Catch the Media Wave – #catchthemediawave

• Take a look at the feedback that integrated health expert and author Joan Borysenko is able to draw from her 10,000 Facebook fans.
• There are 30,000 fans on Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s Facebook page, and she gets many dozens of comments on many of her posts.

Be Part of Existing Communities – #joincommunity

• Red Room – @Redroomdotcom – Where the Writers are – by application, vetted.
• Figment  - Figment was co-founded by Dana Goodyear, a staff writer at The New Yorker, and Jacob Lewis, the former Managing Editor at The New Yorker and Condé Nast Portfolio.
• Authonomy
• Blog Her
• She Writes
• Writer’s Cafe
• Fictionaut - @fictionaut – By invite only.

See additional communities in those started by authors below.

Elaine Orr and Stacey Cochran at Quail Ridge Books, Photo by Anora McGaha

Build Community – #communitybuilding

Building community takes a huge amount of work

• Author Stacey Cochran records video interviews of authors, (see over 200), and he runs the largest writers meetup in the Raleigh Durham North Carolina area, Raleigh Write to Publish
• Author Melissa Foster created not one, but two online communities:
• World Literary Cafe
• The Womens’ Nest
• Author Emily Chand has created a whole publishing and publicity symphony, including a very successful and creative Karmic Chain on Facebook and Twitter.
• Writer Yamina Collins created an online literary magazine that also includes video blogging, Yamina Today.
• Author Anora McGaha created an online literary magazine, Women Writers, Women Books at www.booksbywomen.org with a live Twitter following @womenwriters.

This collection of interesting nuggets about building your platform online is missing the following pieces which will be presented at WriteNow! Writers Conference in Raleigh on April 21, 2012:

1. What is a platform

2. What do you have to do to be ready to develop your platform

3. How do you develop your platform online

—

Anora McGaha, writer, author, micro-publisher, social media manager and trainer, and any number of listed and unlisted roles, skills and activities!

Held in North Raleigh, on the Wake Tech Campus, it was a 40 plus minute drive to get there, and felt like a retreat, an “artist’s date” for a writer. Each time I had been the conference was well-organized, friendly professional volunteers from TAF had thought of everything, and it was like being a VIP.

Lunch was a good boxed lunch. I visited with people I’d met earlier at a few TAF meetings I’d attended, and met new writers. Everytime we meet at a different venue it deepens the relationships. A delightful time, both times.

Last summer (2011), following a talk I gave at the Raleigh Center for Excellence on Twitter for writers and authors, Elaine Klonicki put in a recommendation for me to talk at the 2012 conference and I was invited to talk for 45 minutes at the 2 pm slot on Saturday April 21, 2012.

(See WriteNow! conference brochure here.)

I am also excited that Alison Hill, the author of Media Ready, Media Savvy, a book my micro-publishing company invited her to write and published, will be speaking in the morning at 11:00 am. She has knowledge, experience and ways of seeing and communicating what writers and authors need to know about preparing for media attention. (There’s homework to be done, and it will help!)

I’m going to post another blog post with interesting pieces on building your online platform.

Can your customers see you clearly online?

After three full years of working online, developing websites, monitoring traffic, doing search engine optimization, optimizing social media content and really focusing in on value for clients and my own sites, I keep seeing these recurring mistakes that are costing businesses visibility and income.

1. You don’t have a website. Your online presence is solely through directories that you haven’t claimed.
2. You and your staff aren’t able to update news on your website, because it’s a static website, put up like a brochure, and meant to change no more than once or twice a year.
3. Your website doesn’t answer the basic questions that your customers and community want to and need to know.
4. You put key content that may engage your readers below the fold. Your social media buttons aren’t above the fold. Your blog post titles are at the bottom of the page.
5. You haven’t gotten a Facebook Page, even though you are not restricted by your industry from getting one.
6. You don’t have a direct link to a mapping and directions site on your website, so people can find you with ease.
7. You’re not checking a statistics gathering tool like Google Analytics, or Stat Counter, regularly to see how visitors are moving through your site, to check your bounce rates, and what key words people are using to land on your site.
8. You have social media sites and a blog, but they aren’t readily visible on every page of your site.
9. You don’t have a search field on your site or one that works.
10. You don’t offer multiple ways to get contacted – form, email, phone.
11. You don’t have a blog connected to your website, with links and latest topics viewable on the home page of your site.
12. You haven’t coordinated your online presence with your physical presence, so that there are links between them and they are consistent in messaging and appearance.
13. You’re not building your reputation online by consciously posting multi-media content about genuine quality activities your business is involved in.
14. You’re not monitoring your reputation online by doing frequent searches of your presence online, or by paying for a monitoring service.
15. You aren’t connected to professionals in the field to keep you updated on the latest issues and opportunities for your online presence.
16. You think Twitter isn’t worth your time and are ignoring it.

RSVPs are done through Eventbrite, so we can plan for refreshments.

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Social Media for Business by Martin Brossman and Anora McGaha

I’d heard about it through Carolina Web Consultants, but didn’t learn more until Martin Brossman & Associates stepped up to offer social media services. As one of the associates with Martin Brossman & Associates I’m enjoying getting to learn about Hospice of Wake County, the beneficiary of funds raised through the Big Bad Ball.

Angel Lebak, of Assistant Angel,  is a powerful part of the Social Media team.

It’s a collaborative effort with a lot of great people, and we’re taking the lead on Facebook, Twitter, and a Big Bad Ball for Hospice blog.

About time. There’s a time to make changes. And then there’s the time it takes to make the changes. And the time to squeeze in the time to make the changes. (Did I mention that there’s sometimes no time?)

So if you read this blog post, you’ll know that this site is very new, and shaping up. And still, it will probably give you a quick sense of who Anora McGaha is.