Roundup: A summary of our Author Blog Success Tips

For a little more than two months, we’ve been exploring some success tips for your author blog. Today, we’re going to recap the best of these tips as we prepare to shift to discussions of other social media sites.

Our first exploration was a general overview of blogging statistics, where we learned things like:

• The most popular time for blog reading is 10 a.m.
• Bloggers are generally highly educated, with as many as 75 percent having college degrees.
• As many as 83 percent of book bloggers are female.

Next we explored whether or not you should even start an author blog. Questions to explore around this include:

• Why are you writing?
• Do you have the time to devote to a blog?
• How patient are you?
• How much will you enjoy it?

Of course, I had to go on a little rant about a particular pet peeve of mine: Reposting someone else’s content is NOT blogging!

We then looked at 18 benefits of starting an author blog. The first 5 are:

• Gives you a reason to write regularly.
• Hones your writing skills.
• Helps you get to the point.
• Allows you to explore many different writing styles.
• Bolsters your research skills.

Of course, we can’t offer benefits without giving you some specific success tips for your author blog, things like:

• Make time to blog.
• Decide how often you will post.
• Calendar your blogging time.
• Write ahead and post later.

One big boo-boo I noticed during my author blog series was a number of blogs that were very challenging to read because the background image overpowered the text. Note to self: this mistake is avoidable!

Next we posted 9 signs that you might be a great author blogger, things like:

• Strong writing skills
• Exceptional research and organization skills
• SEO skills

Guest blogging is a great way to increase your author blog’s exposure. For one reason, it instantly puts your message in front of an audience it took the blog owner perhaps years to develop.

Commenting is another essential aspect of developing your author blog. This includes commenting on other relevant blogs, as well as encouraging thoughtful comments on your blog.

Though blog ideas are like soap bubbles for some people, they may be harder to come by for others. Here’s a list of 27 .ideas for your author blog.

Can your blog become a book? Is it better to have the book first, and then the blog? Chicken … egg … you decide.

Of course, one of the most important things to your author blog success is traffic. But there’s a BIG difference between general traffic – even in huge numbers – and targeted traffic.

In your zest for followers and comments, you may also notice other metrics about your blog. We like the maps that allow us see where in the world our readers are.

You work so hard to create the posts on your author blog. Here are a few thoughts on protecting your author blog content.

Some basic author blog questions – but if you’re a newbie, how will you know if you don’t ask? What’s the difference between Tags and Categories? And how important are pages?

Besides the tags and categories, another important but often underused aspect of author blogs is the sidebar. Are you using yours to your best advantage?

Then, of course, there are the ubiquitous keywords for your author blog. Choose carefully, as they make a HUGE difference in how well your blog gets ranked in the search engines.

After all that effort authors put into their blogs, an amazing number commit a huge error: failing to make their contact info readily available.

You’ve got it all set up, you’re posting regularly, and now you’re just waiting for the traffic to start pouring in. Here are 17 tips for marketing your blog. (Hint: many also work to market your website.)

But the biggest mistake of all is losing your content because you committed an unknown violation of your blog host’s rules. Best advice: migrate it to a site you own yourself. (We are taking our own medicine and are in the process of migrating the Marcie Brock blog in the next week or two.)

One additional excellent way to market your blog is by joining a blog challenge. If you’re an author who’d like to take part in one, we invite you to join the 28-day Author Blog Challenge, which will kick off June 2, 2012.

And, lastly, we offered tips from A to Z about setting up a blog tour to promote your book.

There you have it. Just about everything we know about blogging. If you follow these steps, you should see some significant success with your author blog. Make sure you ALWAYS remember that the main ingredient in social media is SOCIAL – and blogging is one of the earliest forms of social media. Also, be sure to master the four most important ingredients of a successful blog:

1. Quality content
2. Regular posting
3. Always use images
4. Comment your butt off

Happy blogging!

MARCIE

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We welcome and encourage your thoughtful, courteous comments below.

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In honor of our 1-year anniversary (May 2, 2012), we’re hosting the Author Blog Challenge! It starts June 2 and is open to published authors, authors-in-progress, and would-be authors. Come check us out and register today!

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PREVIOUS POSTS

Monday, May 7 – Blog tour tips from A to Z

Friday, May 4 – 4 great reasons to participate in a blog challenge

Wednesday, May 2 – In honor of Marcie’s first anniversary, we’re launching the Author Blog Challenge!