Baby Step #1 - Facebook

To get my toes wet in this ocean of social media, I decided to exercise caution. Facebook seemed the least scary option - after all who doesn't like having friends? Don’t get me wrong, Facebook does not make up for a venti latte and a face to face conversation, but it keeps me connected. Getting a Facebook account is simple, www.facebook.com has a self guided set up system. All I needed was an e-mail address. Facebook is a public space. Privacy settings are great. I, for one, love checking out my friend's walls, and I think it's safe to say that others do also. Look up Facebook etiquette. It will save you some well meaning messages from your friendly Facebook team. I admit I’m not the best at updating my profile and uploading new pictures, but I'm getting better. Feel free to look me up, at www.facebook.com/helena.smrcek.7. Send me a friend request, and be my Facebook pal. Let's see if social networking can actually be fun.

The Beginning...

It all started in February 2009. I gathered some much needed courage, boarded a plane, and wondered if this was the biggest mistake yet. After all, I was a Canadian. Why was I trying to figure out the publishing world of the US? Arriving from the snow kingdom, I was glad to see the swaying trees, flowers, and warm sun. As a familiar bond of common faith engulfed me, I felt a wonderful sense of exhilaration. Regardless of where we traveled from, or what accents we brought with us, we all came with similar purpose. We wanted to communicate better in order to influence our world. From workshop to workshop, class to class, I have met wonderful people. I was encouraged. Yes, the publishing industry was going through some major changes, but there have never been more opportunities to get published. The message was clear. Today's writers need to be excellent at their craft. But I have also heard one other message. Authors need platform. By the end of the conference my head was spinning with all the techno jargon. I'm a people person. Technology wasn't exactly my forte. I got teens to do that. As I was leaving the conference, I wondered how would I ever navigate through this. It was one thing to sit in my office, play with scenes, type dialogue, and make sure that I showed not told. What was all this talk about social networking? What was a platform anyway?

Guest Blog Post by Sara Davison

http://www.choosetopresson.blogspot.com/

Your Personal Website

How do people find you? I Google most of my new contacts as well as long time friends – a great way to find out if someone has changed jobs, published a new book, or received an award. I love reading personal websites of my favourite authors, I always find something new and interesting. So, do you have your own website?

Basic websites are really easy to build. This is what I have done. First, register your domain. Mine is www.HelenaSmrcek.com. You can use a number of domain registration companies, I happened to use www.Register.com. I’m not sure if it is better or worse than any other one, so please do your homework and find what works for you. There will be a fee attached to your registration, ensuring your owner ship for a specific length of time. If your term expires, and you fail to renew, your domain name will become available for purchase by anyone who desires to do so. My advice is not to let this happen, since it could be very costly to ‘buy back’ your own domain.

Once you have your domain registered you need to find a hosting service. I use www.Yahoo.com because I have been using Yahoo e-mail service for several years. There will be a monthly fee attached to hosting – mine is billed to my credit card.
Once this is set up, it is time to start working on your site content. You can search the Internet for site building programs or check if our desktop/laptop already has the software loaded. I have used Yahoo Site Builder. It has very easy templates to use and best of all, it is free to download. I love working with this program because I can do it all by myself. Our studio site www.theartstudios.com is created using Mac, by one of our staff. She loves her Apple and enjoys the ability to use a great number of photos.

What you decide to use will most likely depend on your taste and skill level. I prefer the easiest way out. Yahoo allows me to paste and copy from my Word documents, makes uploading pictures very easy and I like the layout of the templates. I would say it took me about 10 hours to build the site. I didn’t build it in one sitting, the program allows you to save your work and continue when time allows.

First, I have created a site map document in my Word program outlining what pages I would like to have on my site. Then I started to write the content. Since adding pages is very easy, I have decided to create the most important pages first and add more pages at the later date.

Once I was done with the basic site, I e-mailed a number of friends and asked them for feedback. I appreciate everyone who took the time to read through my pages and e-mail me their thought. Based on their opinions I have made some changes.

A few hints in closing – make your site easy to read. Make a list of your favourite sites and think about what it is that you like about them the most. Is it the font, the colours, the layout or the photos? Do not flood your pages with tons of text. Also post the most important information above the fold line. Add pictures, people love to see who they are reading about. Take time to proofread. Keep your site up to date and don’t forget to add contact information.