your blog and present best in a format similar to consecutive articles in a published journal. Whatever method you choose, be consistent with your formatting and the level of your interactivity.
Three types of blogs are used by most of our author clients or are used in combination:
Blog as “DVD extras.” Movie DVDs carry a lot of extras: outtakes, directors’ cuts, deleted scenes, that is, everything behind the scenes. The same goes for author blogs: Many of our author clients use this leading blog format to keep audience interest. The very successful blog by Waterside author David Meerman Scott can be found at webinknow.com. David’s blog, titled Web Ink Now, is ranked in AdAge Power 150 as one of the top marketing blogs, a combination of topics that his readers are interested in that does not directly promote his book. Waterside client Bill Evans also uses the DVD extra–type format for his blog at billevansbanjo.com/blog. Note that both of these blogs speak to audience interests in an interesting, consistent, and short format with accompanying visuals.
For fiction authors, the outtake is a great format for behind-the-scenes looks at the books and movies you like with accompanying reviews, information about your characters, plots, locations, and themes of your books. Or print a segment of your book on your blog and add comments along the lines of directors’ cuts on DVDs. Mine your own database for original sources of writing you’ve done to post in your blog: letters, diaries, random observations, poems, or travel observations.
Blog as Question & Answer Forum. This format is the definite winner in terms of blog type, used by successful authors, in nonfiction and also in fiction. The Q&A format can be used not only to teach how-to’s and skills but also has the benefit of reaching behind the scenes for readers to ask and find out the inspiration for a story, how the writing process works, what inspires a writer, etc. The Q&A format is a tool with major practical advantages for authors, including:
Simplicity
Ease of plugging in content generated by others in the form of questions, which leads to cooperative networking
Built-in audience interaction
Helping and giving deeper insight to others
Establishing subject matter expertise, depth, and added dimension
Consistently refreshed and 100% tailored content that improves search engine optimization (SEO) and, best of all, draws returning customers to find out what the next Q&A dialogue will be
Successful Q&A blogs are found all over the web and used by many of our successful Waterside authors, including Andy Rathbone (andyrathbone.com), who uses this format to respond to issues his audience encounters, and Dave Taylor (askdavetaylor.com), whose Q&A is the centerpiece of his author site’s landing page.
A number of Waterside author clients write fiction as well as nonfiction, and these same techniques cross over to the world of fiction author visibility also. Fiction writers can check out Tee Morris’ blog at teemorris.com, who writes science fiction, steampunk, and fantasy.
Collective blogs. Use power in numbers: authors with like interests have formed collective blogs, where various authors contribute to posting. Contributing to a collective site, authors are able to increase the size of their following by posting to their collective networks. This type of blog is fully loaded with content and is an announcement platform for upcoming dates, lectures, book releases, and schedules. One example is our author client Winslow Yerxa, who blogs at the collective site harmonicasessions.com.
Learn about Technorati (technorati.com), the search engine for rating blogs. It looks at SEO tags and the number of blogs that link to your blog to give you a blog rating. Technorati lists the top 100 blogs, a blog directory, instructions for submitting a guest blog, and much more.
Encourage Online Sharing with Your Blog
In their second edition of Blogging to Drive Business, author clients Eric Butow and Rebecca Bollwitt show how to foster your readership community through online sharing in your blog, suggesting that readers can have a sense of ownership within your blog space. Rebecca’s blog (rebeccacoleman.ca) creates a sense of community by addressing customer interests stated in comments. The blog advantage is interactive content, so encourage a strong community to form around your posts. “In some cases Internet users will create groups, fan pages, or their own blogs dedicated to various products or services they like,” Rebecca says. “Opening up similar access and playgrounds for discussion in your own online space can work to your advantage … the community might not necessarily be an actual page, forum, or comments section, but you’ll find that your readers will become your blog’s evangelists.”
Encourage blog conversation starting with reading comments, respond to them in a way that continues the conversation beyond, and then allow and encourage readers to share your content with their own social networks. Ask what they think and what their communities think about an issue to solicit comments. Here are more blog sharing tips from Rebecca and Eric’s book:
To ensure tools are available, provide links and Share This buttons on your blog posts by using a service like AddThis. You can encourage readers to share your link through social bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit and through Facebook.
Use a plugin from Twitter such as Tweetmeme to abbreviate links for tweets.
When readers share your content on their blogs, they can just link back to your post; you can make that link visible from your site.
Remember that blogging is about public sharing that builds your author brand! Whenever your posts are shared, you win as the exposure for your author brand and your book increases along with your ability to be found.
In the last chapter, we told you why you need to have a home base on the web, a site to serve as the magnet for all your writing endeavors. When you’re just starting out, maybe you want to test the waters a little bit. See some proof of what we’re talking about without going to the trouble (and expense) of finding a web host and registering a domain. In this case, often the best solution is to set up a blog on a hosted site like Blogger, TypePad, or WordPress.com. These are places where you can publish articles every day at no cost to you. The advantage of these particular sites for writers is not just the simplicity of setup and maintenance, but also the ability to reach many people through the communities around the platform.
There are many places on the web that will host your blog site, but we recommend choosing one of the big players: Blogger/Blogspot, TypePad, or WordPress.com. Where you choose to place your blog is largely a matter of personal preference. These sites will all help you find your audience through SEO and an existing community of bloggers. They are easy to set up and maintain. All of them have mobile apps that allow you to connect to your blog and post from a smartphone or tablet. Perhaps the availability of your preferred address on a particular host will be a deciding factor.
In this section, we’ll show you the defining characteristics of three platforms: Blogger/Blogspot, TypePad, and WordPress.
The idea behind