7 Ways Your Blog Can Promote Your Book

By Susan Reichert, Editor-in-Chief, Southern Writers Magazine

We all know to use our blog to keep in touch with our readers and friends. In addition, our blog should also be used to bring them into our worlds. Let your blog be the tool you use to cultivate not just the readers you have had, but future readers. Your blog is one of the most important marketing and sales tools you have.

Practice these seven ways:

·         Update your readers. Tell them what you are working on. They love authors to share with them the stories being created.

·         Is it going to be a mystery or a romance, or maybe a little of both. Perhaps you are thinking a thriller or a western. Tell them your thoughts, the pros and cons–they love to hear. It involves them in your writing.

·         Let them in on the period you are thinking the story should be written in. You can even ask them what they think.

·         What settings are you considering placing your story in? You could be considering the mountains in West Virginia, a little town in Ohio, or near an Ocean, the Florida coast, etc. Ask them to give you their opinion or if they have a suggestion. People love to be involved in projects, and especially with authors. It makes them feel a part of your book so involve them–see if they have a preference where you set the story. Ask them to help you name your fiction town.

·         Ask for suggestions on naming particular characters. When they send in suggestions you could make a drawing out of it, and the winner’s suggestion will be used in the story and they will receive a signed book when it is published.

·         Be sure, and keep them updated each week, be consistent, on your progress. Anytime you can get their input you are bonding with that reader, and they are bonding with you and that book. When you publish it, they are going to buy it.

·         Let them in on the up’s and down’s, in’s and out’s-enough to whet the appetites, building excitement and buzz for the book. Perhaps they can participate by asking you questions. Anytime readers can ask the author questions or participate in any way, you can bet they are going to buy that book when it comes out.

Blog to Build Your Audience

By Londa Hayden, Staff Writer for Southern Writers Magazine

In promoting a book, one must think outside the box at times. It finally dawned on me one day that I would serve my book's intended audience far better by offering a blog by the same title at http://www.datepraywait.com. My book “Date, Pray, Wait” is a nonfiction work about my dating experiences as a young Christian woman. I share about how I came to know Christ and learned to wait on God to bring my husband into my life. But, there is so much more to my story than just my dating experiences. Every person can relate to the loneliness of being single. There are a few exceptions to the rule, but for the most part, almost everyone wants to find that one and only someone to have and to hold until death do you part. I've been married almost 26 years now, so what the heck was I thinking when I wrote this book for single people? I mean, doesn't it make more sense for single people to want to read book written by other single people? Perhaps that is true, but I do have the advantage of experience and wisdom to share with Christian singles without being their mother or teacher.

Of course, there are tons of websites out there for Christian singles who want to date, which could be considered my competition. Cyberspace can be a remarkable social networking tool, but it can also be a pretty scary place if you’re not careful. Instead of looking at all these Christian dating websites as competition, I decided to go with the flow and use my blog to compliment them instead. And once I can get the SEO and RSS feed stuff figured out, I hope to start getting a lot more traffic to my website. This is an age of social networking unlike anything the world has ever seen or experienced before. Single people especially use the Internet constantly all day long on their laptops, desktops, iPads, phones, Kindles, etc. They are always online and connected to the Internet in one capacity or another. You must learn to use this technology in order to communicate and reach your audience.

Think about who your book will attract. Now think about who is really buying and reading your book? What does your true demographic audience really look like now? Guess what? That is your audience. So work your promoting and marketing around that demographic; their wants, desires, and needs. Starting a blog is one of the easiest ways to gain internet presence and market your book. I also blog on a separate author website at http://www.londahayden.com about writing, and I have set up separate pages to promote each book I have written. I have a fan page on Facebook for just my book titled “Date, Pray, Wait.”  And of course Twitter is another authority website which really should not be ignored. All of these avenues of social media are interconnected with one another and help me target my marketing efforts to my specific audience. All I need to do is click on the Twitter or Facebook icon to get the link to my new blog article posted to every one of them. It really is just as simple as that.

If you really want to reach your audience, you must consider building a strong internet presence as a big part of your platform for marketing. Most publishers will expect at least this much from any potential author. A blog about your book is a great way to serve and build your audience, and a great way to help promote your book to thousands of people who otherwise might never hear about you or your book. There are many free website hosts where you can easily set up a blog. Here are just a few: Wordpress.com, Webs.com, GoDaddy, Weebly.com, Myspace.com, and Google offers Blogspot.com.

