Caveat: I’m guilty of this myself!

You likely have an “About Me” or “About Our Company” or “About Us” page on your website. And you certainly have a thumbnail image that you use for your social media profiles (if you’re not using a logo or brand). Occasionally you might be asked to be interviewed on a blog, or an article may be written referencing you. In each of these circumstances, you may want a photo of yourself displayed. In a physically disconnected world, where many of your networks and connections are made online, it’s more important than ever for people to sense your authenticity and your personality.

And you don’t want a terribly lit & untouched-up photo of yourself taken at a friend’s wedding, or a snapshot of your vacation to Costa Rica to be the way you represent yourself to the world via your business. I once had a client who wanted to use a photo of himself at an event where he was clearly snozzled – yikes!

If it’s your personal Facebook profile and you regularly update it to show something recent & cute, that’s one thing, if it’s a headshot of you on the website of your business, that’s another thing entirely. This isn’t to say it needs to be stuffy, or nostalgic for Sears photo shoots circa 1981… you want it to reference your personality and that of your business. Read on to learn more about how to make headshots work for you, and see some great examples…

User Experience comprises many aspects of a website, including the navigation, the content, the design, and the staying power.  While there are some blanket rules for web usability (from Wikipedia)…

1. Present information to your users in a clear and concise way.
2. Remove any ambiguity regarding the consequences of an action e.g. clicking on delete/remove/purchase.
3. Organize your content so that it’s obvious how to use the site.

…there are also specific usability & user experience guidelines for each web niche, including author and book websites.  Having designed many author and book websites, and tracked analytics to determine design success, here are some guidelines I’ve come up with that help create a great user experience for author and book website:  Read on to learn about usability and user experience tips for author and book websites…

We all know how it’s important to make meaningful connections with your clients and/or customers. One of the ways you can do this is by sharing with them not only through Twitter and Facebook, but also through YouTube and Flickr. Your brand is an extension of your personality, so use the great tools out there that help you bring it to life!

Putting a face and a voice to a name brings an instant connection that may not have been there previously. It also gives you the chance to share goings-on in a way that enhances your customer’s experience…

For example, if you’re opening a restaurant, add photos and videos of the process of creating the venue to your blog posts – or even create just a photo-blog as a way to start building publicity. People are often invested in and excited about what you’re doing well before they set foot in the door. Or, if you’re building a small business around dog training, offer up some free video tidbits of you and your pup in action. Be creative! If you’re reluctant to be the star of the show, collaborate with someone else – or keep yourself behind the camera. There’s no right or wrong way to go about it.

Bringing your business to life like this can make it, and you, much more approachable & lowers the bar for initial customer contact. It also allows you to spread awareness to audiences who might not otherwise have discovered your offering. With user bases in the millions, using targeted tags and linking back to your website on YouTube & Flickr is fantastic way to bring a new audience to your offering.

There are a few things to keep in mind when writing website content:

1. Keep it short: Website readers are impatient, so they scan website content – it’s often too much work to really “read” on the web & there are so many sources of information that people will find another source if yours doesn’t immediately deliver. Also, because of the nature of the medium people read more slowly and avoid large blocks of text. You can deliver a longer message below the fold or on other pages of your site, but avoid information overload on landing pages.

Read on for more tips on writing website content . . .

First impressions are often made online today, and your online identity is your public face to the world. In addition to doing a Google search on your own name to find out what exists about you, setting up one or more Google Alerts so that you can thank the source and rebroadcast what was said about you (or manage it if it’s not positive), tracking what’s said about you and/or your products on social media outlets, and making sure you own a domain that maps to your name, you need to think strategically about what you want your online identity to be. Choosing an identity doesn’t mean you’re locked into it forever, or that you can’t branch out, but it does give you a starting point to establish yourself when you’re just starting out or are working to establish your brand.

Recently I’ve worked on projects for clients who happily have their hands in multiple pies. For example, they might have a consulting business and also be an author. Ideally these projects start with an established web presence for the consulting business, which can then be leveraged for marketing the related book – and a new site can be created specifically for marketing and selling the book. But what if the book came first? And what if a single person consults about Topic A, and writes books about Topic B? What to do then?

Read more about creating and managing your online brand…

In addition to interacting with your site visitors through comments on your blog posts and pages, there are a handful of other simple things you can implement on your website that will engage your readership:

• Polls. Polls are a way for your readership to feel involved in your story – they allow a reader’s voice to be heard, however anonymously, but are also a great tool for finding out more of what your readership wants from your site. Rather than wonder if your readership wants more content about subject “x” – either mine your data to find out whether it’s successful, or just ask them through a poll. There are a number of free, simple, poll generators, but PollDaddy is a great place to start.
• Photos. Just like you can use a Flickr RSS feed to place your own photos on your blog via tags, you can invite other people to tag their photos with a keyword you will use to display photos on your blog. This is a great way to invite audience participation whether it’s around creating something, going somewhere, or any number of common experiences. If you’re concerned that people might take advantage, then create a Flickr group where you approve membership to add photos to the group, then base your feed on the group’s content. Photos are a great way to feel connected to an audience, and videos as well!
• Competitions. Ask your readers to come up with the best way to do something, then give an award for the best answer/submission. It doesn’t have to be a big giveaway – people love to get stuff for free, no matter how small, and if a competition brings you a large audience, it’s well worth the investment. Your giveaway could be some free time with you if you’re a consultant, or a copy of your book if you’re an author, or a coffee mug with your logo on it no matter who you are.

