Author Platforms, Blogging and Other Necessary Tools

By no means am I any kind of a computer expert, internet guru or expert on SEO. What I have learned has been through, as usual, lots of reading and trying to sort out, to me, confusing terminology and ideas.

With a recent decline in my sales that has taken place over the last month, something made me decide to do an SEO audit on my primary website for my business. Two years ago, before the Panda and other Google updates, I had a page rank of 3, which is not too bad.

To my horror, when I did the audit using a free online tool, I had a page rank of 0! Yes, zero. I quickly checked my Google Analytics, something I don't do very often, and to my surprise, found a steady decline in the number of visits to my site.

It would appear I have neglected two things, my author platform and the SEO of said platform. Of course, one can never be totally sure of why book sales decline (in this case a decline over sales during the past month compared to the previous two years of the same month), but I have to consider there might be a real connection.

In viewing the audit results, it would appear I have a lot more to learn. There are quite a few new items that are now part of the SEO process. At least they are new to me.

I had planned on taking a break from writing new books for an extended period of time. It looks like that break from writing will now be spent working on rebuilding my author platform. At least it will be new and different and as they say change is as good as a vacation.

If you have a blog, website, or other successful online author platform, don't make the mistake I did and fail to monitor your SEO. It takes so much hard work to build a presence and develop a following that you don't want to waste the time and effort through neglect.

Anyone who has any similar experiences and has managed to bounce back, I would greatly appreciate it if you would share your experiences with the readers of this blog by commenting.

Creating an Author Platform Using Blogger or WordPress

Self-published authors are responsible for the entire marketing effort for each book that is published by the author. This includes building an audience for the book, promoting the book, and setting the stage for the next book.

The internet has made this task, commonly referred to as building an author platform, vastly easier with Social Media and Blogs. Social media such as Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook are not the focus of this post.

Two commonly used free blogging platforms are available for authors are Google's Blogger and the open source Word Press blog. Both of these have pros and cons and some thought needs to be used before selecting which platform to use.  

Note: It would be great if any author who has experience with either of both of these blogging platforms would share your experiences and thoughts on the subject in the comments section for this post.

I currently have four blogs I maintain and post to regularly. Two of the four blogs are hosted on Google's Blogger and the other two are "self-hosted" and utilize Word Press to run the blog. This blog, The Self-Publisher's Notebook is more for fun and a break from the "serious" blogs I write that are truly designed to serve as author platforms.  

The Everything Iggy (Italian Greyhound) Blog is meant to serve as an outlet for my passion for this breed of dogs and to experiment with different ideas for promoting a blog, generating traffic and eventually monetizing. Since I view this blog as having a two fold purpose, fun and experimentation, if I make a really big error with the blog, it's fine. It is meant to be a place to experiment and learn as well as a place to blog about Italian Greyhounds.

The Self-Publisher's Notebook is my first, and longest running blog. While I have two short books on self-publishing, it is not my focus from a business perspective. I just really enjoy writing this blog and sharing what I have learned, mostly from my mistakes, with other authors who self-publish.

I like the Blogger platform. It has been easy for a non-techie like myself to learn how to use, move things around and experiment with its features. This has been a huge plus for me.

The cons are I don't have control over the blog, its hosting or if the features change. Within the available framework, there are limits in how much I can adapt the format to my own purposes. There is a limit to how much I can customize the blog and I cannot use the platform for a true, traditional website. Without extensive programing skills, there is a limit to how much I can change the appearance of a Blogger template.

The WordPress blogging platform is free and open source. I am glad I started with the Blogger platform before moving on to a WordPress blog. While not difficult to use, it was a bit more daunting to me to attempt to set up. I still have a lot to learn and so far it has all been by trial and error. When I have needed to have something done right and quickly, I have paid good money to have the changes made to the WordPress blogs.

Also, if you choose the WordPress route, you really need to self-host your blog which will cost you some money, though good web hosting can be found for a low cost.

What do I like about WordPress? It can be adapted in so many ways. It can be used as a website. It can be used as an e-commerce site. It can do everything Blogger can do and so much more.

Will I start any more blogs using Blogger? Probably not. In fact, I have all I can handle in terms of posting regularly on the blogs I have. One of the drawbacks of blogging is it takes time away from writing (thus the need to re-purpose your blog posts into books).

Which blog platform gets my nod for an author looking to start working to create a an author platform?  Knowing what I know now, WordPress, simply because it is more flexible and allows for expansion into a full-fledged working website.

But Blogger is a good way to start as well to get your feet wet. If you start with Blogger and later decide to convert to a WordPress blog, you can transfer all of your own posts from a Blogger platform to a WordPress platform. You will need to own the domain name, which is a good idea regardless of which blogging platform you start with.

As with anything, think about what you need and want from a long term perspective and a short term perspective. Both platforms have their pluses and minuses and I cannot say I have covered all of the pros and cons of either platform.

If any authors who use more experience with either of these platforms would like to weigh in on this topic, please do so in the comment section.

Blogs versus Social Media - More Change for Self-Publishers?

Things change quickly these days as a result of technology. Sometimes I think changes happens too fast and those who bring about the changes often don't stop to ask the question "should I/we" but rather only as the question "can I do this?" I am fairly certain I am not the first, nor will I be the last individual in history to ponder this seeming need for incessant change.

My daughters don't use their cell phones to make phone calls. When I call them on their cell phones, they get annoyed and suggest I send them a text message instead. My daughters created a Facebook account for me. Not that I use it a lot, they just like to use it to their advantage when playing the various games on Facebook. Still, a lot of old friends, students and teammates have contacted me as a result.

Blogs were supposed to be the media of communicating and one of the best ways to build an author platform. Now its Facebook, Twitter and who knows what tomorrow.

The problem with Facebook, Twitter and the other social media as far as I am concerned is I have to learn to use it. Well, that and I find it almost impossible to learn anything of real value or that requires in depth information to understand unless it is on a blog.

Blogs seem like a much better method of sharing information. So do websites that provide detailed content. Yet the ever present need for instant gratification seems to be heading us towards social media such as Twitter. Time will tell. I may even learn to speak and read "text" and other new languages in my ever increasing efforts to promote my books, share information and just communicate with my daughters. Fortunately, my son is even more resistant to learning the new social media than I am so I will always have one person I can communicate with. My wife, she can communicate fluently with our daughters.

What has this new media to do with self-publishing? The internet has been a huge boon for authors who self-publish. It allows authors to market their books, build an audience for their book and to sell more books than ever before via on-line book retailers such as Amazon. If there was not enough for an author to do as a self-publisher, it seems it is now necessary to keep up with the latest method of instant internet communication as well.