One thing I always encourage our authors to do is have a regularly updated blog.
Having a blog is important because it’s the key way that people find out more details about you and your books. When you type in an author’s name you want to make sure that the your author website site not only shows up on the first page of search, but that your website and your information is returned when someone is using VOICE SEARCH.
You can control the message you send to people and have all the information about you and your books available to anyone who is looking.
Three of my favorite author blogs are below:
One way to build blog traffic is by link building.
- Link building is super important for SEO (SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION) but also great for building relationshps.
- As an author blogger, you want to make sure that others link to your content and that you link to theirs.
The key to increased traffic is to get other bloggers to link back to your blog. - When someone links back to your blog posts, it’s basically a vote up for your content in search engines.
- When you write a blog post you might want to consider linking to 3-5 sites.
Different sites are weighted differently. If TIME.com happens to link back to you or Buzzfeed.com happen to link to you, that’s a huge vote for your blog since those sites have millions of readers.
One easy way to get someone to link to your blog is to ASK them. It’s important to ask in a meaningful, non-spammy way. You can send them a nice email that’s contextual to what your blog is about and something they wuld already be interested in.
Sample Email:
Dear Josh,
I saw that you tweeted about Bibliocrunch’s NANOWRIMO inforgraphic on how to to stay motivated and write. I’m writing a similar blog post that will teach you how to stay motivated and write every day.
Would love to drop you a line when it goes live.
Best,
Miral
[Signature]
Typical Response:
Dear Miral,
Sure, would love to know when it goes live.
Best,
Josh
When your blog post is live, you can send a short, but quick follow up letting the blogger know your post is live. It’s always helpful to include a tweet with some sample, shareable text that they can easily share. Remember, you don’t want them to have to do any more work.
The Followup Email:
Dear Josh,
As promised, here’s my article on how to stay motivated and write 10 minutes a day with a sample tweet.
Stay Motivated by Writing Just 10 Minutes a Day. [url]
Best,
Miral
(include sample social media tweets)
When you write a blog post you might want to consider linking to 3-5 sites.
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