You’ve likely heard that people don’t read on the web, they scan – but what does that mean? Does that mean that you can’t have more than a few words at a time on your site? Well, yes & no. It means that while people are *looking for something* they’re scanning. And, most of the time, people are looking for something when they’re surfing the internet. For this reason, writing website content isn’t the same as writing prose. Writing for websites, and leveraging targeted keywords while you’re doing it, takes a little practice & finesse, but isn’t out of anyone’s reach. Try to go about it as if you were the visiting your site. This may be the first time a visitor arrive at your site & they’re trying to figure out if they’re in the right place and if they want to spend more time there – what will help that person feel confident? It also might be that they know they’re in the right place but are looking for a particular type of information – what will help them get to it? The solution is a mixture of drawing the right people to your site using targeted keywords, keeping them there by telling them right away what you’re offering to them, and then giving them easy/clear access to the information they need.

Read on to find out how to feature your site’s keywords and content to keep your site visitors engaged…

You’ve likely heard about landing pages, but just in case you haven’t, or were wondering about what they’re for & how they might work for you, this post will outline what they’re for, what they do, and how to make them work for you.

Read on…

If you’re self-publishing (and even if you’re not), chances are that you want to make sure people can buy your book from your website.  It only makes sense to convert visitors into sales.  Although you never sell your book to your audience you always want to offer your product up for sale.  You’ll want to start by providing purchasing options for the most popular online book retailers: Amazon.com & BarnesandNoble.com.  Unsuprisingly, they’ll take a big cut of the price of the book, but will bring you a huge audience.  If you want to take your sales to the next level, there’s the Amazon.com Associates Program – through this free service, you can earn up to 15% in referrals for products sold on Amazon.com… namely, your book.

But what if you want to sell your book yourself? You don’t need to make a big investment in a shopping cart service, or even spend your days waiting in line at the USPS -  you can easily set yourself up with a PayPal Merchant account, create a quick button for purchasing your book to put on your website, set your shipping preferences, and off you go!  100% of the sales of books sold on your website is profit to you (minus any printing costs of course) — so even if you can’t compete with Amazon.com on convenience, you can beat them on price.  If you sell your book yourself, offer a discount (say, 10%) off of Amazon’s cost & offer free shipping, you’re providing a huge incentive to your audience while still making much more money per sale than books sold through Amazon.com.  You can setup a channel for shipping through your distributor, or, if you’re willing to do the shipping yourself, you can also offer the incentive of a signed copy.

So, how do you bring people to this page where you’re offering your book for sale? You tell as many people as you can about it!  You can provide a link as part of a promotion for a social organization, a club, a team, an event…  you can participate in affiliate marketing (especially with those who enjoy great success), or buy ad-space on popular blogs that target your readership. Additionally, you can offer your book as a give-away in a contest for a popular podcast related to your genre, or as part of a blog-promotion.   Each of these gives you the chance to link back to your book purchase page.

So get out there and get selling!

When working with authors, there isn’t usually a dearth of material for their website…  they’ve usually already come up with some focused content about their book(s) and themselves for the jacket if nothing else.  So, if you’re an author, how do you choose and optimize content for your website to make sure it’s working for you?  I’ve written about tips to help drive traffic to book and author websites, but here’s the low-down on how to feature your website’s content in the best light:

1. Keep it focused. Think about the person you want visiting your website, and consider why they’re there.  What do they want to know?  The mantra for solid content design is, “who we are, what we do, let us help you” – so make sure your intro text provides that in elevator pitch format.  Remember, people aren’t *reading* websites, they’re scanning them.  You want both the design and the text to convey what your website is for and what your website does IMMEDIATELY.
2. Keep it fresh. Websites aren’t something that’s done once and then forgotten about.  They need to be optimized based on traffic/visitor data, new technologies that will help your users, your evolving business, or even just keeping the design from looking stale.  The content for your site should be working for you!  To find out if it is, make sure you’re regularly checking your site stats.  If some text you poured your heart into isn’t driving traffic to the page that offers your product/service, change it!  Check out your successful competition — how have they crafted their message?
3. Don’t limit it to just your website.  Your blog, or, even better, other people’s blogs are a great way to feature your content.  And not just blogs, but article websites (like ezinearticles.com) allow you to provide meaningful content for your area of expertise…  you can do this by creating unique articles, leaving helpful comments, and also by becoming a guest blogger.  This method allows you to add value outside of the boundaries of your own website, create some authority and legitimacy on the web, and link back to your website.
4. Keep it interesting. If you’re just reiterating exactly what people can find elsewhere about your book or about you, there’s no reason for them to stay on your site.  You want to add value by offering up content that will make your readership feel like they’re connecting with you.  This might mean photos of your book signings, videos or podcasts of you doing an interview, some info about your current (but-not-yet-released) project, or a little behind-the-scenes text about your book(s) or process.

So, get out there and let your content shine!