Blog Hop Your Way to Success

By Annette Cole Mastron, Communications Director for Southern Writers Magazine

Are you stumped as to how to gain readers for your books?

The other day, I was talking to Southern Writers Magazine’s Editor in Chief, Susan Reichert, and Managing Editor, Doyne Phillips. We discussed new ways authors can promote themselves at no cost to the writer.

The discussion turned to blogs and how authors could promote themselves when commenting on another person's blog. Between the three of us, we get over 150 notifications a day from a variety of bloggers we follow. We brainstormed about how writers could use all their own blog notifications to spread the word indirectly about their books.

It's ridiculous how easy it will be for authors to invest just a little time that could gain them readers which equals sales. All you need to do is make a comment on every blog sent daily to your inbox. However before you leave the comment, add your name and your current book or series. By doing this, it will show as part of your comment. Seen by all followers of the blog. Think of it as your automated signature on an email. You could also apply this idea to other social media venues. By doing this one little thing, you could easily garner readers captured from otherwise untapped sources.

SWM's Suite T blog has over 2.8 million views to its credit. Just leaving a comment on Suite T will help give you exposure, as well as up your Google footprint. Another idea is to offer to write a guest author blog post for authors you admire in the genre of your current work.

What have you got to lose? Nothing but a little time. You will be helping out other bloggers by leaving comments, and you could gain readers of your work.

So again, I ask what do you have to lose?