Blogging is a relatively easy way for you to publicize your book and even improve your writing while you’re at it. If you can write an e-mail, you can write a blog—it’s the easiest, cheapest, and perhaps best way for authors to find an audience and connect with readers. Blogging is an informal, intimate form of communication that inspires trust among your readers.
For the same reasons that traditional advertising is usually ineffective for selling books, a blog can be highly effective for book promotion. People interested in your topic seek out your message.
WHAT IS A BLOG?
Put simply, a blog is a Web site with a few interactive features. You don’t have to call it a blog unless you want to. It’s possible that within a few years, nearly every Web site will have interactive features, and people simply won’t call them blogs anymore.
You needn’t know anything about computers to blog. Simply type into a form, and presto—the whole world can see it. Your blog is a content management system—a painless way to build and maintain a platform where readers can discover and enjoy your writing.
A blog can be a part of your Web site, or it can be the Web site. The main thing that distinguishes a blog from a plain old Web site is that a blog is frequently updated with short messages, or posts. Readers often chime in with their own comments at the bottom of each post. This free exchange of ideas is what makes blogs a revolutionary tool for authors: A successful blog is a constant stream of ideas, inspiration, perspective, and advice—it’s a real-time, global focus group.
WHY BLOGS ARE BETTER
Some authors who already have a book for sale resist the idea of blogging and the “extra work” it entails. Their reasoning is, “Why create more deadlines when your book is already finished?” Well, blogging can help you maximize the effectiveness of things you’re probably already doing, like answering e-mails from your readers.
Compared with other types of Internet publicity content such as static Web sites or e-mail newsletters, blogs provide three big advantages:
– Blogs are easy to start and maintain.
– The short, serialized content of blogs encourages regular readership, repeated exposure to your books, and more sales.
– Blogs rank high in search-engine results from Google and other providers, making them easy to find.
Why do blogs get so much traffic from search engines? First, blogs are topical. When you’re writing about the same topics and ideas day in and day out, your site becomes packed with the keywords your audience is searching for. Stay at it awhile, and it becomes nearly impossible for your target audience to miss you, thanks to Google and the other search engines. Most new visitors will find your site by using a search engine, after looking for words and topics contained in your Web pages.
Another reason blogs are so easy to find is that search engines usually rank them higher than other types of Web sites. Thus your links can show up at the top of search results, which is where most people click.
Google and the other search engines give extra credit to blogs for a couple of reasons:
– Blogs are updated frequently, and the assumption is “fresh” content is more valuable.
– Blogs tend to have many links from other Web pages with similar content. The assumption is that because other bloggers and Webmasters have decided to link to your content, it’s probably valuable.
Your visibility in search results is key, since about 40 percent of your new visitors will likely arrive via a Web search. If your site ranks highly in Web searches for the keywords related to your book, you’ll have a constant source of well-qualified visitors and likely book buyers.
ENTERING THE BLOGOSPHERE
Step 1 in becoming a blogger is to consume some blogs yourself. Reading other blogs gives you a quick feel for what works, what doesn’t, and the techniques you’ll want to apply to your own blog.
There are millions of blogs, and finding ones that suit you can be like searching for a needle in a haystack. There’s no easy way to filter out low-quality blogs—you’ve just got to sample what’s out there.
A good place to begin is by browsing for blogs about your hobbies, pastimes and passions. You can find a list of the most popular blogs here:
Once you’ve found a few blogs of interest, it’s easy to find more. Bloggers tend to link to one another, both within their blog posts, and often within a side menu of links known as a blogroll.
A handy tool for keeping track of all your blogs is a newsreader or aggregator, which saves you the trouble of poking around the Web, looking for new blog posts. Instead, your newsreader gathers and displays updates for you. One free, easy-to-use reader is:
STARTING YOUR OWN BLOG
Most bloggers don’t have special blogging software installed on their PC, but work on their blog from within a Web browser. Here are the most popular blogging services:
– Blogger.com. Owned by Google since 2003. It’s free and easy. There’s an add-on program enabling you to post to your blog from Microsoft Word. You can use Blogger’s free Web space, Blogspot.com, but it’s best to keep your content on a domain you control, like YourBookTitle.com. Do this by using Blogger’s FTP feature. For instructions: Help.Blogger.com/bin/topic.py?topic=8917. Other blogging systems have similar options: You can publish free on their Web space, or publish on your own domain.
– TypePad.com. TypePad is a flexible and professional-looking platform, but takes a bit longer to learn than Blogger. Still, you’ll have many options for personalizing your blog without having to learn HTML computer code. Basic service costs $4.95 a month; the Plus level costs $8.95 a month and gives you up to three blogs hosted on your own domain. A 30-day free trial is available.
– WordPress.com. Set up a free blog, or upgrade to a fuller-featured service. All that’s required to begin is a user name and e-mail address.
For ideas on how to publish a blog that will attract new readers to your book, see my how-to book “Plug Your Book: Online Book Marketing for Authors.”
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how do i get a web site to get a blog going (instead of a press release) have 7 books to advvertise. 702 434 4253
Hi there,
You can start a blog immediately at blogger.com, which is free. However, I’d suggest you register your own domain (such as YourBookTitle.com) and use Blogger or another program to publish on your domain. An even better, more expensive, option is to register separate domains for each of your titles.
Get more details in my how-to book, Plug Your Book!: Online Book Marketing for Authors. You can read the entire book free here at Amazon by scrolling down to the link “click here to read this book now.” I suggest you look at the chapters “Building your author Web site” and “Blogging for Authors.”
Regards,
Steve Weber
Steve,
How can I find Blogs of interest groups who will promote my book?