Blogging for Authors: 5 Tricks for Successful Blogging Results
Why should a professional writer care about blogging?
The first and most important reason to blog is marketing.
Starting a blog can be an important part of your social media campaign for book marketing.
This doesn’t mean that you’ll only blog for the sake of marketing—it’s not very effective to have a “blog” that only consists of posts asking people to buy your book. If you want your promotional efforts to be successful, you have to write valuable content consistently.
You’ll write posts on various topics related to your niche and the interests of your audience.
Why You Should Start a Blog
Blogging also makes you a better writer.
How? You’re developing a closer connection with your audience. When you’re working on a book, you’re the writer and they are the readers.
In contrast, blogging is interactive. Your followers tell you what to write about. They give you immediate feedback through comments and likes, and you take their preferences into consideration when developing your next post or topic.
Basically, through a process of engagement and continuous improvement, you’re developing a blog your unique readers would like to read.
Once you get to know their preferences in this way, it will be easy to translate that approach to your “real” writing practice and your books or stories.
Blogging is part of the personal branding process, too. If you write good posts and promote them well, you’ll attract a loyal audience. They will recognize your name. They will know your style. They will be ready to buy your book when it comes out.
You can even turn your blog into an eBook!
It’s clear: any writer can benefit from blogging.
You might be wondering: how?
How do you start a blog and make it successful? How do you attract a great deal of visitors who might be interested in your books?
Successful Blogging Results: What Does That Mean?
Before we go any further, let’s clarify an important concept: what do successful blogging results mean for a writer?
This will mean something different to everyone. For instance, if you were a fashion blogger, successful results would mean getting sponsorships as an influencer.
For you, as an author, successful results might mean a few things:
- Personal branding
- Attracting more readers
- Selling more books
- Becoming an influencer in your niche
When you start blogging, those are the results you will focus on. You won’t write random posts on random topics at a random time. You will take a planned approach that will move you to achieving definite results. In this post, we’ll tell you how to do just that!
5 Tips for Successful Blogging
While it’s easy to start a blog, it’s hard to start a successful blog that attracts, engages, and retains readers.
But there are some key strategies that can help you here! Let’s look at 5 of them:
1. Invest in Quality Design and User Experience
Blogging can be done for free.
However, when you’re trying to use your blog to make yourself better known as a writer, you have to treat it as a business.
Did you know that 61% of consumers have bought a product or service based on a blog post they read? Blogs sell, but not all of them. Only a professional-looking site that provides an outstanding user experience will have that effect. To achieve that goal, you need to invest.
If you use a free WordPress theme to build your blog, you’re at a big risk: it will look like many other blogs your audience has already seen. That doesn’t contribute to personal branding. Your blog has to be unique!
To start with, you might invest in a premium WordPress theme. If you don’t know how to handle the design and customization yourself, it’s smart to hire a professional web designer to do that for you. The designer will create a blog with all the right features and style for your specific needs.
In addition to finances, you’ll make another type of investment: time. More on that in the tip that follows.
2. You Need Both Quantity and Quality
Many blogging guides will tell you that quantity doesn’t matter much. It’s the quality posts that your readers are after. Others will tell you it’s important to post as much content as possible. If you don’t know what to post today, just write a brief 250-word post to keep your audience engaged.
The truth? It’s somewhere in the middle.
Quality is important! Your blog posts should never be fluff. They have to be relevant to the niche you choose, as well as to the interests of your target audience. Share tips on how to choose the best book for a specific period in life. Share top lists of your favorite books. Provide content of value for your audience. You should prompt them to do something as soon as they read an article.
As for the quantity, that’s also very important. Sure, a single post per month can be popular, too. However, it won’t help you build a personal brand.
Create a list of topics you’re confident about and plan to write at least one post per week. If you can’t keep up with that schedule, you can hire professional writers from Essay Geeks to help you publish more high-quality content on a regular basis. You can also invite guest bloggers to contribute with their content.
3. Write Clearly
Clarity is the key to success when it comes to blogging. You know how you create tension in your books by keeping your readers in the dark and then surprising them with the outcome? That approach works wonderfully in storytelling.
In blogging, however, you need to take a different angle. The readers should understand what the post is from the headline itself. The intro should make things even clearer. You’ll grab their attention with an intriguing start, but you have to clarify what value they will get if they continue reading.
The organization of the entire post is also important. Create sections with subheadings, as well as numbered lists. They keep the eye and mind of the reader focused.
Don’t provide an overwhelming volume of information in a single piece of content. If a certain topic turns out to be too extensive, you can use it to write a series of posts.
4. Pay Attention to the Visuals
Each and every one of your posts should have a relevant and visually appealing image attached. Articles that feature images get 94% more total views than the ones that don’t.
When you share your posts on Facebook, it will be look better with a cool image. If you include pinnable visuals, your readers will get you more traffic through Pinterest.
You can find great free stock photos through platforms like Unsplash and Pexels. If you want to get really unique with the visual aspect of your blog, get your camera and start taking your own photos. Or, you can hire a professional photographer to do that for you.
As we said, successful blogging is worthy of an investment – it’ll pay off in terms of successful engagement, readership, and potential book sales.
5. Get Some SEO Skills
Search engine optimization (SEO) is your ultimate promotional weapon. You should not obsess over including too many keywords in your posts. That will make them spammy. However, a relevant keyword here and there will bring you more traffic through Google.
SEO is not hard to learn, but it’s not as simple as it sounds. Where do you find relevant keywords? Which ones do you target? You’ll need some training on this. You can take a free online course to learn the basics of SEO and start optimizing your blog for success. To get started, check out our guide to metadescriptions and try using some of the tips on your next blog post
Are you ready to start blogging?
You’re a writer. You were born ready!
Remember: blogging is a long-term activity that demands commitment. However, it can make you a more popular and successful writer.
It’s well worth the effort!
About the Author
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