How to use this Page

If you already write a blog or are thinking of creating one, you’ll need to know how to attract and keep your readers interested. Today’s tip comes from Christina Katz’s book Get Known Before the Book Deal. Use these tips to help you write fresh content that lures your readers back for more:

1. Keep your content fresh. Don’t blog about what everyone else is blogging about. Respond to a buzz topic with your fresh perspective, drawing on your expertise. Give folks something to think about that they won’t find anywhere else.
2. Avoid politics, religion, or anything that might offend your readers, if none of these are your expertise. (Learned this the hard way.)
3. One more time with emotion: Consider what your audience cares deeply about and revisit those topics often. Encourage, inspire, cajole.
4. Use reporting techniques. Can you back that up with a fact? Then go ahead. Trends, statistics, news, and current events are all more interesting with a few facts sprinkled in.
5. Demystify whenever possible. The tip and list forms work well for this.
6. Offer round-ups of your best previous posts.
7. Optimize your blog. Use feeds that allow folks to subscribe. Include links to subscribe to any newsletters you offer.
8. Create a relevant and enticing list of related blogs (blogroll). Visit those blogs regularly and leave comments.
9. Think community. If your blog seems to be just you talking to you, people will not be inclined to stay. Think we.
10. Post rhythmically. Your readers don’t want to come back every day if you are only going to post every other day. Always post consistently.
11. Avoid blogging burnout by utilizing guest bloggers and co-bloggers, but don’t disappear if your audience came to hear you.
12. Be visual. Add quality photos, videos, and podcasts. Remember that you are producing your own “show.” What would you come back for?
13. Hit the high notes. When good things happen, share them. This keeps your blog emotionally compelling and fun.
14. Write short and punchy. Then spell check.
15. Make recommendations. Write top-ten lists. Share books and quotes you like. Be a filter for folks who want more on your topic.
16. Write longer posts in serial fashion (for example, one tip per day for a certain number of days). People will return to catch your next point.

Buy Get Known Before the Book Deal now!

A professionally designed website is your business card to the world, one that should evolve with your writing career. Your website should make a dynamic presentation of the wares you have to offer—books, articles, or writing and editing services. Unlike a standard blog that aims to engage people in discussion, the purpose of a website is to inform people about who you are and to market your writing efforts to your target audience: potential readers or clients, publishers, editors, or agents.

As such, your website should pay you back for the time and money you invested in it. It’s easy to tell when that’s not happening: No one is contacting you, buying from you or hiring you.

To take your website to the next level, where there’s an engaged audience and a clickthrough rate that soars, you’ll want to do four things: Make sure all the key essentials are in place, stock it with the best content, get a little tech savvy and maintain a strong buzz.

Double-check the basics.

Whether you’re an unpublished writer building a platform, a seasoned freelancer, a self-published scribe or a mid-list author, your website has to meet your visitors’ basic expectations.

“You’ll want to hone the content so it has structure and provides visitors with compelling and current information,” says Mark Hollis, president of Hollis Internet Marketing.

Visitors get that structure from the way information is organized, so your first step is to check that your website contains all the right pages:

• A home page with a welcome message
• A portfolio page presenting published fiction/nonfiction (or links to it)
• A reviews or testimonials page
• An about page with short and long bios
• A contact page with your info or agent/publicist info
• An events page or calendar
• A services page informing visitors about what you do—copywriting, editing, etc.
• A press page or FAQ page, as necessary.

After you have all the right pages,  ensure the essentials are in place throughout your site:

• Use high-resolution author photos and book cover images.
• Use familiar menu names (“portfolio,” not “library”).
• Keep drop-down menus simple.
• Check that active links connect to the appropriate pages within your site.
• Avoid Flash and music intros that slow down page-load time.
• Make sure your site loads properly on all popular Internet browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome).

Sharpen the content.

Once the basics are good to go, you can focus on buffing up your content to engage readers.

“Authors can woo visitors by going beyond jacket copy to give readers a feel for what makes the author tick,” says Steve Bennett, founder of AuthorBytes. For instance, novelists can reveal secrets, illuminate character backstory or show images that inspired the setting for a book.

Freelancers can offer bonus material that didn’t appear in a published article but deepens a visitor’s experience of a subject. A “behind-the-interview” pop-up could give readers little-known details about an interviewee.

