5 Key Components of an Awesome Author Website

Every author website needs key components to make it effective, not only for readers, but also for Google to find and index properly. In this episode, Chris and Gena talk about the 5 most important items for YOUR website.

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Episode 3 transcript

[00:00:01].510] - Chris
Hello. And welcome to the Writing Momentum Podcast. This is Christopher Maselli, and I'm here with my wife, Gena Maselli. How are you doing today, Gena?

[00:00:08].880] - Gena
I'm doing well. I'm glad to be here.

[00:00:10].880] - Chris
It's cold outside, though, isn't it?

[00:00:12].450] - Gena
I know it's a little chilly. We woke up to some white on the ground, and I was still trying to figure out whether it was snow or ice. I think it's ice.

[00:00:21].830] - Chris
That's right. We are in Northern Arizona, and we still get snow and ice up here, so you never know. But there are some things that are consistent. That's what we're going to talk about today because we're going to talk about one of the things that's important when it comes to branding your author brand. And that is five key components of an awesome author website.

[00:00:43].320] - Chris
This is exciting because all authors need to have websites. Just like back in the day, you always had to have your calling cards, right? Your little cards that you'd hand out to people. Remember, we'd print those off from just a printer or something like that, right? Or really old days, they'd go to some print shop to get those made. But today everyone goes to websites. So you've got to have a really good and informative website. So that's what we're going to talk about. So let's just talk about the five key components of which the first one is the Home Page, right? You've got to have a strong Home Page.

[00:01:18].280] - Chris
And you may think, well of course, everyone needs a Home Page. But what we really want to focus on here is that you've got to have a Home Page that is uniquely you. It's got to have your voice on it. You don't just want this to be like that calling card. You want it to be something that shows your personality that shows what you have to offer, what your books are about or what your services are about, if you're a freelance writer. And you wanted to really get that across so that when someone first stops by that website, they realize almost immediately what it is that makes you unique and different.

[00:01:56].740] - Gena
Well, I think what we're really talking about here is we're talking about branding. We're talking about establishing who you are at a glance or with a very quick scan or skim what you're about, what your writing is about. And so this is where I think writers get to have a bit of creativity visually because they can think about what kind of fonts do I want to use? What kind of colors do I want to use? What kind of style do I want it to be?

[00:02:29].080] - Gena
Do I want it to be modern and clean? Do I want it to be warm and homey? What is it that is unique? What picture do I get or do I share with my readers? To the people who come by my website that really identify that this is me and give them a sense of who I am just visually, even before we get into the copy, just visually, what am I about.

[00:02:55].760] - Chris
That's right.

[00:02:56].300] - Chris
Fonts and colors and pictures, whether you're doing. I've known some authors that want to do black and white and others that want to do full, vibrant colors other than others that want to use pictures to make it look very professional, and others that want to make it look very casual. So kind of think about what is the look that you want to have. But it also does come down to the writing, too, because I know when we this last year, we went through a major overhaul with our own website.

[00:03:24].260] - Chris
And one of the key things that we felt like we had to do was after we'd written the whole thing, we realized our personality wasn't coming through. Because we do a lot of funny stuff, right? We like to make it just light hearted and that. There wasn't anything funny about it. It was all just kind of serious, like it was a nice professional site, but there wasn't anything to make anyone connect with us. Right?

[00:03:45].130] - Gena
Right.

[00:03:45].580] - Chris
So we went back through and we went through paragraph by paragraph and said, "Okay, how can we lighten this up, or how can we make it tighter copy," that sort of thing? And that was a major overall.

[00:03:56].110] - Gena
It was. Well, if I could go back to the visual side of that when I was talking about colors, I would encourage people to think beyond even just their website, to their social media. This all is going to work together. But thinking about what kind of... visually, what you want it to look like. And so those colors that you choose for your website, you're going to use those on your social media. You're going to use them. And we're going to talk about that in later episodes, how to bring this all together.

[00:04:27].190] - Gena
So also again with that personal tone, the tone that you want to bring with your writing, of who you are. Do you want it to be funny? Do you want it to be quippy? Do you want it to be serious? Do you want it to be academic? What kind of style do you want to have on your website? And that really should be reflective of you as a writer and as an individual. So if you're writing and just to give, for example, if you're writing historical fiction, that is probably going to have a much different look than if you're an academic nonfiction writer who is writing for a specific niche audience that maybe is on classic cars or on space, I don't know something to do with space and technology.

[00:05:21].950] - Gena
So be thinking about that or people can be thinking about that as they're preparing it.

[00:05:27].580] - Chris
I think what we're going to end up doing is probably breaking every one of these out into their own episodes, because there's a lot we could talk about with the home page. For instance, most people don't scan down a full home page. So what you put near the top is the most important, and there are certain things you want to have near the top, but just know, for the most part, make sure that that home page has some good, strong links on it to where you want them to go, and that it shows that it's uniquely you.

