[Video] 5 Reasons Wordpress Should Be Your Author Website Platform

This is a guest post from Russ Henneberry. Russ writes, speaks, consults and executes on Internet marketing strategies that make mighty profits for tiny businesses. You can read Russ's Internet marketing blog here or learn more about his Wordpress Website Design here.

Growing an author's platform starts with a powerful and simple to use website platform. It is the "hub" of activity for you as an author. This 8-minute video and the article below it details 5 reasons Wordpress should be your author's platform.


Reason 1 - Wordpress is Flexible If you need to make a change to the text, images, video, etc., on your Website you will want to be able to make those changes yourself. Wordpress is the most intuitive and user-friendly platform available. In addition to making edits, you will also want to be adding new pages, articles, videos, and images to your Website. A living and breathing Website that is growing over time will build a community around you and your work.

Reason 2 - Wordpress is Discoverable Google is a powerhouse, and you can grow your author's platform by taking advantage of the traffic that Google will send your way. Wordpress makes it easy for both humans and search engines like Google to "discover" the content of your Website.

Reason 3 - Wordpress is Shareable The real power of the Internet is the remarkable speed and efficiency with which we can share things of interest and value to us. Wordpress is able to add the functionality needed to spread your message across the Web.

Reason 4 - Wordpress is Interactive As an author, you will want your fans to be able to interact with you and with each other. Wordpress can be configured to be as interactive as you want it to be with commenting, voting, surveys, forums, and more.

Reason 5 - Wordpress can be Automated When you add new articles, videos, and images to your Website you will want to let the members of your social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) know that you have something with which to interact or share. Wordpress can automate the "pushing" of this new content to your social networks. Learn more about Wordpress Web Design here.

No substitute for "face time"

The Internet is a fabulous connector of people. The world truly does become smaller when total strangers can view a video or Google a phrase and find the perfect person to provide just the service they need. My business would not exist without the World Wide Web. My only regret is that I don't have enough to time to surf all of the Web and social networking sites I'd like to.

My clients come from everywhere, and quite often our relationships are restricted to e-mail and phone calls. Despite the limitations of electronic communications, we do become close. This past weekend, however, I was reminded of how important it is meet my authors in person. It is a truly magical experience after all the disembodied conversations we have shared.

Rob (yes, that's his real name) and I met for the first time last Friday when I picked him up from the airport. We greeted each other like long-lost relatives and spent the weekend sharing meals, great conversation, and long hours of working on his book. I taught a writing class on Monday night, and Rob graciously agreed to share his experiences as a new author with my students.

They were enchanted. I could have explained for weeks on end what Rob conveyed in one short hour. No amount of theory is as real or convincing as hearing someone share what he has learned, often the hard way, on his way to becoming a published author.

In today's world, people—especially young people—spend a disproportionate amount of time talking to each other over the airwaves. They may think that's real communication, but from the perspective of someone who grew up having to share a phone with my whole family, it is a poor substitute for standing in the same space and actually looking at the person I'm talking to.

(Not So) Secrets of a Great Website

After years of having what is known as a “billboard in the middle of the Sahara desert”—a website nobody ever saw—I finally did something right. I created a website that does what it’s supposed to do: inform, educate, help, and attract people. I certainly would never claim to have done this alone. I had a great deal of help on the technical and marketing side from an expert who brought me from dark ages into the 21st century.

Change takes place on the Internet faster than the speed of DSL, sound, or light. I am not technologically gifted, to say the least. Nothing about computers, the WWW, RSS, SEO, web design, blogging, podcasting, tweeting, getting around Amazon, or even writing on someone’s wall in FaceBook comes naturally to me. It is not intuitive; it is learned. Then, as soon as I learn something, it becomes obsolete; and I have to learn something newer, more sophisticated, and usually more complicated. It’s a daily battle, but a necessary one if I am to remain competitive in my field.

My website could certainly use improvement, I know. Yet, bells and whistles don’t seem to be the criteria Web surfers demand. The question is what is it that garners good ratings in the search engines; encourages casual visitors to click on links and read articles; e-mail with questions about book coaching, ghost writing, and editing; sign up for a newsletter; or add a book to their shopping carts.

