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Blogging for First-time Authors

February 09, 2010 by Kat Gautreaux, Account Manager

One of the essential ingredients to a successful book marketing plan is a blog.

A blog will allow you to post journal entries about your process during the book writing stage, to post entries about your publishing timeline, to write about your published book, and to write about everything else you are interested in between.

How does blogging for book marketing work?

It works by establishing a home base for your marketing efforts. As you read other people’s blogs, you can comment from your blog identity, allowing them to follow you back to your blog. When you use Twitter, you can put up tweets about new blog posts and also put the link to your blog in your profile so Twitter users can read more about you. This will drive traffic to your blog.

On your blog site, make sure to add a link to where prospective readers can buy your book.

Why does blogging for book marketing work?

It works because it creates a virtual world where you can be the expert on your book’s topic and allows people with similar interests to interact with you. The more readers you gain for your blog, the more readers you are likely to gain for your book! By allowing readers to be a part of your journey as an author—from first inspiration to the exciting book launch—you can form a community of people invested in your project and your success!

It can be difficult to get going… So here is a quick list of topics you could start blogging about today!

List of 5 ideas or thoughts—Numbered lists are always winners. It helps the blog reader understand what they are going to be reading and helps them get to the end. This works in a blog about business very easily. You can write about one of your chapters, offer tips, etc. But it could also work for fiction! Say you are writing a young adult fiction book about battling a demon. Your numbered list could be “5 Things You Need to Battle a Demon.” It’s entertaining and it brings people into your book.

Publish a list of links—Can’t think of anything to write? Has someone else written it already? Post a link to the articles on your blog. They’ll appreciate the favor and also your blog readers won’t feel like you’ve abandoned your blog for the day!

Take a recent experience and share it—Maybe it is obvious, but writing about something that made you have an emotion is always good fodder for a blog. It lets other people into your world and also allows them to share their own experiences in the comments section. It may even inspire you!

Are you ready to start blogging for your book?

Tags: marketing, writing, blogging, twitter, tips
Filed Under: Social Media

Comments

These are good tips.

To flesh out the “list of links” post, you can give a brief summary of the article, post the link, then offer your thoughts about it. That way your loyal readers will get the benefits of reading whatever you’ve linked to, but will also get to hear from you, which is why they tuned in.

                    posted on 2/15/2010 by Susan Wenger

Why isn’t there a “consumer” or “personal finance” category in Wheatmark Bookstore?

                    posted on 2/17/2010 by Sid Moore

Thanks, Sid, for the suggestion. It will be time to reevaluate the categories and we will certainly consider this.

                    posted on 2/17/2010 by Wheatmark

Kat,

I am looking forward to continuing my Journey with Wheatmark. after months of due diligence I was pleased to have determined wheatmark was the best option for my needs.Sam and Atilla have been top drawer and quite helpful in educating me to your processes. Next stop learning about blogging. MJK

                    posted on 2/19/2010 by Michael J Kerrigan

Twitter seems to be the number one marketing venue to promote new books with ‘tweets’, but I think for authors library thing or goodreads might be better.

                    posted on 4/13/2010 by Karl Harris

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