Less on the Website, but More on the Web

That title alludes to what I need to concentrate on next time. I spent alot of time and effort on building a website, and not enough time on web marketing. What do I mean? Read on to see.

I started building a DickHannahWriting website about three years ago. There's a reason I haven't provided a link. It's not done. I started on it ostensibly because I thought I needed one for marketing. Secondarily it went hand-in-hand with a project I was involved with at the company I worked at at that time (here . . . but don't hold me completely accountable, they've let it go to seed a bit it since my departure). It was a decent little website but sadly had even less content than decency. Since that time, I've started several stunningly good revisions, none of which panned out completely. I've since abandoned the project for  as no matter how I organize it, there is always too little content for a complete website. Needless to say the wasted hours on website development over the last couple of years grew and grew and grew.  

I should have spent more time on web marketing. What do I mean by web marketing? I mean those aspects of websites and e-publishing that are tangential but still inherent in so many of the portals where one can find my book. There is the Amazon book description (here), the Amazon author page (here) there is the (still absent) Facebook page on Toe the Line, the Smashwords author page (here) and the Smashwords book description (here) my BookBlogs author page (here) my Linkedin page and my banner ad (see the top banner in this blog).

 I'm not saying that each of these has to necessarily be unique or different, in fact many of them are direct cuts and pastes of one another, but I didn't know about most of them until I started down this path. I should have had them all prepped and ready by the launch of the book.

 The banner ad too has been used far more than I expected. I used it in forums in BookBlogs, I used it for the top of my blog, I used it in LinkedIn, Facebook, etc etc. Guess what? I threw it together at the last minute. I took a couple of features from discarded book covers and plopped them on the ole art board one evening.

 Had I known then what I know now I would have devoted more time to the banner ad and other seemingly less significant web marketing feature and spent less time on the silly website.