By now we all know that a blog is an integral part of an author website. It serves as a place to connect with readers, establish yourself as an expert, and build your platform. It can also be a place to flesh out new ideas, get feedback, and weigh in on hot topics. But after months or years of blogging, how do you keep things fresh?

Commit to it. Bloggin’ ain’t easy. Try an editorial calendar (or at least a running list of post ideas) to keep you on schedule and creating new content. The more you do it, the easier it becomes.

Change up the design.  Apply a fresh coat of paint to the ol’ blog every now and again. A new background or color scheme is a quick and easy update that your readers will notice and appreciate. If you’re Photoshop proficient, try changing your header image every month—it’ll give readers who use a feed a reason to click through to your site.

Ask your readers what they want. Since you’re the expert, your readers will undoubtedly have questions, and those questions can turn into great blog posts (or even a series of posts) on a topic you may never have thought of. Give your readers what they want and they’ll keep coming back for more.

Go multimedia. You’ve hopefully been incorporating photos and video into your posts, but how about creating your own?  They don’t have to be anything fancy—most smartphones can record and upload videos directly to YouTube. Just make sure the camera is steady and the sound is good, and the content will speak for itself.

Experiment. Do you usually write text-heavy posts? Try an infographic. Do you usually post on Monday-Wednesday-Friday? Post on the weekend. Try new things and see how your readers respond. You may hit blogging gold, or you may find that your readers like you just the way you are.

Also check out these tips from ProBlogger on 31 days to building a better blog and Rachelle Gardner on 13 simple tips for a better blog.

What do you do to keep your blog fresh? 

You’ve probably been told at some point to explore guest blogging opportunities as a platform building strategy—maybe even by us.  Guest blogging can be a great way to identify key influencers in your area of expertise, create professional partnerships, and—perhaps most importantly—attract a new potential readership. But not everyone has immediate access to a thriving blogging community. So how can you find a popular guest blogger in your specialty? We’ve gathered a few of our favorite tips below.

Search Smart

Google is likely to be your first stop on the hunt for a perfect guest blogger; in fact, it’s practically a requisite. In order to make the most of your search time, be sure to come up with a list of keywords and phrases that bloggers in your arena are likely to have used in their metadata (this is a helpful exercise to engage for your own website optimization as well). The more specific you can get, the more likely you’ll be to find an expert in your ideal niche. You can use Google’s Advanced Search function to streamline your results. Remember that placing quotations around a phrase guarantees an exact hit (ie: searching for the phrase “emotional intelligence” will only bring up pages that mention those words in tandem) and putting a minus sign in your search is a great way to minimize erroneous results (ie: searching for “motivational speaker” –religious will only bring you pages that mention motivational speaking but not the word religious).

Blog Directories

The first places you might consider branching out to after a Google search are blog directories. Sites like Technorati, BlogCatalog, Blogarama, Alexa, and Alltop allow you to crawl blogs for specific keywords and browse blogs by category and popularity. Directories can be overwhelming, so don’t go too crazy researching every single site. Focus on those that look professional and seem to have a lot of comments, yet are also within realistic reach.  Also be on the lookout for any past blog swaps.

Social Media

Social media is a tried and true way to identify influencers in your area. Searching for phrases on Twitter will give you the top tweets mentioning the keywords and a list of people whose profiles mention the phrase as well. You want to pay the most attention to those with your phrase in their biography line on Twitter since that typically indicates a more in-depth expertise on the subject. LinkedIn Q&A can also be a good place to drum up some fans and also to make connections with other bloggers. Social media is a great way to make an initial connection. You might try commenting or tweeting back and forth with your prospective guest blogger to create a level of familiarity before formally approaching him or her. 

HARO

HARO, or Help A Reporter Out, is an excellent tool for prospecting potential bloggers, commentators, and experts. HARO is a free daily list serve that compiles requests for sources from reporters and then sends them out to more than 200,000 experts. We can’t recommend HARO enough to authors and experts building their platforms. You can sign up here.

Blog Matchers

If you’re starting to feel exasperated by the number of potential bloggers you’re finding (or not finding, as may be the case), you should look into joining a blog-matching site. We’ve written about sites like this in the past.  Mashable also recommends BlogDash, eCairn, and GroupHigh as valuable “blogger dating” services.

Think Outside the Blog

Don’t forget that it might make sense to reach out to experts who aren’t necessarily bloggers. There are plenty of experts out there with strong social media and website followings who might be willing to write a quick post for you. Another way to “think outside the blog” is to suggest a video blog or social media swap. Many experts don’t have time to type an entire blog post, but might be willing to record a video with a few tips or write an advice-oriented tweet or post. 

Once you’ve found your perfect blogger, you can follow our guidelines on how to best contact them and run your event.  You might be asked to swap a blog post with your guest blogger. In that case, be sure to check out our suggestions on being the perfect guest blogger for your host. 

Let us know any other ways you’ve found the perfect guest blogger in the comments below!

In this series we will address one of the biggest questions facing authors today: how will I publish my book? As little as ten or fifteen years ago, this answer would have been simple: get an agent, who will then pitch the book to major publishers on your behalf. Now, with the wide variety of options available, it can be hard to decide what route to take. This is why, one post at a time, we’ll dissect each of the options in an effort to help authors better answer that question.

