Like you, I belong to a few writers groups online and one of the most asked questions lately has been "Should I have a blog?"
For those of you who have read my book you already know the answer, but for those who haven't I'll try to explain the why behind the resounding "yes you should."
My background is in offline marketing and advertising and any person in that line of work worth their salt will tell you that it's hard to get anything for FREE, but if you can, you should use it. For now, blog platforms are FREE. This may not be the case forever, but for now why not take advantage of the medium to further your marketing reach and help get both, you and your books out there?
The biggest problem I see with authors and blogs is the fact that they don't plan how they will use the platform and instead judge the results by an arbitrary set of values.
I use my blog as a billboard. It's there to catch the occasional passerby, and I try to make sure that there is enough information on myself and my books to be informative when someone drops by. I also use my blog as a means to an end. If you don't have a blog, you are virtually eliminating several additional methods of marketing yourself without even realizing you have done it.
What? Because I have a blog, I can participate in several things that I cannot if I only have a website.
Book Tours: It's hard to participate in book tours, and blog hops without a blog. While there are paid versions you can easily set up tours and hops on your own working with fellow authors to cross-promote each other's books.
Articles: Using a blog you can easily draw attention to your blog and therefore, a static advertisement for you as an author by sharing the posts via Twitter and Facebook. This is wonderful when your articles become viral with many authors sharing them across the various platforms.
If you're creative, you can come up with lots of ways to use a blog, but be careful not to miss the point of a blog. A blog is a form of communication, and communication can also be static. When you create a blog, it creates one more place that readers MIGHT find you. Don't be overly concerned if you blog isn't getting thousands of hits a month. It doesn't have to. It's a tool and right now you can use it for FREE.
If you have thoughts on blogging you'd like to share I'd love to hear your viewpoint. Please feel free to share.
My answer is yes, the blog is what's sold quite a few of my books over the last 7 months. A part of why my numbers fell so much is there's a limited quantity I'm reaching through the blog and I've probably reached saturation for the time being. That's one of the reasons for all of those other things I'm doing these days.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely agree. A great way to build an online presence and a cornerstone of the social media platform. There are probably successful indie authors who don't have a blog or a website but they're few and far between.
ReplyDeleteBlogging is also a great way for an author to remind themselves that people will read their stuff. Nothin as invigorating as people coming by and commenting on your blog post because they like the content. That's great feedback. Otherwise the only feedback might be when people buy the next book you release and if / when that small proportion of buyers write a review.
I agree it's a way of reaching out to other writers through guest posting (on other blogs and vice versa), but would my books be selling without my blog? Who knows? But I do know people give up too easily blogging, or blog only about THEM. Who wants to read about their holiday in some far flung place?
ReplyDeleteI love the community feel you get from blogging. Some people's blogs are like a neighbour's house, where I can nip around for a coffee - like here. :)
I agree with you Tammie. I would love to have a cool blog. My decision not to have one was a tough choice. With a family, demanding 50/60 hour per week job, and a release schedule I want to stick to I had to make some choices about my time. I have chosen to follow my passion, which is novel writing. I am sure I would sell more books if I had the time to develop a blog platform. But I am content with it all for now. But don't rule me out on an occasional guest post or interview though. I've done a couple and enjoyed it thoroughly.
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