Promoting your blog isn’t exactly the same as marketing your book(s)! Book marketing is finding ways to sell your books; promoting your blog may indeed help to promote and market your books, but the purpose of this blog post is to help you promote the blog itself, drawing interest to it and growing your blog readership and community.

The following are the topics I’ll be covering more indepth in separate posts in this series; I’ll add links as I post them:

1. Is Author Blogging Dead?
2. Blog or Website or Both?
3. Social Media
4. Author Blogs
5. Connections and Audience
6. Content Tips
7. Goals
8. Layout
9. Types of Posts
10. Specific Pages
11. Promoting Your Blog
12. SEO
13. Ideas for Posts
14. E-Mail Newsletters
15. Author Blogs: My personal conclusions – and series resource list

PROMOTING YOUR BLOG

Since I’ve been reminded (quite rightly) that the blog posts in this series tend to be “exhaustive, and yes, exhausting,” I’ll try to make this post a bit simpler and to-the-point! So, I’ll do this post in list format. Here goes!

• Content: Consider the following as you create posts for your blog and website:
  • Is your content worth being found and read? Is it usable, not just theoretical? Is it attractive? Is it shareable?
  • Are you linking to your site on social media so people can easily find it?
  • Interview relevant people. You’ll get good content, as well as credibility and social proof.
  • Make your blog interesting by using different kinds of engagement: questions and answers, commenting, challenges, polls, assignments, surveys, discussion posts, quizzes, social media involvement, email newsletters, forums/chats, etc.
  • Blogging is now considered by many to be a good source of longer, instructive articles; what will be helpful and interesting to your audience?
  • Decide on the subjects you’ll cover and your distinctive angle. What is your focus?

• Community building: How do you encourage community, both online and in person? For example:
  • Participate in places where your potential readers gather (online in blogs—both your blog and others’ author blogs–and social media; in person at writers’ groups, conferences, workshops, etc.).
  • On social media, join closely related groups. For example, a friend writes about self-care and spirituality. She found joining writers’ groups didn’t help much, so now she is joining specifically self-care and spirituality related groups. Note that successful blogging usually requires social media support.
  • Encourage “following” (in both blogs and social media) … and follow those whose sites you find useful.
  • Network with other bloggers. Hand out business cards.
  • Write guest posts for other bloggers … and invite others to write guest posts for your blog.
  • Contact other bloggers (by email or phone, etc.). Be genuine and relevant. Share a link to a specific post on your blog that might suit their needs—and share their posts on your blog and social media.
  • Volunteer to give a talk on some aspect of writing to a local organization, or volunteer to teach a school class lesson about your experiences being a writer.
  • Submit a story to a media outlet (newspaper, magazine, radio, etc.) from time to time. Make sure it is relevant to the audience, and perhaps has a unique angle.
  • Share some interesting aspects of your life beyond just your writing. Readers want to know about “you” as a real person.

• Create value: Reach out to your readers beyond just encouraging them to read your books:
  • Hand out bookmarks.
  • Offer to do a workshop or give a talk.
  • Start or join a group (organization, book club, focused feedback group, etc.) that is interested in your topic or genre.
  • Comment on other related blogs and social media people and groups. Ensure your comments add value. And always be gracious.
  • Connect/link your blog to other online channels such as podcasts, video sites like YouTube, conversations on social media, and so on. Offer to do guest posts at other sites.

• Learn from other bloggers:
  • Watch what other bloggers are doing: listen, observe, learn. What can you learn from them and apply to your blog’s situation? Analyze their:
    • content, topics, voice, frequency, length of posts, original or curated context, the categories and/or tags they use, single or multiple authors
    • style (authoritative, conversational, use of 1^st or 3^rd person, humorous, serious, casual, formal, etc.)
    • level (beginner to advanced)
    • approach (inspirational, informational, news, etc.)
    • media use (text, graphics, videos, podcasts, other audio, etc.)
    • their titles and headings (both words and layout)
  • Find ways to differentiate your blog and stand out in the blogosphere.

• Overall tips:
  • Spend 10 to 15 minutes a day promoting your blog one way or another. The daily accumulation will help your blog audience grow.
  • Monetization may be part of your promotion. Consider advertising on the blog or links to other sites where you sell your books, and affiliate marketing. If you advertise on your site, consider the size, position, and appearance of your ads. Don’t be “pushy” with your advertising. And note that spending a lot on ads doesn’t usually increase your monetization very much: useful content is generally more successful.
  • Create a spreadsheet of the types of posts and topics you do. For each post, give a score. Include notes of what worked well, or didn’t, what triggered discussion, shares, links.
  • Use online writing best practices. Structure your post layout for a good online reading experience and create an environment that will lead to action: commenting, social media interaction, e-newsletter, potential book sales.
  • Be aware that blogging does take time and energy and has most success when you are willing to stick with it over an extended period of time—usually, at minimum, at least a year, to really build a strong blog audience. Keep this in mind as you decide whether to blog, and how complex your author blog and website will be.
  • Try to have fun with your blogging. Enjoy it. If you find it to be a drag, your readers will probably pick up on that.
  • Update old blog posts that are still relevant but need to be more up-to-date, have dead links, etc. Consider deleting posts that are never read, are really out-of-date, or are no longer relevant.
  • Know your blog and website goals and make sure every post reflects that messaging in some way. If your goals change over time, that should also be reflected in your new posts (and perhaps remove old posts that do not serve your current goals, unless they are truly “evergreen” and continue to be useful to readers.)

WHAT’S NEXT? Which of the tips above could you use for your blog? Choose one or two to try out!

Don’t forget to comment, please! (The comment link is in the top left corner). Did you find this “list” approach less “exhausting” than some of the previous posts which had a more “paragraph” style format? Were you able to more easily “skim” the post, and then just read the parts that apply to you and your blog? I realize it is still quite “exhaustive” (lots of information) but hope maybe the layout (and less words than some of the other posts) might make the post more useful. And/or … which of the above ideas are you going to try out? How do you think they will work on your blog?