I made a new friend this week. I met her at my church’s weekly small-group get together. She was quiet throughout most of the meeting, but something inexplicable drew me to her. At the end, we got to talking, and I found out she was a fellow writer! Well wadda-ya know ;).
Like me, she is in the fledgling stages of a book. Still writing the first draft, it’s that stage when the story is ever changing, growing, and improving as you journey deeper into your characters’ tale. I asked her if she had a website I could visit and read more about her and her work. She shook her head.
Now, stop right there. Think about what just happened. Put yourself in my new friend’s place, and imagine I’m a potential fan/buyer of your future book.
What just happened? You lost a potential fan.
That’s not to say people will ignore you if you don’t have a blog/website. However, our society today lives and grows off of social media, ESPECIALLY in the entertainment sector. So if you aren’t reachable, if you don’t promote yourself and put your slice of uniqueness out there in a form people can EASILY see and access, it will be 100 times harder to build an audience for yourself.
“But I don’t know computers,” you might think, or “But I don’t have time.” Well, you might want to learn computers, since they are your #1 means of getting your voice out there. And the good news is, making a blog doesn’t take that much time! Its actually pretty quick and easy.
As I am not a website building expert, but rather a recipient of useful help and wisdom, I will link here the amazing website I used to build my blog. Court Tuttle, the author of this blog-building website, takes you through from start to finish how to pick a host, set up your blog page, and start blogging.
http://www.theblogbuilders.com/the-basics-of-starting-a-blog/
What he gets you set up with is, of course, a basic blog. But you can learn and expand from here, customizing your own website to fit your needs.
I chose to buy a domain (lydiasherrer.com) instead of starting a blog on a free blogging site like livejournal or blogspot, so that I had my own corner of the world that I control. Your path may look very different, but I encourage you to at least get started down it with a website and a blog!
For those of you who already have a website, what tips can you share? What has been useful? What parts of your blog or website has been most successful in getting your name out? What things did you wish you had known starting out? Please, share your wisdom with us so that our community of writers and creative souls can benefit from everyone’s collective experience and wisdom.
Interested in learning why building your platform is so important, and how to balance that with actually writing your book? Check out this blog post by Margeret Benison
Want to know why bloggers are like cats?? Check out this adorable, and wisdom packed post by Esther Freeman. (picture courtesy of her blog post)
Lastly, please join me on twitter! If you’d like to hear more about my daily happenings and interesting things I come across, follow me on twitter @LydiaSherrer.
Thank you all, and have a great week!
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