With ASJA’s new website now up and running for eight months, Darcy Lewis, website chair, and Laura Laing, ASJA president, met with the Pacific Northwest chapter in June to update members on website features, troubleshoot problems navigating the site, and talk about some of the challenges faced by the creative and technical teams behind the launch.
ASJA needed a new online presence to serve existing members and attract newcomers, Darcy said, and wanted a stable technology that was affordable and easy to use. The association also needed a new logo to reflect a membership that today includes not only book authors and journalists but content marketing writers.
The website team put a priority on launching a basic website last year with “must have” features to attract new members and has continued to expand the site since. Features for existing members have been more complicated to set up, since both the association management software (AMS) backend member portal and the public WordPress site had to be replaced.
Some additions since the launch:
- An archive of past writing award winners, 2010-2021, with links to winning articles (under What We Do, in Awards)
- Online access to ASJA press cards (under Join ASJA, in Member Benefits)
- An ASJA members’ badge (under Resources, in ASJA Logo & Style Guide).
Darcy encouraged writers to complete their member profiles, which can function as mini-websites with links to writing samples. Besides the benefit to individual members, the more complete writer profiles are available on the site, the more useful the database will be to editors and clients.
Those who run into technical problems completing their profile should send an email to head office including the web browser they use, a link to the page in question and a screenshot of the page.
ASJA Pacific Northwest will hold regular Zoom meetings in July and August, with the next special guest event set for September 21 when book-marketing expert Sandra Beckwith will join the chapter meeting.
ASJA members attending the June meeting: Maxine Cass, Fred Gebhart, Catherine Kolonko, Laura Laing, Christina Leimer, Darcy Lewis, Bruce Miller, M. Carolyn Miller, Michelle V Rafter, Randy Stapilus, Darlene West, Minda Zetlin