These blogs are authored by Authors' Coalition members. They will be a good resource for writers planning a blog tour, for writers gleaning ideas for a blog of their own and more.  The subjects are varied so if you see one that aligns itself with what you are doing, offer the blogger a link exchange or a guest blogger exchange. There are all kinds of ways we can come together.

 www.TheFrugalEditor.blogspot.com.

http://rrpstorytellers.blogspot.com 

www.TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com

www.WarPeaceTolerance.blogspot.com

PRILL’S BLOGGING BASICS

By Prill Boyle

Editor of the super-popular blog, http://defyinggravitynow.blogspot.com. 

WHY A BLOG?

I’m serious  Why do you want a blog?  Do you have something to say that others might want to hear?  Do you have some expertise or experience you’d like to share?  These are important questions.  If all you want to do is sell a product or promote a book, there are easier and better ways to do so.

YOUR BLOG VOICE

The blogs I like best have a strong point of view and distinctive voice.  Both what you have to say and how you say it should make your blog stand out from the multitude.  Be clear about your niche before you begin.  Generally, the narrower, the better.

GETTING STARTED

Both Blogger (www.blogger.com) and WordPress (www.wordpress.com) offer free, easy-to-set up blog templates.  With almost no effort at all, you can be up and running in five minutes.  Ten tops.  Once you’ve created a Blogger or WordPress blog, you can link it to your website, Amazon, Facebook, etc.

HOW TO KEEP POSTING WHEN YOU’RE OUT OF TOWN OR NOT IN THE MOOD:

The more you post, the more traffic you’ll get.  To gain a following, you need to post at least once a week. If you can’t or don’t want to blog that often, consider writing several entries at once and post-dating them to space out their publication. In Blogger, here’s how to post-date entries:

1. While in either the "Compose" or "Edit Html" mode of Blogger, click on "Post Options" at the bottom left of your screen.

2. In the "Post Date" and "Time" blanks, fill in whatever date and time you'd like your post to appear.

3. Now click on the "Publish Post" button.  Your post will not be published until the date and time you've specified.

TRACKING YOUR VISITORS

If you're already taking the trouble to blog, it’s worth the extra effort to install StatCounter or Google Analytics to find out how many people are visiting your site, what they’re clicking on to get to you, which state or country they’re logging on from, how long they stay, what they download, etc.  You can also track how many unique visitors you have versus returning ones.   All this information is invaluable in terms of creating content to maximize your readership.

To install StatCounter, go to www.statcounter.com and sign up.  It’s a free service with easy-to-use tracking features. 

To sign up for Google Analytics, you first need to create a Google account.  Go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/start/#utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-google&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=google%20webmaster%20tools and follow the directions.  If above link doesn’t work, Google “Webmaster Tools” to access the site and proceed from there. 

PROMOTING YOUR BOOK, PRODUCT, BUSINESS, ETC.

Add a link to the sidebar of your blog so that people can easily click on a picture of whatever you’re selling and purchase it.  If you have a business, write some advertising copy and post it in the sidebar as well.  Make sure to provide contact information so that visitors can easily reach you, keeping in mind that whatever you post will be available for anyone to view. 

Note:  Be clear that a blog provides some sort of ongoing narrative.  Its primary purpose is not to sell goods or services.

INCREASING TRAFFIC

Add value

Give visitors a reason for coming to your blog.  You might install a Shelfari widget to display recommended books, provide exercises of some type, review articles related to your topic, etc.  Put yourself in your readers’ shoes and ask yourself what information they might enjoy receiving from you.

Use Multimedia

Making your blog visually interesting and fun to visit will also increase traffic.  Add photos to your posts, insert YouTube clips, create Flickr slideshows, etc.  In Blogger, you add page elements by clicking on the “Layout” tab of the Dashboard.  To add photos to your posts, click on the “Posting” tab. 

Blogger makes it easy to do almost everything listed above, except for creating slideshows.  Here’s how to do that:

1. Go to www.flickr.com and set up an account.

2. Once you sign in, you should end up at your home page.  Click on the "upload photos" button.  (Note:  Photos in your Flickr Photostream will appear in the order of the date you post them.  So if you want a particular photo to pop up first in your slideshow, post it LAST!)

3. Now go to http://flickrslidr.com and fill in the blanks to create your slideshow.  For the URL of your set, copy and paste the URL from your Flickr Photostream page. Leave the Tags and Text blanks empty.

4. Press the "Create Slideshow" button.  In the bottom half of the screen, you'll see an "embed code"--the html code youl'l need to cut and paste into your blog.

5. NOTE:  I cut and paste all these codes and links into a Word document so that I don't have to keep going back and forth, searching for the right pages, etc. as I try to post all of this on my blog.

