Workshop- Creating Web Presence

This is the last workshop I'm going to talk about. There were others but this one made a big impression on me. It was presented by Emma Clair and Michelle McGinnis who were very thorough and and spoke in a language most people could understand. They also had the best handouts. Very organized.

I have to admit the workshop also scared the crud out of me. When I went into labor with my son, my husband ran through the checklist the Lamaze instructor gave us. I remember sitting there watching as he went through page after page. Finally, he looks up and he's on the next to the last page and says "we should have been at the hospital a long time ago."

I kind of felt that same level of panic. Obviously not quite as extreme. But you get the analogy. I'm reading through their handout and seeing where I am at in my writing career and where I should be in cyberspace. ACKKKK!!!

I don't have much of a web presence. I have this blog and I horse around on Myspace and Facebook, but that's about it. I couldn't think of anything I would actually put on a web site. I'm not published. I have an agent, so I'm not really trying to impress them. I'm not sure how much editors actually look at sites unless they've already signed the author.

However, I do need to give it more thought, hence my interest in the class. Michelle and Emma stressed the need to register a domain name. I did that. I went with renemiller.net. I'd have preferred a .com name but the variations on my name were too clunky. The ladies recommended getting a Wordpress site since they are free. Yeah, they're nice but I'm not sure that's the rout I want to go. I have to give it some thought. I really don't want to give up this blog. I've had it so long. But I think my focus for a site would be different than my focus for here. Since I'm coming to the end of my latest opus and expect it will be in my agent's hands before the end of September, I would like to get my cyber presence a bit more developed.

Something else I thought was interesting that Emma and Michelle pointed out was cleaning up after yourself. They pointed out that those bad reviews on Amazon could come back to haunt you. Or that flame war over on another blog from years ago might resurface. These are things to be aware of. Somethings can be deleted, others can't and sometimes it is better to keep your mouth shut or just walk away.

They also talked about "egosurfing." Yeah, we've all googled ourselves at least once. It can be taken a step further by signing up for "google alerts." I can't really explain how it works but it "tracks" you in cyberspace.

Emma's website has more stuff on it about web presence so check it out.