Blogging for Aspiring Authors

A lot of aspiring writers are bloggers. A LOT. And I think it’s a good idea. Why? Here are five reasons:

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1) It might help. You never know. If your blog catches on, you could become a minor celebrity. And that certainly can’t hurt. Unless you are a celebrity for making an idiot of yourself. Don’t do that.

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2) It gets you used to writing for an audience. If you say something boneheaded, someone will let you know, either in your comments or by blogging about you elsewhere. You will learn from this. Also, when you know people are going to be reading your stuff, you’re going to be more careful. Those spelling and grammar errors will start becoming embarrassing, and you’ll make an effort to write better. Even if it’s nonfiction, an improvement in your basic writing skill is always desirable.

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3) It (might) get you readers, otherwise known as a platform. If people like reading your nonfiction, chances are they’ll be willing to read your fiction, too. (For getting readers, see below.)
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4) It gets you a leg-up on publicity when your book does sell. A lot of my fellow Carina Press authors started from scratch when their book first came out. I already had hundreds of blog subscribers, plus, I knew what I was doing, and I knew people. Why did knowing people help? Because many of them were willing to read a review copy of my book.
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5) It gives your personal website a reason to exist. Many aspiring writers feel funny creating a website that features their fiction when it has not sold yet. I did not. Why? Because by the time I started my site, it had a reason to exist: my Debuts & Reviews blog, which grew out of Fantasy Debut, my original Blogspot blog. Give your site some other reason to exist and you’ll feel a lot better about letting people know about it.
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And now the big question: how do you get readers? Here are five ways!
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1) Be a reader. You can’t get readers until you become a reader. The hands-down best way of finding readers for your blog is to comment on other blogs. If your comments are interesting enough, people will click through to your blog to see what else you have to say.
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2) Be interesting. The best way to be interesting is to be yourself, and to write about things that interest you. Really, you are more interesting than you think! But most important, don’t be long-winded. If every post is 1000 words or more, people are going to find you tiresome. Don’t rant. Compose your posts like those essay assignments you did in college. An introduction, paragraphs on 3 to 5 points, and a conclusion. It really is a good form to stick to.
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3) Be helpful. List posts like this one are popular. Try to think of things that you know, that other people might want to know. And write about it in a handy list form. Also, every once in a while, do a link-up post where you point your readers to all those interesting online places you found lately. Occasionally, those places will notice you and maybe they’ll link back! It also helps to maintain a blogroll. Once you add a blog to your blogroll, click it. This way, you will generate a referral on the blog to which you linked, making it more likely that the owner will notice you.
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4) Be friendly. Some bloggers don’t participate in the comments. If you are someone like an agent and need to keep some distance between yourself and your readers, this is understandable. But for everyone else, don’t be aloof. Engage! Respond to comments on your blog. Visitors don’t like talking to themselves. If I start to get the impression that the host is one of those bloggers who never comment, I’m less likely to comment as well.
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5) Use Twitter and Facebook. Yes, use both. Some people like one, and some like the other, so you want to be in both places. They are my top referrers, outside of Google and my old Fantasy Debut site. It is not difficult to set up your Twitter to feed into your Facebook. Follow people in both tools, get followed in return, and most important, tweet your posts. If your tweet feeds to Facebook, people will comment in both places plus your blog.
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And finally, here are three other pieces of advice:
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1) Use Feedburner. This will allow you to carry your subscribers with you if you change blogs. I was able to do this when I moved from Fantasy Debut.
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2) Publish your full feed. The point of your running a website is to build an audience. Nurture your feed subscriber number. It is the most important number for you, not the number of clicks you get (unless you run ads). The best way to nurture your subscriber number is to publish that full feed for your readers’ convenience. It will also help your posts get read. If you publish only an abbreviated version, fewer of your posts will get read, and your comment numbers will plummet.
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3) Use Google Analytics and Google Alerts. Google Analytics shows you where your traffic comes from, and how much. If you get an influx of traffic from Joe Blough’s site, click it and see what he said about you, and then thank him (if appropriate). Google Alerts will tell you whenever anyone is talking about you. Set up an alert for the name that you are known as online, and for the name of your blog.

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I hope you found this useful! If you have any other suggestions or questions, please leave them in the comments, and I’ll try to help.

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Kimber An here.  Thank you, Tia!  To learn more about Tia and her books, please click on over to Debuts & Reviews  She just had Writer Wednesday with a post by Leanna Renee Hieber, author of The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker.  Miss Hieber talked about how to write a series, which I found very helpful.