Karin Bilich, president of SmartAuthorSites.com, says unpublished authors seeking an agent should include video or audio clips of themselves to show that they know how to present themselves. Also, even if you’re not published, provide fun details, such as what inspired you to write a particular story—and no matter what you write, address visitors in your unique voice (not your favorite author’s), so that you stand out in your own way. Keep a link to your website on Facebook and Twitter, too—and record your social media fan and follower numbers, because they can come in handy when querying agents.

“Show you know how to market yourself, and you’re successfully doing it,” Bilich says.

Ultimately, the golden rule is that content is king—so make it good.Even the co

If you’d like to quickly amass content for a book—without the pressure of actually having to work on one—consider blogging a book. Blogging is a fast and simple way to generate a body of targeted content and build your platform, which are key components of landing a book deal in today’s competitive marketplace.

When writing blog posts with the intention of creating a blogged book, be sure to:

• Develop each post as a stand-alone unit with a beginning, middle and end so readers can “pick up” your book at any point;
• Create flow from one post to the next by teasing readers to keep “turning pages”;
• Link related posts to form a cohesive body of work.

In addition to creating cohesive and relevant content (as noted above), optimizing your blog, and utilizing best SEO practices, it’s important to write with passion in an authentic voice, says author and expert blogger Nina Amir in How to Blog a Book (Writer’s Digest Books, 2012):

“Successful blogs have at their helms bloggers who write with passion and purpose, who feel inspired and who every day show up as nothing less than their true selves with all their colors flying,” says Amir. “Almost every blogger I interviewed (for the book) who landed a book deal attributed his or her success to feeling passionate about the subject of the blog and being authentic while blogging. If you feel the need for inspiration, read their blogs.”

Here are more blogging tips from the book to inspire you:

 Top 10 Blogging Tips for Blogging a Book

1. Read other blogs on your topic—and comment on them.
2. Get involved in groups and forums on your subject.
3. Read books on your topic.
4. Set up Google Alerts on your topic or on additional keywords related to your topic (and be sure to open the alerts and read the pertinent posts).
5. Ask some experts to write guest blog posts for you so you get a break.
6. Take a brief blogging vacation (tell your readers you are, in fact, on vacation for two or three days).
7. Do research on your topic.
8. Talk to other people who are interested in your topic or who are experts in your subject area.
9. Explore the possibility of using multimedia on your blog—audio and video.
10. Interview experts in your subject area and post the information or the interview; you can even post it as an audio clip, podcast, or video.

Purchase How to Blog a Book.

Purchase the “Creating an Author Blog” on-demand webinar taught by literary agent Meredith Barnes.

Learn how to start a blog. Register for Blogging 101 workshop with Dan Blank.

Joe Ponzio on Going from Blog to Book: F Wall Street

Although Joe Ponzio started his blog to draw platform to the book he was planning to write (not necessarily blog), like many blog-to-book success stories he feels “ the book and the blog go hand-in-hand.” In the case of Fwallstreet.com, both the blog and the subsequent book, F Wall Street, Joe Ponzio’s No-Nonsense Approach to Value Investing for the Rest of Us, focus on explaining common sense, long-term value investing in plain English.

“Readers understand one better if they also read the other,” says Ponzio.  “Both have separate content, but there is a small amount of duplication. I’d say that 90 percent of the website is completely new, original content, which is crucial because readers come back to your site looking for more answers, more explanations, and those tidbits that your editor cut out but that you felt were important.”

Adams Media released F Wall Street in June 2009.

1.     Why did you begin blogging?

I launched FWallStreet.com in June of 2007 to accompany the book. I had written a majority of the book at that point, though I didn’t yet have a publisher, and wanted to have an online resource for people to visit and host discussions after reading the book.

I didn’t plan on advertising the website or letting the world know it was out there until the book was published. Still, the website took off. By the end of 2007, just six months after its initial launch, FWallStreet.com had more than one million hits.

2.     How did you choose your topic?

The book actually started as a “how-to” guide for my children, then three and soon-to-be-born. It was a simple, 80-page manual on how to think about investing for the long-term and how to evaluate companies and stocks.

I chose investing because that’s what I do for a living. It’s what I’m passionate about. And there is so much bad information out there that only a small percentage of the population ever hear about, learn about, and stick with value investing. I wanted to make sure that my children would be in that select group if I wasn’t around to teach them personally.

