AUTHOR BLOGS-DO'S, DON'TS, TIPS

For authors, a blog, or two, can be an important marketing tool. It is a great way to build readership and to 'strut your stuff.' There are some do's and don'ts so here are a few tips.

Don't get into people's faces about your book. If your blog looks like an add people will avoid it like the plague.

Don't scatter your posts on a million topics. You can't be an expert in all areas and people will soon discover that you are just filling the pages to get attention.

Don't take on topics if you have no expertise or interest. readers don't like shallow writing.

Don't rant. You don't want to come off as crazy or weird, unless that is your marketing strategy.

Don't fill your blog with tons of adds-if you have any-be selective.

Do find a niche. As a writer, you must be passionate about something. If it is the topic of your book, that is great, so you'll want to post about issues that your book addresses. When appropriate you can insert a reference to your book. You can also write about the art of writing, How To's, and be a place to visit for guidance.

Don't allow open 'ID or anonymous' for comments. This is just me, but it opens the door to massive amounts of spammer messages. If someone has to put a real email address they are less likely to load you up with spam.

Do offer tips. People love free advice and like to hear what others think work or don't work.

Do be honest.

Do have Favorite Links and a Blog Roll. This is where you can link to your web site, your publisher, other authors and sites that might pertain to your topics.

Do write about things that are of real concern to you. It is okay to be passionate.

Do fill in the Labels or Tag section below your blog. These are what SEO's pick up on. BE SURE that your first sentence or two contains words that you use in these Labels or tags. Again, this is for SEO. BE SURE TO PUT YOUR NAME IN YOUR LABELS

Do make sure that you have enabled your blog with SHARE buttons (Twitter, FB, etc)

Do vary the nature of content. Find videos on YouTube that are germane and copy the html embedd code and post on your blog. Have guests blogs. Have some opinions, some straight facts, etc. Post Cinchcasts that are audio reports (Cinhcast.com).

Do make your links live so others just click and go to the link page.

Do post as often as you can.

TIPS FOR TOPICS:

Go to Google Insights and see what is trending and what is a hot topic. You can also see who and where there may be an interest in your topics.

See what is trending for topics on Twitter and Yahoo.

Ask others if they will share a gust blog with you on a periodic basis.

Set up a set of questions (say 10) and invite others to answer them. These can be author interviews, expert interviews, survivor interviews, etc.

Some sites allow and encourage a re-posting of their blog-wider exposure is good.

Search for articles-there are many sites that offer free articles on just about any topic.

The key is to write about things you care about. Be helpful, offer advice and tips, be honest and caring in your topics. Never defame another author or blogger. And, don't be concerned if you don't get tons of comments. People live busy lives and often will not comment on your blog. Post often and try to thank those who comment on your posts.

Ten Steps to Effective Blogging

THE FOLLOWING IS A GUEST BLOG POST BY AUTHOR MARVIN WILSON

IMPORTANT NOTICE-MARK 2/20 ON YOUR CALENDAR. OUR GUEST BLOGGER WILL BE KATHLEEN GAGE-SHE WILL POST ON KEY THINGS AUTHORS MUST DO...SHE WILL BE AVAILABLE TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS ON THE BLOG!

NOW BACK TO MARVIN:

Ten Steps to Effective Blogging

So, you’ve started a blog. That’s great. No, really, it’s important nowadays, if you are an author, to have a blog. But remember one very important thing about blogging. Just having one doesn’t mean anyone is going to go to it. There are millions of blogs out there in the Blue Nowhere, so thinking that just publishing a blog is going to get you traffic, page views, followers, and ultimately help you sell more books, is akin to using needle in the haystack logic. It’s like publishing a book as an unknown author and thinking just because it’s there people will flock to buy it with no self-promotion on your part. Not gonna happen.