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Londa Hayden is the founding president of Bartlett Christian Writers and a staff writer for Southern Writers Magazine. Her debut book, Date, Pray, Wait inspired a blog by the same name at  http://datepraywait.com and encourages Christian singles to date with wisdom. To learn more about Londa and her other works, please visit her website at http://londahayden.com.

The Gift of FREE Marketing

by Jessica Ferguson

When I think of social media, I hear voices. I hear my mother in law saying that  just because something is packaged in bulk doesn’t mean it’s a bargain. I hear my mother’s voice asking: if Sallie Anne jumped off a cliff, would you?  My twin cousins chant that if God had meant us to fly, He’d have given us wings. I find myself nodding, “And if God had wanted us to tweet . . .”  

Last month a couple of my friends queried editors. One friend was told she had no internet presence and the editor was only interested in writers with some kind of following. The other friend received a request to submit her novel, but was told to develop a website and a blog. Two different responses but the same message: an internet presence is crucial.

But what if we don’t have anything to say? To promote? To sell?  It doesn’t matter. If we intend to write and sell books some day, we still need an online presence. Now.

A few years ago, another friend, D.B. Grady, catapulted into the social media blogosphere and popped up on Facebook, Twitter and other sites. At the time, David had one book published by a small press and an article in Boy’s Life to his credit. Yet, he zipped around (virtually) and had great fun. He met many people and made a lot of friends, including an editor with the well known magazine, The Atlantic. David was offered an opportunity to write for their online issue. Doors opened. He got a top of the line agent, and he and his editor wrote a book together. The Hidden Hands, co-authored with Marc Ambinder and published by John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, will release in 2012.  

D.B. Grady says, "Editors, agents, and other writers are very accessible on social networking sites, and chats can often turn into assignments. Some of the best connections I've made in the industry started on Twitter or LinkedIn. It's important to be professional, of course, and to let your words represent the quality of your longer prose. But it's just as important to be natural and friendly -- think cocktail party rather than job interview."

I’ve mulled over social media marketing--examined blogging, twitter and Facebook from all angles and points of view; and while it looks suspiciously like a cliff to me, and even resembles bulk packaging, I’ve pegged it as not much more than building relationships, encouraging others, and participating in conversations with an audience of our choice. If we think of it as something fun to do, we’ll be creating exactly what editors, agents, and publishers want us to create--an online presence.

No matter how intimidating or maddening social media is, the fact that it’s FREE makes it less painful.  More importantly, it might very well be the gift that keeps on giving.  And with it, we will fly! 

5 Ways to Get on the Shelf and Get Noticed

by Amy Bayliss

As writers I think we can all agree on one thing: we desire to be read.

So what happens when you spend hours each week crafting an article for your website or blog only to find that very few people have read it? Discouragement can set in quickly but it is soon overclouded by confusion. You know the content is good. You know it is written well. Your writer's critique group raved over it so what could be the problem?

It's simple. In the vast network of the internet your website is lost. No one can find it. If it can't be found, it can't be read.

The internet is like a library. It stores and shares millions of written works in the hopes someone will want to check them out. Search engines are like the card catalog guiding people to what interests them. In this internet library, your website is still in a back room somewhere waiting for the librarian to tag it, categorize it, add it to the card catalog and put it on a shelf.

Five Ways to Get on the Shelf and Get Noticed

1. Choose an SEO (search engine optimization) friendly platform. Self-hosted WordPress sites are superior when it comes to SEO friendliness. This platform also delivers more options in the way of advertising, plug-ins, networking and monetizing. Perhaps the most appealing feature for writers is that you own your content with this platform. If you write on a free platform then you should check your terms. It is likely they can use your content at any time to benefit them and you can't do anything about it.

2. Use highly searched keywords. I use and recommend Google's keyword tool to find the terms that people are searching for but that have low competition. Strategically placing them in the title and post body in a way that reads naturally will contribute to an increase in search rank. Using those same keywords to name the photos within the post will also bring traffic.

3. Optimize internal links. Linking to your articles from within other articles is called internal linking. This practice is beneficial for several reasons but we'll discuss the two main ones. Internal linking causes others to stay on your blog longer. The longer people stay, the lower your bounce rate which increases your search ranking. It also serves as a way to get more hits from your RSS feed reader subscribers. Without links within a post they aren't likely to click over to your site but if there is an enticing link within an article then chances are good that they will click on it. NOTE: Always use search worthy anchor text when linking. That means you should not use "click here" as the link. Instead use a keyword phrase or the title of the post. No one searches for "Click here."