3.     What, if any, market research did you do before beginning your blog?

None. I didn’t think that hard about it when I started, and I figured my blog would be lost in the sea of constantly-updated, keyword-rich, go-go-go stock market blogs. Readers ended up visiting FWallStreet.com, became curious by the design, and stayed for the content. And…they told their friends about it! Most of my early visitors did not come from link exchanges or advertising (I did none) but from emails from other visitors. People would see FWallStreet.com, email it to a friend, and voila!―another visitor.

One thing I learned over time is that content truly is king. If you produce good content, people will want to come and read it. The only way to produce good content is to blog about something you love.

My advice to aspiring bloggers: Stick with topics you truly know and about which you are passionate, and catch the visitors right away with a good design. Content is king, but you have to present it (via a solid design) in a way that makes them want to meet the king.

4.     Did you think you were writing a book, did you plan on blogging a book, or were you simply blogging on your topic? (In retrospect, would doing one or the other have made it easier to later write your book?)

I knew I was writing a book. Rather, I had written a book and knew that the blog was a key part of supporting the book if it were to get picked up by a publisher.

In retrospect, I would have done things the exact same way. I would have written the book (or a majority of it) and then

Writing conferences can be a great way for beginning wordsmiths to learn the ropes and for established writers to further their careers. Large national conferences tend to get the most buzz, but smaller regional conferences can also have much to offer. In fact, maybe your writing group should host one.

Mine does, and it’s proven to be an amazing endeavor.

In 2003, Triangle Area Freelancers (triangleareafreelancers.org) was formed in Raleigh, N.C. Today, it has more than 60 active members. Early on we talked about hosting a one-day symposium for nonfiction freelancers, and in 2008 we made that dream a reality. Write Now! has been an annual spring event ever since.

Why host your own writing conference? The most obvious reason is a dearth of literary events in your area. TAF started Write Now! to meet the underserved needs of North Carolina’s nonfiction writing community. We saw a group eager for information and networking, and decided to reach out.

Hosting a writing conference of any size is hard work, but the benefits can be tremendous: greater regional awareness of your organization, the opportunity to learn from industry professionals and the satisfaction that comes from helping other writers.

If you think it’s time for your organization to take the next big step, consider these 10 tips:

1. Establish a dedicated steering committee. Give yourselves at least six to eight months from first discussion to the day of the event. In fact, the more time, the better. Plan, plan, plan.

2. Make sure you have sufficient seed money. Depending on the size and scope of your event, I’d suggest having $500–1,000 in the bank to start. To get an accurate figure, tabulate your anticipated pre-conference expenses, and then add 15 to 20 percent for the unexpected.

TAF raised seed money for its first conference by charging its members annual dues. Additional funding sources include possible sponsorships, regional arts grants and philanthropic benefactors.

3. Select an appropriate venue. TAF’s conferences have been held in association with Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, which offers a convenient central location, ample parking and a relationship that provides statewide credibility. Other options include hotel meeting rooms, local conference centers and regional libraries.

4. Promote! Promote! Promote! Because TAF doesn’t have deep pockets, we concentrate on free promotion. We blanket the region with brochures, use social media and place announcements in community calendars.

Opportunities for inexpensive conference promotion abound. The North Coast Redwoods Writers’ Conference (ncrwc.org) in Crescent City, Calif., draws attendees with a comprehensive website, promotional mailings and a listing with the Association of Writers & Writing Programs’ Writers’ Conferences & Centers directory, among other efforts, says Ken Letko, a member of the event’s steering committee.

Meanwhile, the Roanoke Regional Writers Conference (hollins.edu/roanokewriters) in Roanoke, Va., has had success tapping traditional media and social media, especially the blogosphere, reports founder Dan Smith.

5. Get the strongest presenters you can afford. For Write Now! 2011, TAF brought in veteran New York literary agent Rita Rosenkranz, who presented a session on the author-agent relationship and hosted a workshop on writing an irresistible nonfiction book proposal. She was a huge draw who helped us sell out for the first time, and was worth every penny we paid for her appearance.

Presenters’ fees can vary widely, with the bigger names charging more. We learned this the hard way when we approached a nationally known, locally based writer to be our keynote, only to be told that she charged $2,000 for a speaking gig and wasn’t willing to negotiate.

Fortunately, many presen