J.C. Martin's Blog, page 21
September 12, 2012
FoW’12: Building an Author’s Blog Platform by Nicola Morgan
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Does your blog help build your author platform?
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Author and blogger extraordinaire Nicola Morgan gave some pointers on building an online blog presence. Here are a summary of some of her tips:
Blog basics
Your blog should:
Be consistent in content/theme (see below)
Reflect your personality
Contain easily accessible information about yourself, and most importantly, your BOOKS (this doesn’t mean promoting your books in your posts, but to just have purchase links in the sidebar, or a page listing your works)
Link well between your online presences, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, LinkedIn, etc.
Have some way for readers to contact you
Most importantly, you should blog only because you want to, and not because you ought to. You should enjoy it, and it should never get in the way of your writing.
What should I blog about?
For non-fiction writers, this is easy: your area of expertise.
With fiction writers, it’s a bit trickier,but here are some of Nicola’s suggestions:
Topics related to your book, e.g. if you wrote a story set in Victorian London, you could post about your research, and about life in Victorian London.
If you’ve “been around the block”, so to speak, you could offer publishing advice or tips on the craft of writing
For writers of lighter fiction (humour, chick lit, etc.), your blog could be purely chatty and entertaining
You could blog about an interesting aspect of your life: a hobby, where you live, your job, the life of a cancer survivor, living with a medical condition, etc.
The key is to be consistent; readers come to your blog with an expectation of what they expect to read.
And, of course, let your personality shine through. 
When it comes to blogging, interaction with your readers is key.
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How to increase your blog followers and reader interactions
Be prepared to blog at least 3 times a week
Respond to reader comments and visit their blogs
Generate discussion by asking a question, or by conducting a quiz or poll
Host giveaways or participate in blog hops
Link to other people’s blogs, either to interesting posts or via your blog roll. They may reciprocate by linking back to you!
How to ensure your blog posts get picked up by search engines, particularly Google
Update your blog frequently
Include key words and phrases in your post (within reason, and not such that it will read awkwardly)
Pictures (used with permission), especially with captions, help
Posts should be brief — no more than 800 words
Include links where the link phrase is a likely search phrase
Now this gets super technical: your post should follow an ‘F’ pattern:
Placement of your key search word/phrase should roughly form an ‘F’ pattern in the body of your post.
More useful and accessible information regarding search engine optimisation (SEO) can be found at SEO for Books and SEO Tipsy.
Guest posting on other blogs is a great way to extend your reach! Always remember to ask nicely, and to ensure that you pitch a post relevant and suitable to that blog.
Finally, it is important to remember that blogging should not be used primarily as a means of increasing your book sales. It should be a means of building an online presence, and maybe, just maybe some of your readers might be interested in you enough to try reading your books.
Now it’s time to find out what YOU think! What features in your favourite blogs make you return to them again and again? Care to honour/flatter/embarass someone by naming your favourite blog?
Source: J.C. Martin, Fighter Writer