Here are some of the lessons I have learned along the way. An effective website should do the following:

1. Have a clear, consistent theme.
Does your site have a single identifiable message? Will readers get it immediately or feel confused by too much variety? Web surfers have short attentions spans. If they are overwhelmed, they will move on.

2. Be easy to find.
Search engines find your site in many ways, but the most important is keywords. If you want Google or Yahoo to know you can help write or publish books, your site should be liberally sprinkled with keywords, or clues, that lead them right to you.

3. Be easy to get around once someone finds it.
Nothing is as frustrating as being lost in a sea of words and pictures and having no idea how to find the information you want. Your website should not be a scavenger hunt; it should be a transparent map that takes you directly to what you’re looking for.

4. Make sure your links work.
Almost as frustrating as being confused about content is, knowing exactly where you are and where you want to go, clicking on an obvious link, and finding there is no such page, or you ended up on the wrong one. Check your links often.

5. Convey your professionalism, trustworthiness, and credibility.
What does your website say about you? Of course, you would like it to shout out that you are good at what you do, you have experience and expertise, you are the expert the reader has been looking for. How do you do that without actually saying all those things? There is a rule in creative writing classes: show; don’t tell. Make that your mantra.

6. Establish a relationship with the reader.
Web 2.0 is all about relationships. It is no longer a one-way monologue; it is now a dialogue between you and your visitor. Your website is a way to say, “Hi, I’m __________. Let’s get to know each other. What interests you? How can I help? Let’s interact.”

7. Answer the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) question.
This should not be news to you: Your website is not about you; it is about your readers. What do they need and will they find it here? What is the benefit in terms of information, entertainment, enlightenment, or take-aways? Why should they hang around a while?

8. Add new features or update information frequently.
Think about yesterday’s newspaper. It may still have uses, but keeping you up to date on the latest news isn’t one of them. Things are happening in the world and in cyberspace. “Inquiring minds want to know.” So does Google, which thrives on new material.

9. Be packed with useful information.
The Web is the world’s biggest library, the encyclopedia of everything you could possibly want to know. When you stop to think about it, that’s pretty amazing. So, where do you and your little website fit into that enormous picture? You are a source of information someone is looking for. It’s up to you to provide as much as you can.

10. Give stuff away FREE.
Don’t hide your light under a bushel. Let it shine. Then, offer it to your reader. You will make a friend or at least a grateful Web surfer who will return. You cannot give away too much. You know more than you think you know. What good is it if you don’t share it?

11. Avoid being an obvious commercial for products or service.
Few things are more annoying than searching for information and finding, instead, one long ad for something to buy—a training program, a series of videos, books, tricks on how to increase traffic to your blog … you get the idea. These sites have lost sight of rules and 9. Be packed with useful information and 10. Give stuff away FREE.

I didn't learn these common sense rules early or easily. I read them; I heard them; I observed them on other people's websites; and, often, people gave them away for FREE. What a concept.

Follow the Bouncing E-mail

My daughters have been complaining about not receiving my e-mail attachments. Now, they tell me they are not even receiving my e-mails. They have a lot of company. My e-mails are bouncing back faster than I can hit “send” — well, my emails to anyone@charter.net, anyway. I had no idea how many people are on Charter. This is not good.

Nothing that involves the Internet is easy. It always has multiple steps, and this is no exception. I start by calling Charter, who tells me, “It’s not our fault. If your e-mail comes from your website, you will have to call your website host.” My website host says they can’t find anything wrong on their end; I should call Charter again. This gives me an instant stomachache.

Being technologically advanced, Charter has a female computer that tries to read my voice by asking me ridiculous questions to which there are no correct answers. Eventually, I give up and say “representative.” Wrong word. How about “operator”? Still wrong. “Agent?” Bingo.

Next step: the endless wait. Despite the fact that my call is important to them, I go into a loop that plays endless commercials for Charter, until a human being finally shows up and asks me for my PIN, which I don’t know. Somehow, he accepts one of the numbers I give him and tries to identify my problem. The agent gives up, says he will connect me with a supervisor, and puts me on perma-hold. The supervisor does not appear. Eventually, I am cut off.

