This post is the first in a series of weekly interviews with clients where I pose questions that I’m hoping will help people as they embark on their own projects.

This week I’ve asked three questions of Gail Kearns (Book Shepherd, Project Editor & Production Coordinator) and Lucy Levenson (Online & Offline Marketing Specialist) at To Press & Beyond, a full service book shepherding agency.

1. What do you wish you’d known about creating an online presence before you started?

You must be prepared to work on your website regularly each week. You need to be constantly finding new content to keep it fresh and interesting. Blogging, posting articles, keeping up to date with endorsements, finding opportunities to link to other sites in your niche, it is much more of a commitment that I had understood.

Visitors will stay on a website for only a few seconds if they cannot immediately find what they want. Make sure critical content and information is quickly available at the top of the page and it loads quickly.

2. What’s the most important thing you learned about online marketing along the way?

What is “IN” is constantly changing. When we started it was Google ad words and per click sales – now it is all about social media, like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. You have to be constantly educating yourself.

3. What’s the best advice you have for someone just getting started now?

For authors with one book and no other products, it is best to direct visitors to Amazon to purchase a title, rather than setting up e-commerce on the author’s site. A large percentage of buyers will go to Amazon anyway. As Amazon provides free exposure worldwide, authors need to optimize their Amazon author page. Having a title properly listed on Amazon can create demand for it everywhere. It doesn’t matter if you’re a famous author or an unknown.