Why Blogs are an Author’s Best Friend

By Carl Weiss

Image courtesy of GoodBooks.Online

In my last blog, “Your Book, Your Business,” I wrote about the many moving parts that make a successful online marketing campaign work when it comes to promoting a book.  In today’s post, I would like to delve deeper into the one component that can be the most valuable of all: Blogging.

The BIG Deal about Blogs

Most writers know that a blog can boost readership when combined with social media.  They feel that blogs sort of pick up where the short copy of social posts leaves off.  When you realize that posts to Facebook and Google+, not to mention Twitter rely on short copy, then it only seems natural that blogposts would make a natural springboard to posting longer copy that can provide more detail and fill in the blanks.  The problem with this way of thinking is that it relegates a blog to kissing cousin status that denigrates the blogpost to second class citizen.  As I will prove below, this way of thinking turns the power of blogging on its head and reduces its effectiveness as an online marketing tool.

In the first place, blogging can and should be the focus of your efforts online, if you are looking to build a large, loyal following of readers who hang on your every word.  Properly crafted and deployed, a blog can inform, engage and convert large numbers of readers to come back week in and week out to see what you have in store for them.  It can build a bridge between author and reader like nothing else.  More importantly, it can help you develop not only a relationship with readers, but a database of large numbers of readers that you can use to spur sales and reviews of your next book.

How big of a reader can you create, you ask?  Below is a screenshot of my other blog, Working the Web to Win, which is the title of one of my books.  As you can see in the image below, we are currently knocking on the million pageview mark.  Granted, it took four years and nearly 300 blogposts to do it.  But it was well worth the effort.  As you will notice from the stats, between 1,000 and 2,000 readers daily find their way to the WWW blog.  Many of these readers are repeat customers eager to read more about the ins and outs of the Internet, which is the main theme of the blog and the accompanying book. 

While the numbers are impressive, so was the amount of staying power that it took to sustain the effort.  I’m talking four years of weekly effort that saw me and my business partner post 1-2 blogs like clockwork.  This meant not only coming up with a topic every or two single week, but taking the time to craft a well thought out blogpost of 1,000-2,000 words.  These weren’t what my business partner calls “Fat Tweets.”  These are full blown magazine-quality articles replete with accompanying photos or even videos that are topic-related.

When most bloggers are happy to put out 500-800 word posts, we were delivering four times that length.  Why?  Because longer posts are far more engaging, they deliver more robust content and last but not least they also allowed us to embed a couple of offers on each blog that are designed to help us generate a database of prospects.

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You’ll notice that two out of the three above mentioned elements were expressly for the benefit of the reader.  If you want to generate a massive audience, you need to keep that in mind.  First and foremost, a blog needs to be centered around your readers as opposed to yourself.  If all you do is write about you, a reader is going to look elsewhere for information and entertainment.  Don’t delude yourself into thinking that readers are interested in rhetoric.  What they really want is what I refer to as Infotainment.  Give them a speech and they will not return.  Tell them how to save time or money, impart an idea or skill that they have not before considered, or make them laugh and you have set a hook in that reader that will allow you to reel him or her in week in and week out.

Of course, the onus is on you to produce weekly posts that grab a reader’s attention and make them come back for more.  The question is, do you have the staying power to come up with a riveting post week in and week out.  Make no bones about it, if you want to create a massive following, you need to post at least one blog every week.  Where most author bloggers fail is that they put out a post every once in a while.  Then they lament the fact that they have precious little readership.  Is that what’s bothering you, Bunky? 

How to Put the Blogging Pedal to the Metal

 When it comes to making the wheels of a blog turn, there are three key elements:

1.      Content

2.      Consistency

3.      Distribution

You’re a writer, right?  So the content should come naturally.  If you believe that, then I have some Florida swampland that I can let you take off my hands.  If you are going to write a minimum of 52 posts per year for years on end, you need to find a way inspiration for your blogs that doesn’t quit.  Since I not only write my own blogs, but get paid to ghostwrite other people’s blogs, let me clue you into the secret sauce that will allow you to write blogs galore. 

In the past 5 years, I have written weekly blogs for everyone from chiropractors and eldercare providers, to plumbers and replacement window dealers.  The way that I learned about all these varied topics was to research them online.  Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, I used the power of the Internet to roll out weekly blogs on topics I know nothing about.  This boiled down to perusing competitor blogs and newsfeeds in order to find timely and even trending topics that could be crafted into articles designed to engage an audience.  Crafting doesn’t mean plagiarizing.  It means generating a germ of an idea that can be used to generate a unique article.

Even though you may be an expert in your own right, trying to come up with 52 articles each and every year is more daunting a task than you might think.  Let me give you another secret of my blogging success.  I call it putting on your associate producer hat.  In the TV industry the associate producer is the person tasked with making sure all the actors have their scripts, the guests are ready to join the talent on the set and the lighting crew has done their part.  In short, the AA is a glorified gopher who is used to wearing a lot of hats.  Here’s how that applies to your blogging efforts.

Every day you literally trip over ideas for a blog or two.  Whether it occurs while you are reading or texting or going through your daily routine, somewhere somehow an idea or an anecdote pops up that makes good fodder for a blog.  The problem is, if you don’t push the pause button long enough to make a note of it, it’s gone forever.  What’s even worse is that in today’s wired world it couldn’t be easier to lay down the groundwork by using whatever device comes to hand to jot it down or shoot a few frames of video to lay down the foundation for a blog. By following this tenet, you will take two thirds of the weight of producing worthwhile blogs off your shoulders. 

Why You Need a Blog Buddy

This and working the web will give you enough rope to start turning out weekly blogs that are informative and entertaining.  This leads us to the next fly in the ointment: staying power.  Enthusiasm and good writing habits will only take you so far.  What you need if you hope to be able to sustain the effort over the long haul is someone you can call on for feedback, somebody that you can bounce ideas off.  In short, you need a blog buddy.  

A blog buddy can be a fellow writer, an employee or a friend.  The most important requirement of a blog buddy is that he or she gives you honest feedback.  The last thing you want is to assign the task to a "Yes Man" who only tells you what you want to hear.  Because if you hope to build a massive following, be prepared to invest a lot of time in the effort.  We're talking years here.  

While you may dream of having a million readers, in the beginning you will only have a handful of the faithful.  This leads to the last and most critical part of blogging success: Distribution.  Unlike websites which are beholden to the whims of the search engines, blogs generate the majority of their readership from social networks.  Your social networks.  If you have thousands of followers, they can be leveraged to generate readership.  If you have a few hundred, you have a problem.  Of course, that doesn't mean you can't build a following.  The question is, how to get the job done in as short a period of time as possible.  

You can find Carl's latest book on Amazon

Remember, once published, a book has a relatively short shelf life.  That means you need to have your audience ready to go.  If not, you might want to consider hiring the job out.  One of the ways we achieved nearly one million pageviews was by creating a system that helps our clients and ourselves to generate readership fast.  We call it Team Tech.  What Team Tech does is assign 5 non-competing businesses to read, comment on and repost blogs to Twitter, Facebook and Google+.  When you consider the fact that blogs that are reposted generate a far wider distribution, this reciprocal system gets the job done in a hurry.  An added benefit is that it also provides feedback from other readers.

The bottom line is that if you are serious about building readership and with it an audience of loyal customers eager to buy your next book, you need to make blogging your best friend.

Carl Weiss is president of Working the Web to Win and publisher of GoodBooks.Online.  He has also written hundreds of magazine articles and blogs, plus 5 books.