Building a writer's platform

As Sara gets underway with her writing career, I am happily doing anything and everything to help. In particular, I’m her de facto web administrator.

• I set up http://saraturnquist.com using WordPress.
• I configured her Mail Chimp account to help her build her email list. She’s already sent out a newsletter!
• I have stood up a Google Analytics account and created a property that is now linked to her website and her Mail Chimp mailing list.

Now, every web page she crafts, whether a blog page or a Mail Chimp archived newsletter, is serving up metrics to my admin page and letting me track it all. This is where you bend social media to serve you and not the other way around.

Of course, I’m doing to same for my own site as I slowly work at publishing my own debut novel. But suffice it to say, building your online presence in this day and age is easier than ever before. (It also helps if you are a professional software dev who understands some of these things!)

Happy blogging and newsletter writing!