JRWC12 Tidbit #4 - Priceless Website Insights

Every author is told to develop their web presence as soon as possible. Join social media and set up a website. But if you're new to the whole shebang, what are the basics? How do you pull together the best web presence you can before you've even sold your first book/story?

JRW's session, Insight Into Your Site: Website 101,  offered attendees plenty of helpful points and information. The panel consisted of Erin Blakemore (author, The Heroine's Bookshelf), Colleen Lindsay (community manager, Penguin's BookCountry.com),  and Anna Sproul (agent, Ross Yoon Agency) and was moderated by JRW's Maya Payne Smart.

Suggestions, hints, and advice flew around the panel like bees around honey. Or perhaps it was my own desperation to absorb every possible tidbit that made it seem like this session was a motherload of good stuff.

The most valuable thing for me was a list of Basic Website components:

• Keep the design simple and clean. No music. No crazy dancing graphics. No "Enter Here" preliminary page.
• All content should be your best writing and carefully edited by yourself and at least one other pair of eyes
• The Home Page needs to be constantly updated/refreshed with new information - it was suggested (strongly) that your blog be the Home Page/blog frequency 1X per week minimum
• Contact Me tab/button/page should not be a form to be filled out by the visitor but contain a professional email address, your name, any current projects, and a professionally taken photo
• Social Media links should be prominent and link to an ACTIVE social media presence. If you don't use twitter, don't put it on the website (yet)
• If you're published, make sure you have a Call to Action on every page - Buy The Book - with links to your book

This led to some discussion about social media. Again, if you don't like facebook, don't link to it, don't promote it. Only link to those media platforms you intend to maintain properly.

Something I'd forgotten to do - Your Twitter Home Page should also be nicely worked up with a photo for your handle and appropriate personalization. No one likes or trusts the anonymous little eggheads. I came home and spent a little time personalizing my own Twitter Home Page. You Like? Well, it's a WIP.

Oh, and speaking of Twitter, be sure that you don't tweet "Buy my book! Buy my book!" but that you DO tweet good content. Links to articles you think would be interesting. Tweets by people you follow and respect. Tweets that you feel inform, entertain, and/or relate to your passion. And try to make sure you keep the character count low enough that it can be successfully RETWEETED.

Whew! See what I mean? Now, get crackin'!

MONDAY FORTUNE COOKIE, 10/22/12

Romance is likely; strike up a conversation!

SNARKY REPONSE: Just hope no one decides to strike you back! Fresh!

Romance is likely; strike up a conversation!

In a way, that's exactly what I've been doing all week-end at the James River Writers Writing Conference. This three-day event was held at the Richmond Convention Center and featured a diverse cast of talented speakers on a plethora of informative panels. And everyone from feature speakers to first-time attendees are in the throes of a serious romance with the written word in all her glorious forms.

From the welcome session to the closing 10th Anniversary Celebration, I was surrounded by writers seeking better ways to woo their chosen muse. Conversations always included the key question: "What do you write?" offering everyone the opportunity to share their love affair with writing openly with others who could understand and share the attraction.

View of the Conference Marketplace

Some of my takeaways were:

• Poetry Warm Up provided by author and performance poet, Allan Wolf, challenged us to consider where we were going to place our "pea of truth"
• Our First Page HAS to set place, person, and plot
• Resist the urge to edit while writing that "shitty first draft" - something that's often easier said than done
• Your blog should be the home page of your website to provide fresh renewed content for visitors with suggested updates of once a week at least, though daily (a concept that boggled my mind) would possibly annoy your readers - as Sabrina tells Linus in one my favorite movie quotes "sometimes more is just more"
• Your website "Contact Me" should not be a form but an actual "professional" email address - visitors are put off by the impersonal form
• Successful agent/editor queries are based on careful research - know who they are and why your book would fit their niche

While there were many wonderful pieces to the event, I felt it was beautifully book-ended by the Saturday First Pages critique, an always insightful though oft painful reading & critique of anonymous first pages and the Sunday Pitchapalooza where we listened to brave souls give a one-minute pitch in front of the entire assembly for critique by The Book Doctors and Alec Shane, agent.

If you've never been to the JRW Writers Conference, please be sure to put it on your short list for 2013.