Elaine Mansfield is the author of Leaning Into Love: A Spiritual Journey Through Grief (Larson, 2014). Gold Medal Winner of the Independent Publisher Book Award 2015, her memoir captures your heart—from the extraordinary closeness of Elaine’s marriage to how she and Vic transformed their struggle with cancer and despair into a conscious relationship with mortality. After Vic’s death, Elaine leaned into her ongoing love as grief led her through overwhelming emotional and spiritual depths on a journey beyond their time together into her new life. Working closely with Elaine Mansfield during the past several years I observed her as a writer who pulled others to her words using social media. When I review her social media metrics over two years it tells a powerful story about how a book found its audience. More than a year after her book’s release, Elaine’s blogs continue to be routinely shared several hundred times on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. She has more than 1,000 Friends on Facebook, 4,000 followers on Twitter, and 500+ on LinkedIn. And she has engaged with most of them in conversations about the topic of death. When I hear from aspiring authors they have no interest or intention in building an audience platform online I want to introduce them to Elaine and let them hear her story of finding readers. Jill: You have a following and community of readers with whom you engage on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google + that is the envy of many aspiring authors. I know…

Although the majority of the traffic to your site will come through social media engagement, an author can’t ignore getting found through Google and other search engines. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, refers to practices used to get a higher rank in search engines – in plain English, it’s the difference between being on the 1st or 7th page of Google results. But, you might ask, if I’m getting most of my readers through Twitter, Facebook, and direct contacts, why do I have to worry about getting found through search engines? SEO will help you keep focused on your keywords. Keeping your blogs within the scope of your essential phrases will ensure you don’t lose sight of your message. SEO will let new readers discover you. A single blog can be a source of major traffic to your site if it’s a high-ranking hit of an often-searched phrase on Google. SEO will ensure you are the #1 result when people search for your name. If you have a common name – or if there is someone else online with your name with a web presence – SEO is not optional. Googling someone is now as commonplace as shaking hands. If you don’t have search engines in mind when designing your site and making content, you won’t be the top result for your name. SEO will draw traffic to your site. Although Marketing Strategies are more than a numbers game, having lots of visitors to your site is always a good…

Why do you need two email addresses? You’ve already got a personal email account with your internet service provider, or your webhosting company, or from Yahoo, AmericaOnLine, or Windows Live Mail. (previously known as Windows Outlook, previously known as Hotmail). Managing another email account sounds like twice the trouble. Relax. Your primary personal email account will remain the address where your personal mail should be delivered. Have you ever forgotten your password? Has someone ever hacked your email account? Without a second email address you’re pretty much screwed. At least for the administrative purposes of your online accounts, personal and professional, we strongly recommend a second email account, specifically a gmail account. Why Gmail? Google mail offers a robust and secure email platform and serves best as an administrative account. Gmail is also how you sign-in to all of Google’s free products and services. There are many tools, including Google Analytics, that require you have a Google mail account. It can serve as the secondary address in case you forget your password, encounter problems with a server down, or your email account is hijacked.  If you have recently downloaded “First Steps as an Author Online,” you’ve already learned the advantages as an author to having a gmail address. Three Email Addresses? You need a third email address to use as a professional author. We recommend you create an email account linked to your website domain [name@yourauthorname.com]. To help you keep your personal email account separate from your work as a professional author,…