When I first put up a blog, some five years ago, I was absolutely thrilled when someone actually visited it and … even left a comment! It was a circle-this-day-on-the-calendar type of event. Take the wife out and celebrate. Today my primary blog has regular visitors from around120 countries across the globe with new “unique” visitors all the time, gets over 200 hits, close to 100 visits, twice that many page loads, and receives an average of 20+ comments per day. Not bad. Certainly not the kind of traffic a blog written by a household name famous blogger gets, but enough to make a significant impact on my book sales. How did I make this happen?

I thought you’d ask, as have many other novice author/bloggers, so that’s why I put together this crash-course post on how to get your blog spiffed up, running on all cylinders, and most of all … noticed, with regular readers. After all, that’s what we want, right? Lots of loyal readers who enjoy our style of writing, look forward to our posts on our blogs, and as a result will figure investing in our books is a good idea.

So let’s get started. Follow these ten steps to the letter, and I guarantee that within months you’ll have a popular blog with an abundance of readers.

1. Post regularly. I put up a new post every day. Most popular blogs do this. You can get away with say, three posts per week, but no less. Otherwise, people will not log onto your blog regularly. Why should they? It’s the same old same old when they do. An aside fringe benefit to daily posting is, it is excellent discipline and practice for a writer. You have to come up with something interesting, even shoot for brilliance, each and every day, and on a different subject every day. It keeps your muse sharp and available. When I’m feeling particularly brilliant, I write several posts in a single day and store them. That way, when I get a day where I have that dreaded “deadhead” feeling, I have several good posts I can use to keep the blog moving and my readers happy. Oh and also important in this topic, keep your posts reasonably short. Blog-hoppers have a maximum five minute attention span. Read your post and time how long it takes. If it takes more than five minutes to read it, cut it down or people will either not bother to read it at all, or just skim read it and not get all the content. This post, for instance, is way too long. I’m only doing this for a special interest group who will (I hope) find it of enough interest and value to read the whole thing. If I were doing this on my primary blog I’d make it a series and only post a couple tips per day.

2. Have a theme for your blog. People do Google searches for blogs on topics of interest to them. Search engines seek out blogs for people looking for specific subjects. You want to attract people who are interested in good books, and people who like to read books in your preferred genre. You don’t have to have a blog mission statement that is limited to just books, although you can do that, but you might include reviews of other books, invite other authors to be featured on your blog, or post writing tutorials, or post about interesting developments in the industry. Use your imagination, figure out what you can write posts well about that is of enough interest to you to keep you inspired to write about it. And you can be somewhat eclectic if you have several such areas of interest and expertise. My blog statement includes lots of humor, all things literary, promoting spiritual growth, and even an occasional political/social/economic rant. Also – your blog name should be the same as your url. That way people will find it easier to remember and return to your blog. If you blog is titled, let’s say for example, My Meandering Muse, your url should be http://mymeanderingmuse.com

3. Provide value in your posts. Nothing is more annoying than a blog that does nothing but tout the author’s own books and/or products. It’s all about relationship marketing, hmm? Nobody wants to be “sold” something when visiting your blog. Soft sell them on you by becoming a source of valuable information and entertaining reading. Your posts should include links to interesting sites, new and exciting software and/or other programs of interest to your readers, how-to information, notices of events happening they’d like to know about, trends in the industry – whatever. Tell a humorous story that makes them laugh occasionally. Your blog is not all about you. It’s about your readers and providing value to them. Do that and they will love you and wind up buying your books.

4. Get your blog looking good. Even with stock blog services like Wordpress and Blogspot, there are tons of custom themes available to make your blog have a distinctive appearance. Do a Google search for “free custom layouts for blogger (or wordpress)” – pages of sites will come up, with thousands of themes to choose from and how to information on installing the html code into your blog. Experienced blog-hoppers yawn when they log onto a blog for the first time and see a standard, boring, regular ol’ layout with no pizzazz to it. In addition, if you use wordpress, which I prefer for a lot of reasons, having used WP and blogspot, you can, for a small fee, upgrade and have the “wordpress” taken out of your url. This looks more impressive to the professional blogging community. Url’s with “blogspot.com” or “wordpress.com” in them are considered small potato blogs. It looks best and most impressive to have simply,Your Name Here– trust me on this one.

