Your Website is Your Home Base

Sep 4, 2012 | Digital Marketing

While the latest or biggest social media site seems to be top of mind and constantly in the news, your website is an extremely important piece of your online real estate.
It’s the most important one.
It’s what goes on your business cards, gets linked in your social media profiles and, in general, is the hub of all your online activity.  It’s your home base.

And, it’s surprising to me when speaking with authors  that they often are considering marketing their book without one – or think it can be effective with one splash page.
When thinking about the design and layout of your website, there are a few pages or content that every author should have on their website and along with a few more things you should consider:
•    About – You should have a both a short and long version of your bio along with your picture.  Not only do fans want to read about your background, but this needs to be readily available for media to find.
•    Contact – There should be a very clear way to get in contact with you.  Again, not only because fans will email you, but because you want people like publishers, agents, journalists, etc. to easily contact you.  Also, this is where you can put contact info for your speakers bureau, agent, etc.
•    Books – Make sure there is one page where all of your books can be easily seen, a short synopsis available and then links to purchase them online.
•    Speaking – This will not show up on every author website, but if you are interested in being hired to speak, make sure you have a top level navigation item for Speaking.  Include your speech topics on this page along with a speakers reel so people can see you in action if at all possible.  A speaker ‘one-sheet’ containing information about you and your topics for download is always good as well.
•    Blog – We will go more in depth on this next week, but if you have a blog make sure people can easily find it and subscribe to it.
•    Newsletter or Email signup – While this may not be it’s own page on your website, make sure it is extremely easy to signup for your email newsletter, book excerpt, free report, etc.  If set up properly with the right tools, each time you create a blog post, your subscribers will receive email notifications.  In marketing language, we call this your funnel (more on that later).
Your website is an extremely important tool in building your tribe.  Make sure it has all of the content your fans and visitors are looking for and, especially, make it really easy for your visitors to find your book!

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