Running A Blog The Right Way
Now that I find myself busy embarking on my first real blog tour, I am beginning to interact with other not as writers but as bloggers. The one thing I have noticed is that careful planning and preparation that these people put into their blogs. Not just in terms fo ensuring that the grammar is correct in every post, or that they avoid using too many links and looking like a giant ad board, but with regards to the way they run the blog.
They run their blog like a business, which I guess it is, or rather a division of a business. The blog of a writer is a place for us to promote ourselves, share ideas and kind of drain our minds of all the thoughts and notions that float around in it, making space for the current works in progress. Not forgetting of course the cross promotion of other writers, carefully placed back-links and guest posts from aspiring writing, successful writers, publishers, agents and cover artists. The other important thin a blog gives us writers is a centralized place to sell our work. Sure the purchases will go through other sites and companies, but we can direct people to our page in order to get there.
The important thing, and the part that I am only just really beginning to grasp is how to run a blog well. My current system, ROW80 updates aside is to wake up, if I have an idea I'll try to write something before work, or otherwise at various points during the day. Other days I simply have an interesting (to me at least) idea his me as I am driving to work or sitting behind my desk, and then I try to find the time to write about it. Some days I have no clue and try to just force something out for the sake of it (Today is a bit of both, I had an idea, but this post is somehow moving away on a tangent)
I have approached several fellow writers, people I am luck enough to call friends, and asked if they would be willing to host a post I have written or will write once I receive their approval. While all have said yes, they have all come back to me with a schedule. They can put me in the diary for the xxth or have space in two weeks. This is fine with me, anybody who is willing to put up with my ramblings can wait years to do so if they chose. (ok maybe not years.) But it certainly got me thinking. There are some days when I get multiple ideas, and while I make a note of them, but the time it comes to writing them I can never get that same feeling and train of thought going that I had in the initial moment.
Maybe it is time that I started to write the ideas in full or as close as, as soon as I get them, that way I can build up a string of blog posts that can either be scheduled in or kept in an In Case of Emergency Break Glass kind of box. Possibly even a pile set aside for each.
It does strike me as a sensible idea, and may actually make my blog appear slightly more professional. I won't hide who I am behind a mask of dead straight professionalism, because that just isn't who I am, but hey a little improvement here and there can never hurt.
