Where Should Your Blog Call Home?

In advance of my book, The Trust, being published I dove, well, stepped, into the deep end of the book marketing pool with the goal being to let the world know about my book.  There also wasn’t a lot of planning on my part.

I spent a lot of time working on a website – you can find it here.  As I was working through this process a friend asked me what my blog was going to focus upon.  My response? 

“What blog?” (This blog, by the way.)

After that comment and a bit of looking around, I decided a blog could be fun. 

It’s been a great experience. 

However, as I am learning, with every aspect of this writing business, having something, whether it be a book, a blog or a twitter feed – just having it out there alone is not enough.  You have to tell people about it and hope they come by.

I found this entertaining, even akin to multi-level marketing.  After all, one of the reasons I have the blog is to market the book, but it seems I also have to market the blog. However, I have found some neat ways to get the word on my blog out.

Here are a few of my initial things that I have been doing that seem to be working.

1 – Make it relevant.  I post to my blog twice a week. On Mondays I try to share some experience about my life as a writer.  On Friday I look to publish something to help with the process of writing or publishing.  If people start reading it, they will expect there to be new content up.

2 – Make it fun to read.  That means interesting and, I certainly hope on my part both fun and – generally – grammatically correct.

3 – Keep it focused and concise.  For me that means keeping it under 600 words. 

4 – I visit other blogs (and participate on them)- I never used to read blogs, now I spend time doing it several times a week and I enjoy it.

5 – I shamelessly self-market.  If I don’t do it who will?  Twitter, other blogs, pingomatic, and where ever else I can find a place to get the word out there.  I’ve had some ups and downs and have a few thoughts on what works, well, at least have worked for me.  I‘ve also made some mistakes and have learned from them.  If I can help someone out and not have them make the same mistake, then all the better.

Now in addition to this, one other method I have found for spreading the word on my blog is by having several different homes for the blog.  For instance, my main blog is on my website, but I also have a feed to the blog on several other sites – Amazon, Goodreads.com, and redroom.com.  I use an RSS feed and when I update my website blog the others are updated as well. 

Now I hope that one day people will be falling all over themselves to get to my website, but that day isn’t today.  However, I know that people are on other sites and If my blog has a home there then there are just that many more chances for someone to see it.  If they do they just might come back.

Well, at least I hope so.

Oh, and if you’ve made it this far I would love it if you would consider buying my book!

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