Your Book Is Your Business

OK, your publisher or publicist or friends and colleagues have told you that you must start blogging. Why? About what? But, I have some serious writing to do. But, I haven’t a clue where to start or what to do. Then again, perhaps you have started blogging and are certain that the only audience you’ve developed are a few friends and family who visit occasionally out of a sense of duty.

Content is always king, form follows content, and the minutiae of your life isn’t going to gain you a following unless you are a humourist whose books are based on engaging minutiae. So choose a subject that is near and dear to your audience. Use your blog as research for your next book. If you are a poet and don’t want to give away all of your poems, use some of them for illustration in a blog on poetics. If you are a food writer, write about the aspects of food that you are researching and include tips and recipes. Let your audience know what you are doing with your latest book. Tell them the stories behind the development of your current book and how it is affecting your audiences. But most important, decide your strategy and target your audience in advance and build your following. That means marketing and promotion.

I’ve amassed quite a collection of resources in the past few years - books, ebooks, websites, blogs - on blogging and other social networking blather and am delighted to provide you with a free, straightforward, how-to e-book for beginning bloggers, courtesy of Maria Reyes-McDavis, the web success diva. Just go to her website at http://www.websuccessdiva.com, sign up for her newsletter and receive the no-nonsense Blog Success 2.0 Guide: “A complete step-by-step guide to turn your blog into a lean, mean traffic building machine that will target, engage, and convert your audience.” It’s the whole, meal deal without all of the choices and philosophical meanderings you’ll find in the various tomes on the subject. Not only that, but her newsletter is always filled with meaty, useful tips that you can put into action immediately. Maria’s expertise moved me from research into action. I hope she’ll do the same for you.