by Fauzia Burke, in Author Branding

You’ve heard me say this before, and I’ll say it again: every author needs a dedicated website. But a website alone isn’t going to create the comprehensive online brand you need to successfully promote yourself and your books. A solid author brand encompasses many digital assets, including a blog, newsletter, and social media presence.

But there are some additional places to build your online brand that I find many authors forget about. Here are some of my favorites:

Amazon Author Central: Amazon’s Author Central is a great place to build out your online presence. You can post a longer biography, upload your author photo, and even set up a feed to your blog. This is a free resource I recommend all authors use. You can learn more about creating your Author Central profile here.

LinkedIn: Once you create your LinkedIn profile, it’s pretty easy to ignore until you’re looking for a new job, or need to update your profile with a new job title. But don’t ignore this one! First of all, they have a profile section called “Publications”. Make sure your books are listed here. But, in my opinion, the best part about LinkedIn is that they allow anyone with a profile to publish “long form posts”. This is a great way to take the content that you may already be posting on your own blog, modify it, and amplify to a larger audience. More on the process can be found here.

Goodreads: Every author gets a Goodreads author page (for free!)--you just need to claim it. Complete your biography, upload your author photo, and link to your social media accounts. Make sure all of your books are associated with your author accounts (this becomes vital if you share a name with another author). Beyond the basics, you can also create different “bookshelves” on Goodreads and share them with your friends. These are a great way to promote the works of fellow writers. You can find more information on how to use Goodreads here.

Medium.com: Medium is another platform for sharing your writing. And while you can certainly create original content for Medium, you can also use it as another place to post the content you’ve already written for your site. They even have a page dedicated to books and authors. Just remember to affiliate yourself as the author of your book, and include a link back to your website. Get started with Medium here.

The important thing is to make sure your strategy with these other sites matches your online brand, connects back to your book, and links to your website. Start playing around with some or all of these platforms, reach a wider audience, and watch your network grow.

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