M. K. Theodoratus, Fantasy Writer, blogs about the books she reads--mostly fantasy and mystery authors whose books catch her eye and keep her interest. Nothing so formal as a book review, just chats about what she liked. Theodoratus also mutters about her own writing progress or ... lack of it.

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Friday, May 18, 2012

Blog, Blogged, Blogging

Have been thinking, a lot, about blogging the past couple of days. Partly, because I haven't been blogging much. Partly, because I'm thinking of ways I might change this. Partly, my link to the blog about making money by turning your blog into a book. -- Not that I think I'd ever spend the effort to do that. Still, I've been blogging for maybe three-four years. Maybe it's time to do things a little differently.

Perhaps the best advice would be to write a better blog. Julie Rosen at Social North wrote about "The Art of a Well-Written Blog". You might take a peek. I found it useful. Hope you do to.

Of course, when you've written the blog, you want someone to read it. Don't you? Looking for some new ideas to mine, I put "improve blogs" into Google. The #1 listing was a blog by SEOMoz : 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic [Updated 2012]. The blog is a revision of a blog written in 2007 and prints out a small binder full of pages, if you print it. There's a lot of technical info which I think might even help me understand what's going on.


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Yeah. The need to market is ever-present. Twitter. Blogspot. Facebook. I'm on all of them with varying degrees of success. My "eh" factor usually turns my attention to other efforts, but still, I try to be more efficient about marketing. 

Sometimes, I even give myself a chuckle. Recently, read an article by Jeff Bullas on how to run a successful Facebook page promotion. Since my Far Isle Half-Elven page is so anemic, I thought it was worth a look -- even though I had other things to do. Result: They discussed the campaigns of Kohl, Target, Southwest Airlines, and Corona beer among others -- all of which spend millions on marketing. ...

Yeah, some self-published writer is going to be as successful as them.
 

5 comments:

Brian said...

Hi Kay,

I like your site, you have some interesting posts. My site My Perfect Pitch compliments yours, consisting of interesting articles from a published author, and a free writers yearbook with over 1000 book publishers currently accepting submissions. Keep up the good work.

Regards, Brian

Unknown said...

Thanks for the link to How to Write Great Content... I feel like I'm mostly doing everything it mentions on my blog, yet still not engaging a readership. Hmmm. I know how you feel. If writing is my second job, "marketing" aka blogging feels like a third. And it's tough to give any time, energy, or fore-thought to a third job. Anyway, just stopping in--I found you on Absolute Write and you're now in my RSS feed. Blog on! :)

Unknown said...

Traci, glad to have you "on board". Isn't the Water Cooler a great place for useful information. I enjoy the "fights" too.

On the Great Content piece, I printed it out and underlined key ideas ... went back and reread it ... and now I think I'm going to ignore it. Frankly, I don't want to think about my blog any more than I have to, but I think it my attitude: "Take me as I am or go away."

B.A.Williamson said...

Definitely trying to build a readership for my new blog. It isn't easy to get notice. Thanks for the links! You're writing is incredibly helpful. I'm just getting started with a serialized YA fantasy story over at www.gwendolyngray.blogspot.com. I'd be grateful for any advice or suggestions you might have.

Unknown said...

B.A. -- sent some feedback at your website. Nice story, but current publishing conventions prefer you start out with your character in action rather than telling about her.