Sharing the blog

By HL Carpenter

Are you building your author platform? If you decide having a blog will be part of the way you gain visibility, one decision you can make is whether or not to include guest posts. We know many fine authors who feature guests—and we are grateful to every one of them for their generosity in sharing their virtual space with fellow authors, including us.

When we started out, we made a different decision for our main blog. Why? We think controlling our brand is simpler if we're the ones doing the writing. Does that mean we're selfish? Could be. Hey, we're the first to admit we're not perfect.

But we do know how to share, and we have two different ways of sharing blog space with hardworking colleagues.

One way is to come up with a topic that interests us—such as book covers. We write a brief explanation about what inspired one of our covers and invite our author friends to share a paragraph or two about what inspired their covers. Authors love to discuss book covers! The result: We get a post on a topic that works with our brand, other writers get ideas for their own covers, and the featured authors get publicity that doesn't come across as a hard-sell. A triple-win! Aren't we smart? (And modest too.)

The second way is by maintaining a separate blog where authors can tell "the story behind the story" of their books. While keeping up with two blogs takes work, the payoff is getting to meet great authors. As a bonus, we have the opportunity to share the entertaining mini-tales written by those great authors with an interested audience. What could be better than helping others succeed?

Do you share your blog? Let us know in the comments.

____________________________________________________________________

HL Carpenter are the mother/daughter author duo HL Carpenter write family-friendly fiction from their studios in Carpenter Country, a magical place that, like their stories, is unreal but not untrue. Their latest book is The Ghost in The Gardens,a middle grade mystery. Visit HLCarpenter.com to enjoy gift reads and excerpts and to find out what’s happening in Carpenter Country. Social Media Links: https://www.hlcarpenter.com https://www.pinterest.com/hlcarpenter

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hlcarpenter https://plus.google.com/102212877836673370583 https://twitter.com/hl_carpenter https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5820921.H_L_Carpenter https://www.amazon.com/HL-Carpenter/e/B007SHS9LA