marketing | Kenneth Ronkowitz

Charles Dickens was a big self-promoter and if he were writing today he would definitely have a website and be on social media.

I have built websites for several authors and their needs are generally similar. (A few of my samples are here.) If someone just typed your name in the search bar, what would we find? Chances are they are looking to find out About You (biography), your Publications, any Events you might be involved in (readings, workshops) some samples of your writing, and a way to Contact you. And those 5 topics make up a reasonable starting place for a website menu.

For a business, if you don’t have a website you don’t exist, and for a published (or hoping to be published) author that is also true. It has been true for a decade or so that having a website is a mark of validity. (That is unfortunately also true for conspiracies, scams, and questionable groups.)

Every writer should have a website as a way to market and promote yourself and your writing, build your audience and sell your work.

I have worked on designing sites for a number of writers who were actually told by their publisher that having a site was a requirement for being published. The bigger publishers often will host a page for your book with a few of those elements but a lot of the marketing of writers (especially novices) falls on the author. Self-promotion is important.

I wrote recently about some tips to help you boost your search engine optimization (SEO). One of those ways is for authors to have a social media presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram etc. It can also be having a blog as part of your website so that fresh material is out there about you. If the only update to an author site is when they have a new book (which might be a year or years apart), people are not going to return to your pages.

Authors use blog features to stay in touch with their readers. You can also guest blog on other writers’ sites. In this past pandemic year, online blog and book launch tours and interviews became commonplace. Even commenting on other people’s blogs and including your name and website URL helps.

Search engine spiders are out there 24/7 on the web looking for changes to web pages to feed their algorithms. If your site remains the same, it doesn’t help your SEO or hold your audience.

Typically, there is a lot of time between books, so short-form publications keep your name visible. Publications in periodicals can bridge the gaps. Offering some new writing as a blog post, memoir, story excerpt, poem also keeps the gap filled.

Having social media followers helps build audience. Besides the obvious big platforms like Twitter or Facebook, consider offering some video. Audiences are quite wiling to watch short videos recorded with some care on a phone and posted on YouTube (which also allows you and others to easily share on their own sites).

I believe you should own your name as a domain and as a handle on social media sites. You should also do that by creating accounts on some sites where book authors are featured. Check out Goodreads, LibraryThing, BookBub and
LinkedIn (particularly for nonfiction writers and journalists).

Being a self-published indie writer is more common and accepted today. In the last century, a lot of “vanity presses” would print your book for a price and do little else for you. Now, sites for self-publishing offer more from social promotion to press releases to entering your book in contests. If you are in control of your own book distribution, then get it with as m. Everyone thinks first of Amazon and yes it should be there, but also consider Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Ingram, OverDrive, Libby, Hoopla, Scribd, Tolino, Playster, Bibliotheca, and Baker & Taylor.

Today, authors need to do more of the promotion than ever before and it is easier to do it than ever before.

Of course, you want your website should be the first result that pops up when someone types in your name to find you or your company when they use Google, Bing or any search engine. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become a business service on its own and is often packaged with web design services.

It’s not that I don’t see it as very important, but I certainly don’t see it as important as some clients, especially ones new to having a website. I very rarely recommend using an SEO service. Search engines like Google send out bots and spiders to crawl the web all the time and they will find your pages. It might take a month or more but hey will find it.

Now, getting to he top of the search results is a different thing. If you think your photography site will be the first thing searchers see when they type in “photographer,” you will be disappointed for a long time.

Optimization can be both technical and content-based. On the websites back-end improvements designers can include particular header tags, metadata keywords, alt-tags on photos, and smart use of hyperlinking. Though I use those things, I focus on front-end, content-based factors which I feel are more effective in boosting SEO.

Search results depend on a number of factors and algorithms. Here are some of those front-end and use approaches that I try to describe to clients.

Make your content unique. If someone searches your name + photographer, the results are more likely to be your site. Add other keywords such as a city, state or type of photography (weddings, portraits etc.) and the results improve. One of my clients was very pleased that after a few months a search on Google for “ellen denuto photographer” showed her site at the top. She/we did no special SEO but we did follow these suggestions.

Keep adding new content. Blogging is a great way to keep content fresh and draw traffic to your website. Blog features on websites using what were originally blogging services (such as WordPress) can be redesigned to be an event, news or updates feature rather than the traditional blog. Setting a regular schedule to post new content – once a week or at least once a month – is a way you can boost your rankings.

Get other sites to link to you. Google uses PageRank to order search results. Other people linking to your site helps you move up in searches. But it also is guided by the rank of those linking to you. If I link to yur site it will help, but if The New York Times links to your site it will help a lot more. Still, asking friends and colleagudes with websites to mention your URL helps. Put that link in your email signature, use it for online bios or any time someone writes an article about you.

Use social media. I have a lot of clients who were not interested in being on social media, and honestly, if you don’t plan to keep up t it regularly it won’t help your SEO. It might even hurt. If I see a link on a site to Twitter and follow it and they haven’t posted in the last six months I feel like they are “out of business.” Social media is so important to search results that I know several publishers that include a clause in contracts compelling authors to engage with followers on one or more platforms. Again, active engagement and new content feeds search engines with lots of fuel for their algorithms. If similar sites and competitors are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, etc. then you should be there too competing for eyes and clicks.

Maintaining a social media presence, like updating your website, requires time and scheduling. I have several web clients who also use me for social media maintenance. But you can do both yourself if you’re willing to learn how and commit time to it. If you are starting out, choose one or two. Twitter and Instagram are very easy to use, especially on a mobile device. Depth of engagement on one site is better than infrequent use on three sites.

Consider using video. Video on your site and on social media is much easier than it was a decade or two ago. Remember that YouTube is owned by Google, so video there will give your search engine results a boost.