5. Add some gadgets. Gadgets drive traffic to your blog. Both blogger and WP have scads of free gadgets in their standard dashboard offerings. Plus you can do Google searches for additional interesting gadgets. Add a statcounter and check it often – track how much traffic you are getting and from where. Put a flag counter up in the sidebar. Add a translator gadget for foreign visitors. Put up a picture of your book cover (yes, this kind of soft sell self-promo is okay) and have it hyperlinked so when people click on it they go to the book’s buy page. Start a blogroll where you list with links some of your favorite blogs that might also be of interest to your readers. Just look into this, you’ll be amazed at how many gadgets are available. A word of caution here, don’t overdo it. Some blogs get so gadget crazy they look cluttered and detract from the post itself. Find a good balance for your style and readership. Again, it’s all about, value, value, value … select gadgets that will be of interest and/or assistance to your readers.

6. Link your blog to all your social networks. If you are not Twittering, Facebooking, Goodreading, Linkedining, all those amazingly powerful tools available to help get your name out there, shame on you, you should be. If you are, good for you, if not, start right now, and have your blog url linked and fed into your profile page. People go to your facebook page, see a snippet of your blog post, find it interesting, click on it, and BAM! – You have another visitor to your blog. This is how we roll, peeps. Get with the program.

7. Cross link your blog to multiple other sites with hyperlinked words and/or phrases within your posts. If you post about a particular author, or book, or blog, or interesting website, or whatever, put that mention in bold and hyperlink it with the site’s url so when people click on it they can go right to the subject matter you are posting about. This accomplishes two good things. One, it adds value to your post, the convenience of being able to click and go with ease if they want to find out more about the subject. Two, search engines will recognize the links on your blog and people visiting those other sites may be attracted to your blog as well. Bingo was his name-oh … more traffic for your blog.

8. Ping your blog. There are several good pinging services available for free. My favorite one is http://pingmyblog.com On this site you can key in your blog name, your blog url, select “all,” click on “agree to terms,” click on “Ping My Blog,” and presto – your blog gets sent out to dozens of powerful search engines all around the planet in a snap. After I started pinging, within two months my blog traffic increased threefold. And it keeps growing. Every time you publish a new post, ping your blog.

9. Visit other blogs and comment on them. Do a Google search for blogs with topics of interest to you. Visit them, read the posts, and this is most important … leave a comment! Not just some wimpy “Great post!” or “Love your blog!” kind of rubbish, compose a real comment with some content that lets the author of the post know you actually took the time to read the post and have something of interest to add, share, or ask a question about. You are a writer, hmm? Write like one. An important axiom to remember here: comment unto others as you would have them comment unto you. One of the first things I do when checking out a new (to me) blog to see if it might be a good spot to host a stop on one of my virtual book tours, is check to see how many comments the blog gets on average. If it’s less than 10 per day, I pass. You want comments, and a boatload of them, all the time. This is imperative, along with high traffic volume. I always click on the statcounter and see what the traffic volume is like. Traffic and comments are the two largest indicators of a successful blog. So again, how do you get traffic and comments? Become a visitor and commenter on other blogs. Once you get noticed as a regular reader on several blogs who leaves well written and interesting comments, not only will in most cases the authors of those blogs start visiting your blog, their readers will start noticing you and hop on over to check your blog out as well. Also important here, when you leave a comment, make sure and either hyperlink your signature with your blog url, or put your blog url under your signature. Just one link, please. You look blatantly self-promoting if you list all your twitter, facebook, myspace, primary website, and blog links. Keep it to one, no more. The best most professional way to do it is to hyperlink your signature. Here is the html code for doing that, using my name and blog url – which you simply replace with yours to make it work for you.

Marvin D Wilson">Marvin D Wilson

Substitute your blog url for the blue characters (blog url) and your name for my name, and this formula will allow you to hyperlink your signature, making it easy for people to click on your name and go directly to your blog.

