Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Build a Platform

You will find a lot of articles online about website design. They come in the form of blog post and these article posting services that are found throughout the web. Most of these articles won’t provide you with any earth shattering information. You may glean something from reading them, but the main reason they are there is because all of these guys developing websites and selling website templates are trying to build a platform. Being the experts on the subject that they are, they know that one way to get people to visit their websites and blogs is to get as many links as they can. In part, it can be done using a blog, but the article publishing services also help because they all pass these articles around like a virus. I’m often surprised to find something I’ve written show up on a website I’ve never visited.


I’m going to offer a couple of pieces of advice here. Unless you’re trying to promote yourself as a website design expert (selling web design services or have written a book on the subject), don’t write about website design. There is so much stuff out there that the web is overloaded with it and you’ll have a hard time getting noticed.


The second piece of advice is to follow the example of the website design gurus and get your junk out there. Pick a subject related to your books and write an article. It can be junk, but stick it out there. At the bottom, you’ll have your name and maybe a link to your website. You’ll also include information about your book. So when people are searching for information and find the article you wrote, they’ll also have information directing them to you for more information. I can complain all I want about the lack of respect people have for true experts, but the fact is that we can use that to our advantage. Rather than turning to true experts, people turn to the person whose name they recognize. Because of that, if we can get our name out there and people begin to recognize it, we will appear to be the expert, whether we are or not. I hope you aren’t trying to convince people you’re an expert in an area that you aren’t, but even that is a possibility in some instances. Get your name out there and you’ll build your platform.