week's challenge is to get a video up!] The rest of the list gives some more targets to plan in [already there on facebook and twitter].
It’s interesting what you’ve noted about notability and wikipedia – what about if you’ve a specific topic that you can launch as a page, and where you may be referenced? …something to explore!
Thanks too for you article on 3 Steps to Start your Author Platform. It’s a useful reminder to go one step at a time as there seem to be so many options available.
All the best,
David
Thanks David – I have started tentatively with YouTube but am intending to expand my video presence in 2010.
A friend Sam is putting some feelers out for Wikipedia for me – apparently you can’t write a page on yourself – but presumably you could write about a specific topic. I guess it is a community like any other.
Thanks, Joanna