6. Now...go to your blog "Layout" page.

7. Click on the "Add a Gadget" button.

8. Scroll down the gadget list until you get to "Slide Show" and click on the button.

9. Fill in the blanks:

10. Title the slideshow whatever you want.

11. For "source," use thge drop-down menu and click "Flickr."

12. Under "option," click "user."

13. And for "username"--and this is the trick--you need to use a number like this:  89979909@N00.  To find the number that corresponds to your slide show, go back to the Flickr Slidr html code you created (and saved in a Word document) and look for something similar in it.  Then copy and paste it in the "username" blank.

14. Then...finally...press SAVE.  Your show should appear on your sidebar.

In general, keep your postings short

 Reading on-line is different than reading hard copy.  Less is more.  People are busy.  Do them a favor and be concise. 

 Be smart about titles

 Think of the keywords people will likely type into a search engine to find the topic you’re addressing in your post.  Use those words in your post titles and, even more importantly, in the title of the blog itself.

 Hyperlink to any and everything you can

 Link to any person, place or thing you possibly can.  In Blogger, you’ll find a link button in “Compose” mode.  Just click on the button and type in the address of the website to which you want to link.  Whatever you link to connects you to that entity on search engines.

Link to your website.  (This goes without saying, I hope.)

Encourage people to comment on your blog

 Activate the “comments” feature.  Consider forming of a group of like-minded bloggers to comment on each others’ posts.  Comments increase your search-engine rankings.

 Comment on Other People’s Blogs

 Google your subject and see what sites come up.  I signed up for a Google Alert (if you don’t know what this is, Google the term) for the phrase “late bloomer” so that I’m notified when others post on this topic and I can what they’re saying.  I frequently end up commenting on others’ posts this way.  Keep in mind that your comments on others’ sites will often appear in search engines when people type in your name.  If you use Analytics or StatCounter, you’ll see firsthand how much commenting brings traffic to your site

Link Your Blog to Others with Similar Subject Matter

 Reach out and invite others to do reciprocal links. 

Invite others to do guest posts.

 Have other authors or experts in your field write a guest-post—a win-win providing exposure for both of you.

Consider teaming up with others to do a blog. 

 If you have a team, everybody shares the responsibility.  In other words, each person can post less often.

Maximize Social Networking Tools

Install a FeedBurner subscription box.

 Go to www.feedburner.com and follow directions.  (Note: I like FeedBurner because it gives me statistics on my subscribers.)  If you don’t want to use FeedBurner, provide some other way for people to sign up to receive your blog automatically.

List your blog in blog directories

 Listing your blog in common directories helps increase your search engine ranking and bring more visitors to your site.  Start with the following ones:

• Blogarama:  Go to www.blogarama.com and click on the words “add yours now!” 

• BlogCatalog:  Go to www.blogcatalog.com and click on the tab titled “Submit Your Blog”

• Blogged:  Go to www.blogged.com and click on “Submit a Blog,” (at the top right of the home page).

• Technorati.  Go to http://technorati.com and click on “Blogs.”  Then click on “Claim Your Blog” and follow directions from there.  (From their website:  “Technorati was founded to help bloggers to succeed by collecting, highlighting, and distributing the online global conversation. As the leading blog search engine and most comprehensive source of information on the blogosphere, we index more than 1.5 million new blog posts in real time and introduce millions of readers to blog and social media content.”)

Put a Facebook badge on your blog (using Blogger):

1. Go to your Facebook profile

2. Scroll down to the very bottom of the profile page and click on "Create a Profile Badge."

3. Wait a few seconds for the embed code to appear in the box.  (It should start with <script src="http".)

4. Highlight the code; then go to "Edit" on your menu bar (at the top of the screen) and click "Copy."

5. Open up the Dashboard of your Blogger blog.

6. Go to "Layout"

7. Go to "Add a Page Element"

8. In the Page Element box, type "Facebook" in the Title box and paste the code in the Content box.

9. After you click "Save," your personalized Facebook badge should appear your blog

Note:  If in the process of going from your Facebook page to your Blogger page, you lose the code you've highlighted to copy, just repeat the first four steps and save the code to a Word document.  Then you can paste the code from that same Word document into your Blogger page.

Use Blogcast to publish your blog on Facebook.

Simply go to your Facebook page, add the Blogcast application, and follow directions. 

If you have a book on Amazon, publish your blog on their site as well.  

Go to www.amazon.com and click on AmazonConnect.  (Note:  First you need to sign up for an Amazon customer account.)

If you’re on LinkedIn, add a LinkedIn button to your site so that visitors can have access to your resume, etc.

If you’re an author, consider sharing the first chapter of your book

This works best with self-published works because the rights are exclusively the author’s. Go to www.startatbeginning.blogspot.com and follow the directions.

Install an “AddThis” button to your blog.

