More and more these days, everyone is expected to have their own presence on the internet – social media, websites, blogs. Authors are no exception – people want to connect with their favourite writers and now they expect a website to go along with it. This can be a great marketing tool for you: you can write articles about your work or things that matter to you, post all of your books so they are easily found by fans, and advertise your publicity campaigns.
But to do this, you need to market your blog. People can’t come if they can’t find it and it’s hard to get up the rankings in Google to be found by accident.
So how do you do it?
Social Media
Find people on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter by identifying authors similar to you who already have big followings, and start following the people on their follower lists. It’s likely that you share their interests, and you can quickly grow your own following this way. Post links to your blog on these platforms and everyone following you will see you.
Post in Forums
Start posting in forums related to your topics – LinkedIn, Goodreads, Google+, and many more specialty sites. Sharing your experiences will make people remember you and start conversations and will hopefully lead them back to your blog, which you can usually link to in your signature. When you’ve written an article that’s relevant, you can link to it and build up traffic that way.
Comment on Other Blogs
Commenting on other blogs that match your interest is a great way to get your voice out there. On lively blogs, you’re able to interact with other people who are already disposed to be interested in the same things you are – if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be there.
Find the top five blogs in your genre/style/interest and post regularly on them. If you’re helpful and insightful, you’ll soon get the notice of other bloggers, which in turn can take you to the next point.
Guest Posts
Most serious bloggers are happy to consider articles from others who share a similar platform – after all, it’s one less blog they have to write! Be sure you are familiar with their content and the kind of questions their readers ask and write yours within those parameters. Promote your guest blog on your own network and be sure you stick around to reply to the comments.
Blog Carnivals
Blog carnivals are regularly published collections of links to articles, submitted by bloggers in a specific field. This is a quite overlooked aspect of blog marketing as they aren’t as popular as they used to be, but if you can find one with good circulation in your field, start submitting your best articles. And you could always start one yourself if you can’t find a suitable one.
Video
Video teasers that sell your story can be linked to YouTube and other video sites and bring in traffic that might not ordinarily visit a writer’s blog. You can also try how-to videos (always good), opinion pieces, and reviews to generate traffic. Be sure you tag them with the right keywords so people find them.
Contests
Contests can offer free copies of upcoming books, one-on-one time with authors, valuable prizes and freebies, and critiques and evaluations. If there are no book or writing awards for your specific niche, why not create one? You can advertise on social media, bringing entrants to your blog to make their submissions.
Publicizing contests with the appropriate media and press releases when the awards are announced can help attract new readers to a special page you set up for the awards on your blog.
You can offer free copies of upcoming books, valuable prizes, freebies, or critiques. You could create an award, advertising on social media for entrants, which will bring them to your blog. Publicizing your awards or contests can bring new readers to your page.
All of these are free and incorporating just a few of them can help you grow your site. Great content is the foundation of blogs, but finding a way to market that content is what will make your blog stand out. Which strategies have you tried, and which have worked best for you?
Having just looked at how to market your blog, what should you actually write about in this blog?