Optimizing Your Online Presence – for Writers
WORKSHOP TOOLS & RESOURCES
Thank you to everyone who attended the workshop. I hope you found it useful and took away some things you can implement.
As promised, here is a list of the resources, tools, and websites which I mentioned during the presentation (None of these are affiliate links).
Regards,
Fungai
Success Stories
Used their online presence to sell books. I went on to speak about how you can use the Internet even if you don’t have a big following.
- Rupi Kaur – rupikaur.com
- Lang Leave – www.langleav.com
- Tyler Knott Gregson – tylerknott.com
- Atticus – www.atticuspoetry.com
Keeping Track of Your Online Presence
How do you keep track of people talking about your books or you? Useful when you want to reference the blogs, news sites, media houses that have mentioned you. The paid versions offer visualizations, social media monitoring, and other tools.
- Google Alerts (Free) –
- Awario.com (Starts at $29/month)
- Mention.com ($29/month)
- Sprout Social (Starts at $99/month)
- AgoraPulse (Starts at $79/month)
Author Websites
Best platforms for setting up an author website.
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- Wix.com
Free and super easy to get going. Everything is drag and drop. May become costly later if you decide to add more features to the site. If you want to use your own domain: e.g. www.fungai.com you need to pay $5.00 per month, but you still get ads showing up on your site. For $13/month (paid annually) you can get rid of the ads and get a free domain name for one year (Renewable at $14.95/year).
Wix.com - WordPress
Free. Thousands of free templates and plugins. It’s the most popular content management system on the Internet. One-third of all websites in the world are built on WordPress. The learning curve can be a bit steep, especially if you want to customize templates and plugins. However, it’s possible to do a simple install and get going quickly if you are happy with how the template you have chosen looks.
WordPress.com
- Wix.com
Mailing List Sign Ups
Email is the highest converting form of organic reach. Examples of writers who have mailing list subscriptions on their sites
Blog Ideas
Getting content ideas for your blog.
Royalty-Free Images
The following sites have images you can download and use on your blog.
Optimizing Time with Social Media
- Social Media platforms allow you to schedule your posts so you don’t have to post them physically every day.
- Use a tool like Planoly.com to plan and schedule your posts on Instagram
- Other tools like Hootsuite.com are available. Cost more.
- You can also use a service like Fiverr.com to have someone else create social media posts based on text or images you supply. You can even find people to manage your social media on there. Make sure you do your verification first and opt for ways of adding managers to your accounts instead of handing over passwords.
Book Promo Sites
Great ways to get your books in front of verified readers.
Writer | Digital Storyteller | Web Developer
I believe that every serious artist should be able to make a living from their work if they want to and I’m on a mission to find the best tools, ideas, and resources to help artists succeed. I experiment with business models, monetization ideas, and new technology in my own creative process as part of this journey of discovering.