Month: December 2011

Author Blogging 101: Where Are the Readers?

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There’s nothing more typical, and more dispiriting, than a new author blog that has just started, and on which the writer is diligently posting articles, and wondering why no one seems to be noticing.

Hey, we’ve all been there, and most blogs start exactly that way, particularly if this is the first blog you’ve ever worked on.

It’s almost as if the process of doing all the technical work, setting up your blog, getting the theme right, the plugins all working, all the plumbing going right, is a distraction from this one fact: Where are the readers?

 

We All Start With a Readership of 1

Every blog starts with the counter at 1: you are the only visitor. Let’s face it, your whole blogging journey is going to be growth from here, there’s no other choice.

One of the first things I learned about blogging was to not rely on friends or family to become blog readers. In fact, assume that they will rarely read your articles.

So how does a blog go from a readership of 1, with no support from people close to you, to something alive, vital, and thriving? Where do all those people come from? How the heck do they find your blog in the first place, considering the sheer size of the internet?

That’s where traffic comes in, and why you need to understand what it is, where it comes from and what you can do about it. And we’re going to go over each of those issues.

But first, let’s take a high-level look at blog traffic to get our bearings.

Three Kinds of Traffic

There are really only three distinct ways people come to your blog or website, and it pays to know what they are. Here’s how I look at it:

  1. Organic traffic—This is what I call people who arrive at your blog by clicking a link somewhere that wasn’t paid for. In other words, it coincided somehow with their own interest or curiosity.

    You an divide this organic traffic into:

    1. People who click your own links, like the signature file you use in your email, or the link you use as a member of a discussion forum, or when people click your link in a social media profile.
    2. People who click other people’s links, for instance if you contribute a guest post to another blog with a link back to your own blog, or the link in an article that’s been republished from an article site. This also includes marketing you do like entering blog carnivals, and all the times other writers link to your articles.

    2.  

  2. SEO traffic—I think of this as traffic that you attract from search engines by writing your blog posts in such a way that they aim at specific keywords that appear in people’s queries when they are looking for information in your field.

    You can build SEO traffic through a variety of means, including

    1. Blogger tools like themes that help you optimize your posts, add-ins like Scribe (affiliate) that analyze your posts for SEO efficiency or other specific tools.
    2. Blog design, in which a designer can code features into your blog that will benefit you when it comes to search engines
    3. Hired SEO experts, not an option used by many indie authors that I know of. However, experienced SEO consultants can have a major impact on your blog’s search engine rankings.

     

  3. Paid traffic—This is all the traffic that results from payments of one kind or another. For instance, you might use:
    1. Pay per click, where you bid on specific keywords and then pay a small fee each time someone clicks the link that’s displayed on content-appropriate pages.
    2. Advertising, like running a banner ad on someone else’s blog, or running a Facebook ad campaign.
    3. Sponsorships in which you materially sponsor or co-sponsor a contest, an award or some other event that brings people to your site.

Each of these three kinds of traffic can be used to bring new readers to your blog. In fact, there are specific strategies you can use for each of them.

The great thing about working on traffic is that even small steps will have an effect. When you learn some of these strategies and apply them over time, the effects snowball.

That’s when a combination of the links coming from your own efforts combine with the effect you have within your niche. Other people start linking to you because of the contribution you make with your articles and blog posts.

Content marketing, the natural tool of the blogger, always starts with great, useful content. That’s what people will link to.

As we continue to look at author blogging, we’ll also continue to explore each of these avenues by which readers find and reach your blog. And I’ll share with you the strategies I’ve used on my blog and the results they’ve produced so you can see firsthand how this all works.

 

 

This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

37 Tips For Writing A Book’s Foreword

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1. Read the book. Understand the message.

2. Reading the Table of Contents and one chapter alone is not enough.

3.Take detailed notes throughout the book.

4. Write to the book’s audience.

5. Write in a familiar voice.

6. Be very careful not to talk down to the readers.

7. You should probably write between 750 and 1,500 words.

8. The foreword’s main role is to help give the book’s author credibility.

9. With increased credibility, comes more sales.

10. Explain how you know the author of the book.

11. If you don’t know the author personally, devote more space to the book’s message.

12. You are trying to make an emotional connection with the reader.

13. You want the reader to like you and your story.

14. Your job is to help get the reader to believe and trust what you have to say about the book’s author and the book itself.

15. Keep the tone simple and personal, but keep your writing tight.

16. Include short anecdotes and real world examples that illustrate the theme of the book.

17. Anecdotes are an important way to help the reader like you and your story.

18. Discuss why this book is significant or timely.

19. Show why the book’s author is a credible person to have written this book.

20. Tell readers why this book is worth reading.

21. Show how the reader will benefit by reading it.

22. Refer to specific things in the book.

23. Explain why you chose those things to discuss.

24. Connect the book to experiences that a reader might face in everyday life.

25. Mention the good points about the book and what the readers will get out of reading it.

26. Be sure to give a very brief synopsis of the book.

27. Talk to the reader as if you were talking to a friend.

28. Keep it engaging and tell an interesting story.

29. Make sure your foreword has a beginning, middle, and end.

30. Tell readers why you are qualified to write the foreword.

31. Don’t be afraid to name-drop.

32. If readers can recognize any of the names, you will gain credibility and likeability.

33. Put your name, title, and location at the end.

34. Make sure you mention if you have a fancy title or prestigious award.

35. These things help establish your own credibility and celebrity.

36. Remember that you are not just writing this foreword to help the author sell more books, but also to help your own career.

37. Authoring a book’s foreword is a great way to remind the public who you are and what you have accomplished.

This article was written by Joseph C. Kunz, Jr. and originally posted on KunzOnPublishing.com.