How does J.A. Konrath self-promote?
Writer Unboxed has a lovely post from author J.A. Konrath on self-promotion. Of course, I was most interested in what he has to say about websites, and I wasn’t disappointed:
2. Provide Internet Content. People are looking for two things on the net; information and entertainment. They aren’t looking for advertising.
If your website or blog is just a big commercial, it will be ignored.
But if it offers, for free, compelling and constantly updated content, surfers will find you. Even more importantly, they’ll find you through the content, not through your name. Anyone who already knows you can find you on the world wide web–that’s not a victory. Your goal is to get people to find you when they’re looking for something else.
Yes! This sounds tricky, but it’s not too hard. Consider the first item on Konrath’s list, writing short stories. What do you do after the story comes out? If your contract allows, post it online! Now, when people are looking for an urban fantasy story featuring trolls or this year’s Hugo-nominated stories, or what have you, they find you.
Konrath himself accomplishes this goal by blogging extensively about self-promotion, and writers of all sorts find his site that way.
Post your short fiction. Blog about something. Give people something to find, and something they can link to.
3. Link. The more people you can trade links with, the higher your Google ranking, the easier it is for folks to discover you.
This is what made Google better than other search engines: instead of just indexing each site independently, it views them in the context of all other websites. Your content is evaluated not just on its own merits, but its credibility with other sites is taken into consideration. How? In the way those sites link to yours.
The simplest way to get linky is to create a blogroll. However, Google loves sites that are timely and frequently updated. Even better than the blogroll link is the link within a blog post (like the ones that kicked off this entry).
Konrath has summed up the two-step process of establishing a successful website: post things that people want to link to, and link to other interesting sites.