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!