[00:05:52].600] - Chris
So what's the next page?

[00:05:53].740] - Gena
The next one is the About the Author. And again, this is something that you want it to be a reflection of you. How do you want to portray yourself? How do you want to share this? And just from a writing standpoint, I've definitely seen writers write this in a few different styles, whether it's more like a journalistic style or whether it's a personal style—third person versus first person. I've seen it both ways, and it really depends on who the audience is, how you want to portray yourself, how you want to position yourself.

[00:06:37].150] - Chris
So I recommend making this just around a couple of short paragraphs that are about you. And the reason why is because if you have agents and editors who are also looking at this page, you want them to get a kind of a bird's eye overview of who you are. Put some of your credentials in there. This is the kind of thing you might include on a proposal. It's the same copy you can use. And I also recommend having some statistics on there, and it doesn't have to be in the bio.

[00:07:04].170] - Chris
But we like to put, like, how many books we have sold overall. Because that's something that again, agents and editors look for, or how many people follow you on social media. Those are good types of things that you can put on that page that can give you credibility and get a lot of interest.

[00:07:25].090] - Gena
Well, let me ask you, Chris, what about the author who has not published yet? What would you tell them?

[00:07:31].060] - Chris
So you just leave that portion of right. We talk about this when w we talk about doing proposals. You need to write your bio about the things you have done, not about what you haven't done. So if you haven't had anything published yet, that's okay. Your bio still, though, needs to tie into the book that you're writing. It needs to speak to who you are and what accomplishments you have had. So if you've entered a writing contest, put that on there. If you are writing a children's book and you regularly work with children, put that in there. So it's anything that's relevant to who you are and what you're writing. Of course, if you do get publishing credentials, of course, you want to put that in there, because that is just good overall to show. But if you don't have them, that's okay. Play to your strengths, don't play to your weakness.

[00:08:21].640] - Gena
Well, and I think what you just said there about being relevant is important. There are times when we get excited about other things that we've done. Maybe you're a top salesperson in your field, but you know what? If you're writing a children's book, people don't care about the top sales field unless you can write it in such a way that it becomes interesting. It would be more interesting and more applicable to, if you're writing a children's book, to talk about maybe your volunteer work where you're reading to kids at the library, or you're working with a children's youth group or something like that that would be more applicable. So this is not your resume. This is something that is speaking to your work as a writer.

[00:09:13].150] - Chris
That's right. Go ahead and include a link to your LinkedIn profile on that page. That's fine if you want to have a link to your resume, but this is not the resume itself. That goes on LinkedIn. All right.

[00:09:23].750] - Chris
The third page. So you've got your home page, your About the Author page. You also need a page about your book or about your series of books. And if you have more than one book, you may have more than one of these pages. But for most authors who are starting out, you want to have at least one page there about the book. What the book is about. I generally would take the copy that's on the back cover of the book, and that's what goes on this page, along with a picture of the book. Maybe some testimonies from people who have reviewed it. Put their testimonials right on there. And then if you've got a buy link, you might as well put that on there. If you have a link, make it go directly to Amazon. If you're selling it there, or even if you're self published, you can make it go directly there or a way for them to purchase it.

[00:10:09].650] - Gena
Next is a Contact Page. This is how people can contact you. I wouldn't put my personal phone number on there, but you could put a contact page where people may be a form that people can fill out that they can send you an email. That's just a simple way for people to ask questions and get the conversation started.

[00:10:31].630] - Chris
Yeah, the form is a really good idea, because if you post your email on there and I see authors do this, you're just inviting spam to your inbox. Whereas if you put a contact form, the website has a way of taking whatever someone fills out on that form, and it sends it to you by email. And then if you want to respond, you can. It keeps you from just getting a bunch of spam. And usually those forms have some anti-spam measures in them. So even the bots that do come by and fill out a form, it can block most of those. So definitely include that.

[00:11:05].930] - Chris
Some authors will have their media kit. They might put on that page, too. If you are doing podcasts and interviews and that sort of thing. If not just go ahead and just have a contact form where people can go ahead and write you a note in case they want to have you come and speak somewhere.

[00:11:21].350] - Gena
And then here's the next one that's really important is the lead magnet. So, Chris, talk about what a lead magnet is real briefly. Now, this is a topic we're going to go into a lot more detail on in a later episode. But what is a lead magnet? Because I think there's a lot of people that just don't know.

[00:11:41].320] - Chris
Yeah. So this is the one item I see left off of most author websites. They've got their homepage. They've got about them. They've got about their book, they've got a way to contact and that's it. They don't have the lead magnet. So a lead magnet is a short piece of content, and that's key. It's short piece of content that is valuable content that someone will give you their email address in order to receive. So, for instance, it might be a free short story based on your book.