In our last post, we talked about how traditional publishers work. Today we will discuss the burgeoning business of self-publishing. Self-publishing (not to be confused with vanity publishing, which we’ll discuss next time) is basically the process of contracting with a variety of professionals to create a book. That might include editors, graphic designers, book compositors, printers, and distributors. So, for example, if you have a complete manuscript, you’ll have to find and pay an editor to work on the content; then a compositor to do the interior layout; then a cover designer to create the cover, back cover, spine, and flaps; and so on. You can also hire book shepherds or packagers, who have a stable of contractors and who will coordinate the work on your book.

Sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? Well, there are some good reasons to do it yourself, and we’ll share some of the downsides as well.

Pros:

Ownership. Since you created the book, you own the publication rights to all versions of the book (ebooks, foreign editions, film adaptations, etc.)—unless you sell them to a traditional publisher. Retaining your rights is especially useful if your brand or business is tied to the book and if you’ll want to incorporate parts of the content from the book into your website, seminars, materials, and the like. When you self-publish, you pay the upfront cost, but you also keep a much larger percentage of the profits (to the tune of 35 to 45 percent of the retail price versus 2 to 10 percent with traditional publishers).

Creative control. Since you’re calling the shots, you get to decide exactly how you want your book to look. You have final say on everything—from how the editor approaches the content, to what colors the designer uses in the cover, to the printing specifications and technology.

Speed to market. Having control of the project also gives you the ability to get your content to the market faster than a traditional publisher would be able to. If you have something timely you want out in six to twelve months rather than two or three years, self-publishing is the way to go.

Cons:

Quality. Even when working with purported “experts” you should always be wary of the experience an editor or designer brings to your project. There are plenty of contractors out there with little experience creating a commercially viable book, and it can be a hard pill to swallow if you get stuck paying for low-quality work. Additionally, a self-published book can lack the unity of having one team working on it, as well as the polish a seasoned publisher can provide. Even if you’re working with highly skilled professionals, unless they are receiving the kind of feedback from national retail buyers that major publishers are getting, they will never have the same insight and therefore won’t be able to provide the same level of quality. Many self-published books unfortunately possess a few major missteps that keep them off the shelves of major retailer.

Distribution. Since anyone can self-publish a book, there is no guarantee of quality and self-published books are often viewed poorly by the media and retailers. And because self-publishers generally do not receive feedback from retail, they lack the ability to adapt to the market the same way publishers can. Since retailers can be squeamish about self-published books, getting into retail channels, even with the help of a distributor, can be difficult.

Distinction. For the reasons we’ve discussed (quality control, lack of retail feedback) self-published books can sometimes carry a stigma. Since they generally lack solid retail distribution, their sales histories are usually weak, which makes them a riskier bet for retail buyers. For buyers, it’s a question of choosing something untested with no track record (a self-published book) over a product that has a record of excellence (a traditionally published book).

So what now? There is a wide variety of resources and articles out there for self-publishers (like this one from Nathan Bransford on self-published millionaires). Here are a few websites and books to check out:

• Dan Poynter’s website on publishing, complete with everything from writing and editing advice to information on how to typeset your book and find a printer. Poynter also has quite a few books out on self-publishing.
• John Kremer’s site focuses on book marketing and also offers all kinds of resources for self-publishers.
• Self-Publishing for Dummies by Jason Rich: This book is a simple introduction to the business of self-publishing, complete with the traditional For Dummies graphics.
• The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing by Tom and Marilyn Ross: This book surveys the entire process from writing to printing to promoting.

If your goals as an author are aligned with the pros above and the cons are something you can stomach, it’s probably a good idea to dig a little deeper into self-publishing as an option for your book. Once you’ve done your research, the next step is identifying vendors. The resources above should point you in the right direction and help you find qualified professionals who can provide the services you need to create your book.

It’s that time of year. Time to sign up for gym memberships, to clean out cluttered spaces, and to make grandiose lists of things to-do in the New Year. All joking aside, if you want to make a real go at becoming a published author in 2011 there are a few commitments you need to make.

1. Commit to Read More

If you want to become a published author you need to know what’s selling in your genre. You should be reading the bestsellers plus the others to see what’s getting published and what’s standing out. In addition to reading in your genre you should be reading about the craft of writing and the business of publishing. The more you know the better your chances are of getting published (and not getting screwed).

2. Commit to Learning

No matter how good you are you could always be better. Take a class online or at your local writer’s group. Watch webinars, read, and attend workshops. Set aside at least 30 minutes every day to learn and improve your skill.

3. Commit to Making Friends

Writing is a lonely pursuit. Don’t work in a vacuum. Make friends with other writers and passionate readers. There is so much you can learn from them and the support they give you can help you weather the rejections and bouts of writer’s depression.

4. Commit to Marketing

Publishing is highly competitive. Everything you can do to raise your name above the crowd and get noticed will help you get a book deal and,  once the book is published, make sales. Figure out your “brand,” get involved on social media, and start networking with your readers.

5. Commit to Writing

You need to commit to writing and submitting your work several times a week. Build a solid writing practice, line out a schedule you can stick to, and hold yourself accountable. You can’t publish a book without a finished manuscript. You have to put in the work.

6. Commit to Passion

You should write because you love it. Yes its work and yes sometimes its hard, but you have to fuel your passion and drive your creativity to its limits if you want to succeed. Any gains you make mean nothing if you aren’t passionate about what you do.

Shennandoah Diaz is the President of Brass Knuckles Media, an uncensored PR & Marketing firm catering to creatives and the avant garde. Passionate about education, Diaz empowers creatives by sharing articles and teaching workshops on marketing, social media, and publishing. Learn more at www.brassknucklesmedia.com or at www.shennandoahdiaz.com.