What’s More Important: Author Websites or Social Media?

website or social media

In 2013, I observed a conversation on Twitter where a publisher said they didn’t believe in author websites “for a lot of authors”—that social was a better place for authors to spend time from a marketing perspective.

It bothered me, and I ended up writing a blog post about it, exploring why a publisher might think this—rightly or wrongly.

Since then, I’ve taught countless conference sessions and webinars about author platform development, content strategy, marketing and promotion, and long-term best business practices. Hands down, the No. 1 thing I’m questioned about is social media—by the unpublished writers, advanced writers, and well-established career authors. I don’t mind fielding such questions, but I find social media the most difficult topic to teach effectively, and I’ll have a separate post about that tomorrow.

On the flip side, I rarely field questions about author websites, aside from technical ones about what service to use or other fiddly details related to domains, hosting, and WordPress sites. I believe this happens for a few reasons: Website design and development is a more technical area, plus few authors actively engage on their site with readers. It can be something of a “set it and forget it” thing. Who’s really looking at an author website that much anyway, especially one without a blog or active updates?

Meanwhile, everyone you know is likely on Facebook—it has 2 billion users and it’s the No. 1 app in the world. Many visit daily (hourly!).

Yet social media is ephemeral, volatile, and out of your control. The content is visible now, buried tomorrow. Your account could be shut down. You could be limited in who you reach over time. You might have to pay money to get the same level of engagement as a few months or a few years ago. It’s not so great at organic discoverability, meaning it’s hard to get seen by an entirely new audience who doesn’t know you … unless you run ads or you can motivate your friends and followers to share and repost things (make things “go viral” as we once used to say).

But yes, social media is still where most readers spend considerable time, even though it tends to inspire love-hate feelings and remains a primary area of complaint and unhappiness in some people’s lives. But it’s necessary, right?

I may be in the tiny minority of people who happen to think social media isn’t 100% critical for an author’s online presence. Yes, it makes things much more difficult if you refuse to use it, and I don’t like it when writers spurn it out of some kind of literary peacocking—believing that it’s “beneath” them to market themselves on social media.

But effective marketing and promotion (and platform building) does exist beyond and separate from social media. These days, I get more noticeable results from my website and blogging efforts, email newsletters, and in-person networking than I do from social media. Not that I want to give up social media—quite the contrary—but I could walk away from Facebook and still earn a living. Not so with my website—it’s absolutely fundamental.

So I want to make a case for why investing more time in an author website—focusing more on this aspect of your platform, branding, and overall messaging—could have a lasting impact on your brand and reach.

Being more discoverable through search

Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook: these four companies are sometimes referred to as the “four horsemen,” companies that have near total dominion over our digital lives and incomparable, data-driven insights into our behavior. I’m willing to bet that every reader of this blog has a relationship with at least one, if not all, of these companies.

Of these four, authors are well aware of the power of Amazon and Facebook in book marketing and sales. Apple may be an interesting player in the future, but I’m setting them aside for this post. Google is the one that authors tend to ignore or discount, but shouldn’t.

Google controls the search market, as well as a significant portion of the digital advertising market; in terms of its dominance of the latter, it’s rivaled only by Facebook. (Together, the two are considered a “duopoly” in digital advertising.)

If some part of your site or blog ranks well in Google, it can equate to a living, assuming you know how to monetize traffic or have something to sell. This is why so many businesses pay money for search engine optimization; even minor increases in ranking can hugely increase product visibility and a customer base.

Imagine if you write Navy Seal romances, and Google connects your name to the genre. Here’s what the results look like (today, at least):

Navy SEAL romance

See those covers—and see it dominated by one author? Suzanne Brockmann benefits greatly from Google identifying her with this set of keywords. How or why did this happen? It’s likely a combination of things, such as keywords and metadata associated with her books at Amazon, Google, Goodreads, and her website. All together, Google has received a strong signal that ties together “Navy Seal romance” and Brockmann’s books and her author name.

Indie author Derek Murphy has discussed such optimization; in his case, he’s trying to rank for something like “mermaid romance.” Currently, his book is third in search results for that keyword phrase.

You can strengthen your signaling to Google through your author website, blog, social media accounts (particularly Goodreads), and Amazon book description by being consistent in the keywords you use to describe your work. Help connect the dots for Google about who you are and what you write so that it can send the right prospects to you. These are often going to be new readers—readers you didn’t have to advertise or beg for.

What would happen if you not only built a site that strongly associated your author name with your category, genre, or work’s themes, but you also posted content on those themes? Large publishers have spent considerable time and energy in the last few years building out such sites and content. For example, if you try running a search for “Navy Seal romances,” you’ll find a publishers’ website in the results (Heroes & Heartbreakers), featuring a blog post that rounds up titles from Macmillan authors with Navy Seal characters.