This goes on for a while until I have a tantrum and actually get to speak to a real, live supervisor. I try to explain that all of my e-mails are coming back with an error message that indicates I’m sending SPAM. He suggests I forward the offending message (which one?) to postmaster@charter.net. "How can I do that if I can’t get through to Charter?" I ask. He prevails upon me to try. My e-mail bounces back. He gives me his private e-mail address and finally deduces that Charter doesn’t like my e-mail signature with its little ghost and links to my website, blogs, and twitter.

"Do my daughters really need my signature?" he asks. "Can I write the postmaster@charter.net from another e-mail address?" These suggestions are followed by a serious explanation of SPAM with which I am quite familiar, since a lot of it gets through, although, of course, not my little ghost logo or twitter link.

That whole procedure (four phone calls) takes over an hour, and I still haven’t begun to implement the supervisor’s multiple solutions. At the moment, I am too tired to even try. I only hope no one from Charter is expecting a reply to his or her e-mail message before tomorrow, or, perhaps, ever.

Mac User from Hell

The mother of all storms blew through St. Louis yesterday. It knocked down power lines, closed highways, left whole blocks dark, and interrupted my Internet access. You would think I would have figured out when my electricity went off that, perhaps, just perhaps, when I rebooted and couldn’t connect to my website, e-mail, or iDisk (my cyber backup system up there in the Apple’s private cloud), that it might have had something do with cable being knocked out by the storm. I believe the appropriate word here is Duh!

But, no; I just went crazy unplugging and replugging little black boxes, running around the Apple/MobileMe website to no avail (you can only get there on Safari, not on Firefox), and calling every Apple tech supportnumber on my list. Thank God, these guys are all hired for their patience because I am the Mac user from hell. Everything that goes wrong pitches me into panic mode. Ohmygod, __________ isn’t working. I think I’ll go ballistic. (Should one confess to such things on her blog? Well, I’m probably not alone in this form of insanity.)

The more little gadgets and capabilities I own, the worse it gets. Once upon a time, I had a little box called a Mac SE, which gave way to ever bigger boxes and then back down in size to just a monitor and then to even smaller MacBooks. The littlest Macs are iPhones and iTouch/iPods, but I haven’t gone there yet. There’s no telling what could go wrong with something I can hold in my hand.

So, after much teeth gnashing and nail biting, my cable is back up, my Internet connections are working, my junk mail box is full again, and my iDisk is back in its cloud. What more could one ask, except maybe for the sun to shine on a weekend, since it is June; and, at this rate, I will never get a tan. But I digress.

Really, at the moment, until the next storm, it’s all good.

Technology Overload

We have a saying in our family: The one who dies with the most toys wins. Until recently, I didn’t even think I was a competitor; now, I’m sure I’m going to win.

It started with the new external hard drive, which I had to have because it spoke two languages: Mac and PC. Then, there was the ergonomic keyboard for the PC, since my fingers seem incapable of negotiating a standard laptop keyboard. And, of course, I had to have a universal wireless mouse of my own, despite the fact that there were mice in every drawer of every desk in two states.

The entire time I was in Florida, every time I made or received a phone call on my cell phone, I had to go outside to talk because my phone didn’t seem to like the house, especially the kitchen. My earpiece wouldn’t work at all, so I wore out my left ear smashing the phone up against it. Leslie finally took pity on me and gave me her old cell phone, but then she had to take me to the Sprint store to switch my phone number and contact list. I was happy as a clam, but what did I know? Apparently, a truly modern cell phone user is half naked without a Bluetooth permanently attached to his or her ear. Need I say more?

By now, three quarters of the world knows the saga of my new laptop. Really, it seemed perfect until I realized how incomplete I felt not being able to send e-mail or access the Internet while sitting in bed, which is about five feet away from my desk. “Why do you need wireless when you live in a closet?” Terry asked. My condo may be small, but it is not a closet. Besides, no one really needs wireless. It’s like diamonds. People have been known to live all their lives without diamonds. But the question is, are they really happy?

Such reasoning immediately sent me to Best Buy to inquire about a wireless modem. The inquiry led to the purchase, which led to the attempted installation, which led to the frustration, which led a totally unintelligible conversation with someone in India. I don’t know what he said, but it doesn’t matter because I am connected and can access the Internet from every room. What more could I possibly want, except maybe to figure out why I still can’t send and e-mail from any room?