Infrastructure.
How to build the pyramids? One brick at a time, starting with the ones on the bottom.
I say this word A LOT. Why haven’t I really tried to drive traffic to my Facebook page yet?
Yes, I don’t have a deadline (and I don’t have a book I’m trying to promote), but the big answer is that I still don’t have all the pieces in place to maximize my number of likes and get readers to interact on my Facebook page.
When I say “infrastructure” – I’m referring to the roads, electricity, running water, and locations – the basic services that need to be in place to make it easier for people to sign up for your newsletter, visit your website, like your page, etc.
To be fair, it’s an iterative process. You start with one piece at a time. Half of a pyramid is still impressive. People will still come to your site, but they’ll be even more likely to take a picture and buy your book when it’s all put together. Here is the “minimum” infrastructure I suggest for an author’s platform:
- Set up a website. It’s your main hub and most people will come back to it sooner or later. Note: I use dreamhost (for private registrations and hosting) and wordpress sites because you don’t need to know how to write code and can make some amazing, beautiful pages without hiring a designer.
- Add Google Analytics. It’s free and lets you track where your traffic is coming from.
- Newsletter If you have multiple books/plan to have multiple books and are building a brand – Add an newsletter. Dreamhost has a service included with their hosting and Aweber is also very good. This is a huge source of traffic and will help you with repeat purchases over time. .
- Get accounts for Twitter and Start building it. It takes very little to get going on Twitter, I got 2000 followers in 30 days… As an author, you can quickly build an audience on twitter and should start doing this a few months before you
- Create a Facebook Fan Page
- Create a cover image (I show how to do this blog post and this one)
- Create a Welcome Tab (see my tab posts from earlier this week)
- Create a tab listing your books w/ links to kobo, Amazon, B&N
- Create a tab to sign up for your newsletter.
- Create a Google+ page. Google+ is actually the number 2 service for social media (behind only Facebook). Not only that, it will become increasingly important.