Offering the media (and influencers) the official story on you and your work

Anyone who wants to formally review your work, interview you, report on what you’re doing—or just find out more about you—is most likely to Google you and look for your official website. The more professional their purpose, the less likely they are to seek you out on social media. This is especially true for librarians, educators, booksellers, and journalists. You do not want to make these people guess at your official bio or how to contact you. Nor should they have to scroll through dozens of Facebook or Twitter posts to identify your latest book or when it released.

If your website makes a bad impression, these people may decide against coverage or offering you an opportunity. Or they may hesitate because you simply don’t look like you’re serious. (I judge people on their website all the time; I know I shouldn’t for all things in life, but I do. And it affects whom I choose to do business with.)

Here’s a short list of people who ended up at my website, read my bio, and contacted me with an opportunity: the National Endowment for the Arts, National Public Radio, reporters for The New York Times, the National Press Club, the Virginia Quarterly Review (who later hired me full time), and of course nearly every writing conference that’s ever asked me to speak. It’s true that some of these organizations may have first heard about me on social media. But my website builds confidence and gives them a specific way to reach out.

Securing high-quality email newsletter subscribers

About 99% of all my email subscribers are website visitors, which is common with nonfiction authors or those who blog.

Novelists may find that most subscribers come from giveaways, contests, social media, or other opportunities not related to the author website. Still, any reader who ends up at your website, and then subscribes to your newsletter, is likely to be among your most high-quality fans, especially if you didn’t have to bribe them to join.

Also, at your website you’re better able to run A/B tests on email sign-up forms or pop-ups, and see what marketing copy or what combination of copy/image/giveaway results in the highest rate of sign ups. You can use this knowledge in other places and contexts.

Understanding what social media use is effective

If you don’t have Google Analytics installed on your website (to analyze your site traffic), that’s your homework today. Do it. It’s free. And even if you can’t interpret the data, eventually one day, when you can, you’ll be glad you installed it long ago. That’s because Google Analytics can’t see into your past traffic; it can only count forward from the day it’s installed.

Analytics will show you how social media affects your site traffic, and what sites are most effective at sending you readers, and which readers are your most valuable (e.g., those who sign up for your email newsletter or spend the most time reading your site). Analytics can help identify what works or not (such as guest posts, social media campaigns, collaborative efforts, and more).

Monetizing the audience you have

Hard selling on social media (“buy my book!”) isn’t effective if done frequently. If you want to ask people daily to be a patron, support your crowdfunding project, enroll in your online course, buy your book, etc, people may soon tune you out or unfollow entirely. I rarely use Facebook or Twitter to ask for a sale; instead, I save that for my website or email newsletter where people are highly engaged and interested. (On social media, however, I will share useful content or a blog post, which may lead people to my website, and then there’s a related upsell or something for sale.)

So what’s more important: your website or social media?

For me, it’s obviously my website, but that’s partly because this blog is important to my platform. Thankfully, you don’t (or shouldn’t) have to choose between having an author website or participating on social media. Nurture both. Choose to make your website a proud and strong showcase for your work and what you want to be known for, and don’t expect social media to always be the hub for all your branding or reader discovery. You’ll be stronger if you have a multi-faceted approach, especially if and when social media fails you.

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Sandra J. Kachurek

I looked at my blog/web site and the last posting was January 2017 (gasp). With social media, I see people talking, whether it’s with me or not. My site? Maybe a few, too few. When I post I feel like I’m tossing a minnow into the ocean and waiting to catch a whale. You’re right in that a key is what do I want to be known for as a focus for site content. The answer has been becoming clearer for me during this year. However, like writing, I can’t wait for inspiration or a product (published book) to post on my own blog. Your topic is timely.

Thanks again, Jane, as always. Also, my favorite phrase of the week: “literary peacocking.”

Paul Topping

Good post! I am not an author but a computer guy. The simple answer to the website vs social media question is that the website is what you use social media to drive traffic toward. As you say, your website is where you get to tell your story without much interference from the content platform — you can pretty much do whatever you like. And, of course, the website also drives people to your social media accounts. Facebook sites give some of the advantages of a website but Facebook is just too constraining. When I find some person or business only has an FB site, I am disappointed.

Joanne Tombrakos

Great perspective as always! I could not agree more that a website is of utmost importance. It’s essentially a virtual storefront. And social networking is changing as I write. I also agree that whenever I’m asked to speak all people want to ask about is social media. But I don’t think it’s an either or choice. I think like most things digital, they all work in tandem together to build a presence and a brand. That’s my two cents!

Harald

Excellent post, Jane (as usual). What I find interesting is that the #1 Google result on my name is my Author Central page on Amazon (one of my website pages is #2). Which is not a bad thing. And which reminds me: I need to update it!

jeff lyons

Totally agree with you.