4. Network with other writers in your niche. You can reach more together than you can apart. When you link to each other Google pays close attention. That is what Google looks for. In addition to it being good for search rankings it is also great for readership. You expose each other to your readers. The internet is an unlimited audience. Here we can share readers instead of competing for them. Guest posting on sites is the most successful way of gaining other readers. Promoting each other on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter increases search rankings and exposes you to new readership.

5. Avoid duplicate content posting. In the past when a writer published on another site they would simply freshen up an old article or even use the same article on multiple sites. That is no longer advised. Google frowns upon sites that have duplicate content. It is also no longer recommended that you write excerpts to articles on your blog since that too can be seen as duplicate content. Instead, change out complete words and sentences or rearrange the format of articles before reusing them. Publish a synopsis on your site to direct traffic to the article you wrote and be sure to use searchable anchor text when doing so. This practice will benefit both sites.

We've only scratched the surface of ways to improve your web presence but this list will definitely get you out of the backroom and onto a shelf to be discovered.
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Amy Bayliss is a professional writer whose preferred medium is the internet. Her skills and talent help hundreds as a consultant and the co-founder of DIYMinistry.org. Along with her business partner, Lisa Boyd, they have made the site a one-stop site for help for those looking to build a platform online. You can also find Amy blogging at her home on the web: AmyBayliss.com.

One Day Starts Today

by Susan Reichert, Editor-in-Chief

David J. Schwartz, PhD said, “The person determined to achieve maximum success learns the principle that “progress is made one step at a time.”

We would all love to wake up this morning and be a successful bestselling, sought after author with people clamoring for our books, so much so the publisher can’t get them printed fast enough. Movie studios are knocking at our door with contracts.

The truth is that normally doesn’t happen to anyone…and if it should, there is a strong possibility that it will be just for that one book because they haven’t built their foundation. Long-term writing success requires a foundation and as Dr. Schwartz said, “foundations are built one brick at a time. Football games won a play at a time.” When you see someone hit it big, look close, you will see that person used the one-step at a time approach. One-step upon another until stardom was attained.

To become a bestselling author, many steps come into play. We have to write every day to finish our manuscript. Then we need to find an agent who will find the publisher or we need to find a self-publisher. Our work doesn’t stop there. Then comes the marketing phase of this foundation. Every day we have to make efforts to market our book. We have to Facebook, Twitter, and then we need to blog. There are many bricks needed to build our foundation. Remember in anything we undertake, to succeed we need to take one-step, one brick, and one day at a time.

When we have a project to work on, we should never look at the entire scope of the project, just the part that can be achieved that day. We have all heard the expression ‘One day at a time’. That is all we have. Take today; write what you can, market what you can; your one day starts today!

My Blog Blows

by Shannon Milholland, Social Media Director

My blog blows. Do you ever feel that way? You've followed all the design advice and your blog appearance is top notch. You provide excellent content. Everything about your blog says professional. The only problem is your reader list which is your mom, your great-aunt Martha and your first grade teacher, Mrs. Goldstein.

Before you turn in your Blogger badge and ride off into the sunset, consider trying these tips:

Hang with Your Hombres

You're blogging about gardening but spend your free time at an inner city roller derby rink. Chances are they don't know a petunia from a peony. Find places your audience congregates and mingle. Your mastery of the subject will naturally draw these acquaintances to your site.

Help a Hero

Find someone in your area of expertise whose blog you devour. Volunteer to help them by commenting on their blog or reposting their blogs on Twitter. You may be thanked with an opportunity to guest post or with a credible recommendation.

Host a Happy

Everybody likes getting something for nothing or practically nothing anyway. Fund a giveaway for your site that directly relates to your content. If you're blogging about beauty, aggregate a package of new product. If you're writing movie reviews, offer movie passes complete with popcorn and drinks. What do you ask in exchange? Ask them to follow your blog, mention it on Facebook or tweet about it. You'll be amazed how excited people can get over even a low-value prize.

Does your blog blow? Harness the wind by hanging with your hombres, helping a hero or hosting a happy. Soon your blog will blow hurricane style.