By Laura Christianson
Guest columnist

Blogs. Web sites. Social Networking.

When you ponder the plethora of the online venues from which you can promote your book, it’s hard to know where to start.

Prospective book buyers need 8-to-10 “touches” from you before they remember you, your book, or your brand. Cyberspace is a great place to reach out and touch someone. If you haven’t written or published your book yet but plan to do so during the next two years, NOW is the time to begin making those touches.

Here are a few tips for building your online presence:

Build your hub. Think about the International Space Station. Construction began in 1998 with the Control Module. Gradually, additional modules have been added.

Your online hub should be a Web site and/or a blog. A Web site generally contains static content that changes infrequently. A blog is an interactive Web site—its content is updated on a regular basis (at least weekly).

More and more often, authors and businesses are creating sites that seamlessly integrate blog content with static content. For example, at my business site, www.HeBlogsSheBlogs.com, our blog is on our Home page. Navigation buttons on the Home page lead to inside pages that function more like a traditional Web site. WinePress also offers this service–their authors get a Weblog page and several additional pages to which they can add content.

Gradually add spokes or “modules” to your hub. I consider social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace) and social bookmarking sites (Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon) as spokes. You’ll create a profile at each site (registration is free) and link to and from your hub. Millions of people subscribe to social networking sites, substantially increasing your chances of being found and “touched.”

In future posts, we’ll talk about how to effectively use social networking, but for now, we’ll suggest several sites for you to explore.

• Don’t feel compelled to instantly sign up for each of them. Spend time looking around, visiting other authors’ profiles, and studying how members market themselves.
• After you’ve visited a site several times, ask yourself whether you feel comfortable joining the community, and whether it’ll be worth your time investment to become an active member.

Here are some sites to explore:

General Networking:
Facebook – http://www.facebook.com
LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/
Ziggs – http://www.ziggs.com/ (for business professionals)

Targeted Networking:
MySpace – http://www.myspace.com/
Shoutlife – http://www.shoutlife.com/ – Christian social networking for authors, music artists, comics, organizations, and regular folks.

Video Sharing
YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/
GodTube – http://www.godtube.com/ – Christian version of YouTube

Book Sharing
Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/
Shelfari – www.shelfari.com
BookTour – http://www.booktour.com
Book Marketing Network http://bookmarket.ning.com/ – You can set up your own customized social network at ning.com

Micro Blogging
Twitter – https://twitter.com
Plurk – http://www.plurk.com/

Social Bookmarking
Digg – http://digg.com/
Delicious – http://delicious.com
StumbleUpon – http://www.stumbleupon.com/

What sites do you use/recommend? Leave us a comment!

Laura Christianson is a WinePress author and co-founder of HeBlogsSheBlogs.com, a Seattle-area company that helps individuals and businesses maximize their blogging, marketing, and writing skills.