10. Once you have your traffic and comments up to a respectable level, host other authors and bloggers as featured guest posters on your blog. If you hear on another author’s blog that he/she is planning a virtual tour soon, offer to host a stop for him or her on the tour. If you like a certain blogger who posts on topics of interest to your readers, offer to let them do a guest post on your blog. They will in most cases offer to return the favor at some time or another, and both of you benefit, as your readers will learn about them, and visa versa. If you are fortunate enough to land a really popular author and/or blogger as a guest, you will be exposed to many new blog-hoppers as their fans will visit your blog and some of them will like yours and become regular visitors of yours.

In closing, I would advise you to get ready to roll up your sleeves and do a lot of work. Getting a popular blog going is not an easy task. It requires discipline and determination. You will at first find it a monumental undertaking, but take heart. It gets easier. Once you get some momentum going, it will become second nature to you, and feel as easy and natural as fixing your morning coffee. The benefits are many. You will make new friends. The blogging community is full of wonderful, friendly, and interesting people, who love to help each other out. You will experience the joy of logging onto your blog after not having been there for a couple hours and seeing several new comments and your traffic for the day is skyrocketing. And most importantly for us authors, eventually you will see a dramatic increase in your book sales, and when you release that next book, you will have a waiting readership that loves your style of writing and will buy your next novel.

And in the end, that’s what we all want, hmm?

~~~~~


Statcounter - http://www.iwebtrack.com/free-web-page-counter/stat-counters.htm

Twittering – http://twitter.com

Facebooking – http://www.facebook.com

Goodreading - http://www.goodreads.com/

http://pingmyblog.com – http://pingmyblog.com (wink and lol)

BLOGGING FOR FIRST-TIME AUTHORS

THE FOLLOW ARTICLE IS FROM THE WHEATMARK NEWSLETTER. Hey, if it is good advice, pass it along.

Book Marketing Tip

Blogging for First-time Authors

By Kathryn Gautreaux

One of the essential ingredients to a successful book marketing plan is a blog.

A blog will allow you to post journal entries about your process during the book writing stage, to post entries about your publishing timeline, to write about your published book, and to write about everything else you are interested in between.

On the Wheatmark website we have a blog post that includes step-by-step instructions on how to start a blog using Blogger - one of the free blogging sites available.

How does blogging for book marketing work?

It works by establishing a home base for your marketing efforts. As you read other people's blogs, you can comment from your blog identity, allowing them to follow you back to your blog. When you use Twitter, you can put up tweets about new blog posts and also put the link to your blog in your profile so Twitter users can read more about you. This will drive traffic to your blog.

On your blog site, make sure to add a link to where prospective readers can buy your book.

Why does blogging for book marketing work?

It works because it creates a virtual world where you can be the expert on your book's topic and allows people with similar interests to interact with you. The more readers you gain for your blog, the more readers you are likely to gain for your book! By allowing readers to be a part of your journey as an author-from first inspiration to the exciting book launch-you can form a community of people invested in your project and your success!

It can be difficult to get going... So here is a quick list of topics you could start blogging about today!

List of 5 ideas or thoughts -Numbered lists are always winners. It helps the blog reader understand what they are going to be reading and helps them get to the end. This works in a blog about business very easily. You can write about one of your chapters, offer tips, etc. But it could also work for fiction! Say you are writing a young adult fiction book about battling a demon. Your numbered list could be "5 Things You Need to Battle a Demon." It's entertaining and it brings people into your book.

Publish a list of links -Can't think of anything to write? Has someone else written it already? Post a link to the articles on your blog. They'll appreciate the favor and also your blog readers won't feel like you've abandoned your blog for the day!

Take a recent experience and share it-Maybe it is obvious, but writing about something that made you have an emotion is always good fodder for a blog. It lets other people into your world and also allows them to share their own experiences in the comments section. It may even inspire you!

Are you ready to start blogging for your book? Check out the step-by-step blogging instructions on the Wheatmark blog. To learn about more marketing and publishing-related tips, visit Wheatmark's Author Resources as well.