I talk a lot about marketing strategies for authors, and one the most important 
is blogging. Hosting a blog gives you a way to connect with your readers, and it’s also incredibly powerful for search engine optimization (SEO). The more often you update your blog, the more reasons you give Google to find your site. You also naturally build up keyword concentration with the topics you write about, bringing even more traffic over time.
I learned about the benefits first hand when I launched my business website back in 2004 (BusinessInfoGuide.com). My goal was to attract my target audience of entrepreneurs, so I began sharing articles, tips and resources that I thought they would enjoy. I was basically blogging before I knew what blogging was! And with each new article, the site traffic increased. Today if you search for terms like “how to start a gym” or “how to use Google alerts,” articles from BusinessInfoGuide.com show up in the top search results.
Content is king and the more often you update your site, the better. For best results, that means blogging at least five days per week. Since many of us can’t keep up with that, set a goal to update your blog two to three times per week. It will take some time to build your audience, but you should see your traffic increasing steadily. And if you think blogging takes too much time, consider this: you’re a writer! Hosting a blog gives you an opportunity to exercise your writing muscles! I am grateful that I get to blog each week. It reminds me that I am a writer and it’s one of my favorite things that I do.
How to Start a Blog
If you don’t yet have a blog on your website, contact your webmaster and see if you can add one. Depending on how your site was built, you may be able to add a blog to your existing site. If that’s not an option, then consider having your site redesigned. While that may sound like a major undertaking, it will be worthwhile in the long run.
If you’re starting from scratch, I recommend having your site built on WordPress, which is a powerful blogging platform. Find a web master who knows how to build sites on WordPress (most do these days).
The last option is to launch a blog on another website, such as blogger.com. However, when you host your blog on a different domain, your main website can’t reap the rewards of the increased content and traffic. Ideally your blog should be hosted directly on your primary domain.
What to Write About
When getting started, consider what kind of content your audience would enjoy. You can share helpful tips, how-to advice, interviews, opinions on industry news, and other useful information. If you own the rights to your book, you can also share excerpts from your book, which can help inspire readers to make a purchase.
Pay attention to what your readers respond to—and do more of that! Also, your blog is the foundation of your social media strategy. Share a link to each new post on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It will take some time to find your groove and build momentum, but it’s a long-term investment that should pay off over time with new readers and buzz for you and your books!
Here’s a previous article on Blog Promotion Secrets that you may also find helpful.
Your point that the blog should be the foundation of the social media strategy is so true. Many companies or small business have aggressive Facebook or Twitter campaigns that eventually direct their potential customers to their blog, only to lose the audience because the blog does not match or live up to their expectations. We should start the blog with the understanding that it will anchor the organization’s social media presence.
Love “comments rule” above – had to leave one. 🙂
I recently started my blog! So excited!!
Check it out here:
http://www.metrorelationship.com/SuccessfulCouples/
Thanks, Emma! We just added the “comments rule” recently and have noticed a nice increase in comments as a result. Good luck with your blog!
I have a couple of different blogs, both of them are on Blogger. Would there be an advantage to having my blog be on WordPress, primarily, instead of Blogger? I just want to write, be read and have my writings be respected. I’d be interested in a dos and don’ts of the blogging world article.
Great question, Jeremy. The main benefit of building a blog on WordPress is hosting your own domain. Plus, you will find that WordPress is more sophisticated and will give you more options. Do you have your own domain? If your domain looks like “jeremysblog.blogger.com” then you are missing out on the opportunity to build your own brand under your own domain. Does that make sense? Hope it helps!
That totally makes sense and it helps a lot, thank you. I guess it’s time to head over to WordPress and make myself famous!
Also, incredible response time! You get a gold star for awesomeness!
I’ll happily accept that gold star! 🙂
I’ve been working on my blog for a couple of months now and I find myself torn regarding content and posting frequency (and I am just now commenting on this because I just saw this on a tweet today). I want to post frequently, but I only want to post decent quality content so that my visitors will know that when they see that I have a new post up they can be assured it will be good. What would you say is a good frequency for posting? I’ve seen some folks who do it every day and have nothing to say and some folks who post a couple of times a month but usually have some value in what they are saying.
Hi Scott, I totally understand the dilemma. For SEO purposes, the more often you update your blog, the better. I usually recommend a minimum of two to three times per week. If you can’t keep up with creating content at that pace, could you solicit guest posts or feature interviews on your blog? Anything you can do to increase frequency will help with traffic. Good luck!