Today I’m sharing 12 blogging tips for authors, because blogging was one of the smartest and best things I ever did for my business as a book coach and author. In this post you’ll learn the why, how, what, when and more, in order to grow your community and write a book your readers will want to buy and share with others.
Boost Your Book with a Blog
Blogging has the potential to be the star of your book marketing plan. For community building, blogging is one of the most effective tools you can employ to create content and attract readers. And that content will give search engines even more reasons to send visitors to your site.
Just as important, though, blogging will help you write a better book (stay with me another minute and I’ll share how).
Those new to blogging often ask me where to start, what blogging platform to use, how to get people to your blog, how to blog effectively and how to use your blog to better serve your readers.
These 12 blogging tips for authors will guide you to writing the best content for your readers, grow your community and make the most of your blog, as an author or author-in-the-making.
- Use WordPress: I use WordPress because it’s fairly easy to use and very flexible – there are multitudes of plugins (WordPress lingo for “apps”) to do just about anything you can think of (from a shopping cart to a spam stopper to social sharing), and WordPress is excellent for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Use Yoast or Yoast premium plugins to help with your SEO and drive more visitors to your blog.
- Invite Comments and questions: Engage your readers and they’ll stick around. You’ll learn more about them–what they think, love, share, ignore, need–helping you write a better book! Plus engagement helps with SEO. This is not as easy as it used to be when there were fewer blogs, but it still works.
- Use Social media to share: More people will find your blog if you share on social media. You can even tag people you quote or link to in the post. And you can encourage others to share your blog socially by including a social media plugin, like the one you’ll find at the bottom of this post!
- Connect with colleagues and influencers and share their stuff: The more you support others; the more they will support you.
- Choose Keywords: Make sure you identify a focus keyword that you use in the title, first sentence and throughout the post. The Yoast plugin can let you know whether you need to do it more often or less. In addition, you can identify tags (other keywords used in the post).
- Be Consistent: Once a week or more is ideal ; blogging the same day each week is also helpful if you can stick to that.
- Schedule Ahead: Going on vacation? You can write a post and schedule it ahead of time. Just remember to share on social media the day it posts.
- Your posts can become the main part of your newsletter. I send a newsletter every other week. This helps me commit to at least a post every other week and gives me a way to offer valuable information to my community consistently. If the post is engaging it also makes it easy for them to respond.
- Share it elsewhere: You can reprint on linked in, thrive global or medium. Just wait a few days before sharing on some blogs so that search engines “know” that your blog was where it was posted first. Follow others on medium and comment and you will attract more followers and comments yourself.
- Pitch to a national blog: Many of my clients blog on national sites, like Psychology Today. While it’s still important for you to “drive traffic” to your national blog through social media and email, once a post gets enough attention, that website will start promoting your post in a morning email or on social media.
- Check the guidelines for Helpareporter.com and PRleads.com. Their tips can also help you in writing a strong blog post, even though they focus on pitches.
- Headlines and images improve readability and keyword density (for search engine optimization): just be sure to “tag’ your pictures with keywords.
These blogging tips for authors should be enough to get you started and blogging strong! Feel free to add your own tips below as a comment, or ask questions on blogging. Oh, and here’s one more–give people a way to subscribe. I do it through a newsletter but you can also use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or other ways to let readers subscribe.
Happy Surprises From Blogging
After I first drafted this post, I received an email from a doctor who had attended the publishing workshop I led during Harvard Medical School’s CME course for women in healthcare leadership three or four years ago.
She reminded me that I’d told her that her book idea seemed both worthy and marketable.
She told me that, since then, my blog helped guide her in writing her book proposal. After each rejection from a publisher, she recalled my supportive words and regained her hope. Eventually, she found the publisher who believed in the book as much as she did–an impressive publisher, too! The book hits bookstores this October!
You can imagine my excitement to discover that, for four years, my blog and my one-time comment had sustained this writer in her search for a publisher. When we put our words out in the world, week after week, as one does with a blog, we often don’t even realize the impact we may have. Yet, that impact may be the greatest gift of all in blogging. We make a difference for people, in the same way that our mentors and teachers make a difference for us.
What do you hope to get out of blogging? Or, if you already blog, what insights, tips and benefits can you share as a comment below?
Writing is an Art and if your content is precise, informative, and accurately written down. so, it will automatically grab the attention of the audience. Recently I read Jeremiah Revel’s fiction Book which is Beautifully written down you must have to read this book.
Great informative blog. but the layout of the website is not so attractive. I must recommend making the outlook attractive so customers may take interest in your content. by the way content is very well organized.
Thanks for your feedback Jessica. It would be helfpul if you can be more specific about what is not working.