[00:12:14].290] - Chris
It's a complete piece of content. This is not the first chapter of your book. No one wants an incomplete piece of content. They want a complete one. They also don't want to just sign up for your newsletter, right? No one wants to do that because they think they're going to get spammed. So it needs to be a piece of valuable content, something that they can download and that they're willing to exchange their email address for. So, for instance, on Writing Momentum, our website, we have a free PDF that we give away called How to Get Noticed by Agents, Editors, and Readers. If you go to writing.fyi/getnoticed, you will find the page for that. And if you'll put in your email address, we'll send you that PDF. That allows us to build our email list with people who are raising their hands and saying, "Yes, I'm interested in what you have to offer." So I encourage you to spend some time figuring out what can you give away. Is there a PDF? Is there a quiz you can have people take? And then they put in their email to get the answer to the quiz.

[00:13:17].390] - Chris
We have a friend who is an author, and she writes books that take place in small towns. There's a chef in the town. So she'll give away recipes that the chef has created. That's a valuable piece of content to people who are readers of hers. They like that sort of thing. So they're willing to give up their email address for that. So think about what could you get someone to give their email address for? Because your email list is one of the most valuable things that you have as an author. So you want to be building that.

[00:13:48].090] - Gena
Yeah. Even if you don't have your book published yet, you can create some piece of content for people who maybe they started following you through social media or maybe you have entered into some writing contests and so people have seen some of your work there. Or maybe you've actually had your work appear in some online space. This is a way for people who are interested in what you have to say, to get a little more information. But it's also a way for in the future for you to contact them with new releases. New releases.

[00:14:24].670] - Gena
And when I say new releases, if you have a blog, (we'll talk about that in a minute), if you have a blog, this is a way for you to reach out to them and let them know, "Hey, I've got something new." Or when your book does come out for you to say, "Hey, I'm just letting you know my book has hit the bookshelves and be sure to check it out. Here's a link to it. So this is a valuable element that every author's website needs to include, and many don't.

[00:14:56].570] - Chris
Yeah. Don't forget to do that lead magnet. Now you may have noticed we've already gone through five key components there. What we haven't touched on is the blog that Gena just mentioned, and the reason for that is because it's not really a key component. In fact, it shouldn't be on your website if you cannot keep it up. A blog is awesome for getting Google interested in your website so people can find the website for having keywords for building conversations. It's great if it's consistent. If you're posting on it like every week great. Have a blog. But if it's inconsistent, if you're not posting on it on a regular basis, it's better to take the blog off because otherwise it shows that it's out of date. So I generally recommend for authors, don't do it unless you're ready to have content on there and otherwise, just wait until you're ready. The more important thing is that email list as opposed to the blog, because it's getting directly into people's email boxes.

[00:15:54].900] - Gena
Yeah. And I would say also with the blog. When I think about doing blogs a lot of times, I think about them in terms of magazine planning. You want to plan ahead. So if you want to do a blog, that's fantastic, but don't just write one and then throw it out there. Think about writing three or four that you're going to drop along. Then you've given yourself a lead time, like a buffer. Yeah. So that when life happens and then keep working ahead so that when life happens, you have a child that gets sick or you get ill, or maybe you go on vacation. It's not like you're trying to scramble to keep up with this. You've already given yourself some time and some lead time. And you know, these blogs, I've already written them ahead of time, and they're going to be dropping every week or twice a week or even every two weeks. Probably at the most. But you can put those out there and know that they're coming.

[00:16:59].110] - Chris
That's right. All right, Gena, we're about out of time. So you go ahead and give us a brief recap of those five pages.

[00:17:03].960] - Gena
Yeah. The five page, these are key components of an awesome author website. First one is your Home Page. The next one is your About the Author. Then About Your Book, a Contact (preferably a form), a Lead Magnet that will somehow get people to give their email addresses to you. And then that 6th one that really is where you want to do if you can keep up with it is a Blog. So those are the five components that every website should have and a sixth one that you could have if you can handle it.

[00:17:46].620] - Chris
That's right. All right. That's episode number three. We hope you've enjoyed the Writing Momentum podcast so far, we're just getting started with all the information that we want to share. Next week, we're going to be talking about what you need to self publish on Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing platform. So if you're wanting to get into self publishing, you're going to want to hear that episode. It's coming next week. Be sure to listen to the episodes we've put out there so far. And if you have any questions, any thoughts, we'd love to hear them. You can go ahead and go WritingMomentum.com. Look for our contact form. Send us a question and we'll try to answer it here on the podcast. Until next time. Please go ahead and review and rate and subscribe to Writing Momentum Podcast. And we hope that your writing has momentum.