This helps people share your posts with others and gives your writing a chance to potentially “go viral.”  Go to www.addthis.com and click on “Get Your Button.”  Select the option for the particular button you want to appear at the bottom of all your posts.

Add labels to your blog and sidebar.

Labels make it easier for visitors to navigate your blog and find postings on subjects of interest to them.  A list of labels in your sidebar becomes an index of sorts. 

To create labels in Blogger:

1. Create labels in either the "Compose" or "Edit Html" mode.

2. After you finish typing a post, simply fill in the "Labels for this post" blank at the bottom of the screen.  Keep in mind that any label you choose will end up on your label list.  I believe that it's best, therefore, to put yourself in the mind of your readers and think about what labels would be useful to them.

Once you've created a few labels, there's a second, amazingly useful tool that you can use to add to, subtract from, and/or change both your list and your individual labels. 

To manage your list, do the following:

1. On the Blogger Dashboard, click on the "Edit Posts" tab near the top of your screen.

2. On the left-hand side of the screen, you should see a list of all the labels you've created.  To the right of this list, you'll see an inventory of all the posts you've written arranged from newest to oldest.

3. To delete a label from your label list, click on the label itself.

4. Then on the list of postings that appear, select any or all of the ones you no longer want to have that label.

5. In the drop-down menu box titled "Label Actions," scroll down to "Remove Label" and click on the label you want to remove.  It's that simple.

6. Play with this same function to teach yourself how to add labels or change them.  (It's a similar process for both.)

Once you're happy with the list of labels that appears on the left side of the "Edit Posts" screen, you're ready to create a label list that will appear on the sidebar of your blog.  Here's how to do this:

To creating a Label List/Index on your blog sidebar:

1. Go onto your Blogger dashboard.

2. Click on the "Layout" tab (at the top of the screen)

3. Click on "Add a Gadget" (on the right-hand side of the screen)

4. Scroll down the list of gadgets until you see "Labels."

5. Click on the "Labels" button.

Cross promote!  Link to your blog from your newsletter, columns, e-mail signature, website, WikiHow article—any and everything you can.

Here’s what Carolyn Howard-Johnson (http://carolynhoward-johnson.com), author of The Frugal Book Promoter, has to say about newsletters (much of which applies to blogs as well): 

Why have a newsletter?

• Because regular newsletters build loyalty. To an organization, to an author, to a product. They do that by offering content that their subscribers want..

• Because newsletters educate. They give information to subscribers that the sponsoring organization or editor wants them to have.

• Because newsletters can actually recruit. (By the way, too many newsletter editors are too eager to trim away subscribers who are not also active participants. In this electronic age, it costs nothing for a newsletter to go to people who once showed an interest; that person's interest might be kick-started again by a new project featured in the newsletter or by the subscriber's own personal needs. Let the subscribe opt out! Don't just trim them away!)

• Because the content in newsletters can be the seeds for publicity in other places. Local newspapers, other organizations, etc. might be interested in articles published in your newsletter.

• Because newsletters can bring a group together by offering interactive opportunities. In other words, subscribers who are encouraged to participate in the workings of a newsletter can help others while branding themselves and marketing their product or business.

• Because newsletters encourage frequent contact with its audience. In marketing, frequency counts.

Google Yourself

Here’s what Carolyn Howard-Johnson has to say about self-Googling:

“I Googled myself this morning, just for the heck of it, and found more than 30 pages of websites, articles, discussion boards, blogs and other places where my articles appear or where people are talking about me.

“Then I Googled a few of my competitors to find out where they're showing up and I discovered some places I should be targeting. It was an interesting exercise--one you should do too.  If you're trying to position yourself (your book), your CEO or your client as an expert, try the Google experiment.  “Are you ‘all over the Internet’ or do you still have a lot of work to do when it comes to spreading the word about your product, service, cause or issue?”

FOUR VERY DIFFERENT AUTHOR SITES TO CHECK OUT:

Mary Carroll Moore’s blog:   http://howtoplanwriteanddevelopabook.blogspot.com/  (MCM is a novelist who is also a writing coach, workshop leader, etc.)

NY Times bestselling novelist Jane Green’s blog:  http://www.janegreen.com/. A very personal blog about Jane’s life.  She has a distinctive voice and point of view.

Novelist Ann Patchett’s website: www.annpatchett.com.   She doesn’t bother with a blog and it doesn’t seem to have hurt her sales.  (Patchett wrote Bel Canto and won the Penn Faulkner.)

 And, of course, check out my blog:  http://defyinggravitynow.blogspot.com. (I try to practice everything I’ve preached above.)

----

Prill Boyle is the author of Defying Gravity: A Celebration of Late-Blooming Women. Learn more about her at www.prillboyle.com. Check in on her blog at http://defyinggravitynow.blogspot.com.

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