Your Blog's Little Black Book

So you’ve been active on the social media sites and worked darn hard to get the traffic flowing to your blog. Luring them in took time and effort, so don’t let your visitors sample your wares and then just slip away. You deserve more than that.

You deserve a commitment.

In your case, commitment is adding their contact information into the modern-day version of the little black book -- your mailing list.

Every time I say “mailing list,” I hear groans. Trust me, I hate spam as much as you do. This is not about you becoming a spammer. This is about you being able to reach out to your fans, the people who love your work, and send then a reminder each time you have a book coming out. It is not some random mailing list. Your list will contain people who signed up to hear from you.

The second reason writers groan when I say mailing list, is that they envision doing a lot of work to build that list. If you don’t want (or don’t have time) to put together contests, newsletters or short stories to entice people out of their email addresses, then here are a few lazy ways to build it:

The easiest option is to have them sign-up to receive a summary of your weekly blog posts by e-mail. Several of the mailing list companies can do this for you automatically. That makes it the perfect low maintenance approach to building a mailing list.
Another option is to have a sign-up for special announcements. Let people know that they will not receive weekly, monthly or regular contact from you, but will only hear from you when you are announcing new books, release dates, public appearances, virtual book tours or other important events. That way people know that they are signing up for periodic advertisements from you about your books. Provide them with a one-time valuable item, like an ebook, podcast or videocast.

Don’t feel like you have to choose just one of these. Mix and match as you like. Just promise me you won’t let them sneak off after partaking of your goods.

Posted by Tamela Buhrke

What Sucks? The Blog or The Blogger?

How successful are you at blogging? Feeling good about it? Sort of? Not so much?

If you feel ambivalent, you are not alone. Blogging has become the necessary evil. It is often viewed as a burden foisted on innocent writers by that dark force of the publishing industry -- the marketing department.

Blogging seems unavoidable. It is the axis upon which all other marketing strategies revolve. Got a radio interview? Make sure you tell those listeners your blog address. That newspaper article needs a link too. Literature for conferences must contain your domain. The list goes on.

That pressure to provide a link causes many writers to scramble haphazardly into building their blog presence. Often they do so without training or guidance. Soon their unfocused blog posts run the gamut of topics, seemingly based on the principle that posting anything is better than nothing. Blog! The readers will come. When no readers arrive, they have no idea why. Even worse, the visitors they do get leave without buying a book or even commenting on a post. What went wrong?

Where is the blog-love we’ve heard so much about? Where are the fans? The comments? The book sales?

Why didn't anyone mention all the work that’s involved? The extra writing takes you away from your manuscript. The blog promotion is overwhelming. Social Media. Keeping up with comments and email. Checking links. Organizing the site. Archiving. Tags. Meta tags. SEO. Lists of internet acronyms that you don’t even want to understand.

Is any of this really selling books?

All of it begs the question -- is the problem the tool, or the skill of the ones who wield it? Is the era of the blog over, the market saturated? Or maybe it’s that people are tired of authors who’s blogs offer nothing more creative than a running commentary on what they had for breakfast (Don’t laugh, I’ve read it).

Frustrated yet?

If so, join us each Wednesday of this month while I explore the pitfalls and successes of the blogging imperative. I’ll give you the unfiltered truth about why the blog platform really does suck and what you can do about it. Then I’ll reverse course, turning the spotlight on the blogger. You’ll see where nearly every writer (myself included) has gone wrong in their blogging. Then we'll both learn from those mistakes and master the number one rule of blogging -- readers, readers, readers.

So get ready for a journey into the foggy world of blogs. Let’s see if we can clear the air.

Dec 8th: Why Blogs Are Bad to the Bone.

Dec 15th: Bloggers Gone Wild

Dec 22nd: Blogs That Have Seen The Light

Dec 29th: The Number One Rule of Blogging

Posted by Tamela Buhrke