Part One of my talk at
The Unite Conference in Vancouver. Stay tuned for Part Two:
We live in a different age of publishing. Traditional
methods of marketing don’t work in this digital age. Promoting your written
words is a new kind of art form with a ton of potential for new authors. Let’s
talk about how to get those words noticed in world that is constantly
shrinking. Your most powerful tools are marketing in the midst of peer-to-peer
networks and search engines on the world wide web.
Start a Blog
Personally, I prefer Typepad (www.typepad.com). Check out my blog for
ideas, www.cthomasdavis.com and www.anauthorsblog.com. I’m able to
post videos I’ve created, photo albums, YouTube or GodTube videos, books I’m
reading, and books I’ve written. It’s also possible to make money from the
books people order from your site that has a direct Amazon link. Other author
sites to look at: Lisa Samson, (www.lisasamson.com),
Claudia Mair Burney – Ragamuffin Diva, (http://ragamuffindiva.blogspot.com),
Marilynn Griffith, http://marilynngriffith.typepad.com/rhythmsofgrace.
There are other great hosting sites including Blogger (www.blogger.com) and WordPress (www.wordpress.com). These sites are user
friendly, organized, and either free or inexpensive. This will give you a place
to post your poetry, writing, whims, and stories for your friends and the rest
of the world to see. The best part about these sites is this: whatever you
write will automatically be posted in major search engines like Google,
Ask.com, etc. So if you write an article on “The Beauty of the Mountains,”
people searching for things like, “Beauty” and “Mountains” will be directed to
your site.
You can also choose a subscription service users can
subscribe to that will send them an email when you create a new post. This can
also tell you how others find you, where people live who are hitting your site,
what pages they’re clicking on, etc. See www.feedburner.com
for more information.