Grace Burrowes

Spot on, Jane. The one piece of cyber-real estate an author own is his or her website. For years, authors built up their FB followings at the urging of publishers and “knowledgeable” market weenies to the detriment of website care and maintenance, then, when swarms of readers had learned to connect with authors on FB, FB pulled that “pay to play” baloney. That’s the social media MO. Authors get cyber-sharecropped, and an unpredictable, self-interested gatekeeper shows up where reach used to be. And don’t get me started about the bot pollution on twitter…

Ernie Zelinski

You say, “I may be in the tiny minority of people who happen to think social media isn’t 100% critical for an author’s online presence.”

I am also in the tiny minority. So is David Chilton. Two months or so ago, David, a multi-millionaire and very successful self-publisher (whose book The Wealthy Barber sold over 2 million copies) was trying to get a hold of me and left a message on my answering machine, in which he said, “Ernie, you are one of the few self-publishers who knows what he is doing.” I realize that I know more than at least 97 percent of authors, self-publishers, and so-called book marketing experts out there. With over 965,000 copies of my books (mainly self-published) sold worldwide, my success and results show that. Nevertheless, David Chilton knows two to ten times more than me. Check out his valuable videos that cost only $200 US and you will see that he has little use for Social Media.

http://www.thechiltonmethod.com

What’s more, here is an article by a true book marketing expert who also has little use for Social Media.

“Don’t Get Suckered By Social Media” by Rob Eagar, Marketing Consultant
http://www.startawildfire.com/2017/06/suckered-social-media.html

Of course, the so-called “book marketing experts” trying to sell authors a book marketing program based on Social Media are going to object vehemently. This I can assure you: These Social Media advocates have sold a lot fewer copies of their books than David Chilton, Rob Eager, or me. Results don’t lie, in other words.

Andrea

Thank you so much. This is great information.

Jeff Shear

I rely on your analyses, and I take much of what you write to heart. It’s all good and always honest. You’ve got credentials. Without you, we writers would be throwing punches in the dark.

However, I wonder if your analysis of social media versus blogging could survive the climate of fiction land.

I’ve come to think that writers who tell other writers how to write and sell books and build email lists gain success. I’m not saying anything new here. Nor does this apply to you. I’m merely expressing my astonishment at the brashness of writers who haven’t written anything significant, or published, or worked in the industry, advising other writers on the advantages of their secret snake oil sauce.

Indie writing might well be flourishing largely on advice columns and how-to books. On writing!

The real test of your analysis of blogs versus websites, I would argue (civilly), depends on its application to fiction writing. The word fiction doesn’t appear in your column. You do mention novelists, but leave us to offer our readers inducements and shiny objects. You talk about lures. But really, what are honest fiction writers left with, lit crit?

Jeff Shear

I agree, Jane, we were talking past each other, sorry; it’s the ancient sound of two hands missing!
Let me clarify my point with a question: The web site for fiction writers is what, essentially, a splash page that does double-duty as a hub, as in the case of jeffshearbooks.com? Is this then a fair statement: The author web page functions as a hub in so far as I blog, allowing me to call attention to my work through adding permalinks to my tweets and other social media? More directly, is it your point to create a “redundancy” or a circle that takes a tweet, in this instance, to spark a permalink that refers the attentive reader back to the author web page/splash page, where a click might drive him to my new book at http://tinyurl.com/y6wrppee? Am I taking your point, using social media and my website hub to entice my readers to my book without “literary peacocking,” to borrow an apt phrase? Or should I sign up for a half hour to speak with you? You make an important point.

Jeff Shear

Thank you, Jane, for helping me walk this through. I’ve got Google analytics in place on my web site, and I’m spending some money on AdWords. Watching how changes in the web page affect outcomes on analytics is real hands-on useful information, as you’ve made very clear. (Why did it take me so long???)

Jeff Shear

Thank you for the URL. Bought Brian’s book! @ExtremelyAvg. This is an important time for me, Jane, not as a writer, but as a writer trying to grasp the business of writing. Cheers. BTW, the post on your blog that follows this one “twins” your thinking, a regular diptych of solid advice.

Matt Hill

I’m not a writer (well, only amateur scribbling for my own eyes) but I am a professional web designer/developer and I can state with conviction that you absolutely need a website, and one that you control. A Facebook page is fine as far as it goes, but it’s fundamentally constraining and does not allow you to keep control of your content.

Your website should be optimised to convert visitors into fans or customers, in some form. Fill it with calls to action to get people to do what you want, whether that’s buy your books or build your email list. In fact, using your website to build your email list is probably the best thing you can do, over and above trying to directly sell books.

In addition to building your email list, a website allows to to write in more detail, and preserve your content. Facebook and Twitter might give you direct access to people, but as Jane says, that medium is fleeting and ephemeral, and controlled by the companies who provide them. They could delete any of that stuff whenever they like and you’d get no say in it. It’s therefore vital to have a place where you can cultivate your presence on the web in the way you want, without fear of it being flushed down the virtual toilet when the gatekeepers decide they don’t like what you said.

Being on social media may get you cool points for being ‘accessible’ to readers, but having a website is far more valuable in the long run.