blogs

As an author, you’ve probably been told you should be blogging. Blogs are an excellent way to engage your audience and establish yourself as an authority figure. Still, many find the idea of blogging overwhelming and the actual process of writing blog posts almost unbearable. But with a little bit of planning, a few shortcuts, and some tips from the blogosphere, you can be posting and engaging with readers in no time. Here is our five-part series on blogging to help you get started:

Part One: To Blog or Not to Blog (why you should blog)

Part Two: A Blog Without a Cause (what to blog about)

Part Three: Taming the Blog Monster (managing your blog)

Part Four: The Blog Without a Name (promoting your blog)

Part Five: Blog Vital Signs (tracking your progress)

In part two of our five part series on blogging, we’ll focus on what you should be blogging about. Blogs began as online diaries, and diaries, by nature, are full of random thoughts. But in order for your blog to be effective, you need to focus at all times on the key message you want to convey to your author platform.

Start by identifying key topics from your book, marketing message, or genre. What would your audience be interested in? How does it relate to your author platform and marketing message? Here are some ideas:

• Industry news and updates
• Book reviews (review others in your genre)
• Tips, ideas, strategies, facts, and other helpful tools associated with your message. For example, if you are an expert in leadership, share tips on running a meeting or turning around a trouble employee.
• Events, new products, and other time sensitive items

Categorize your blog content into main topics, which might include book reviews, industry news, interviews, guest posts, etc. To go back to the leadership expert, your categories might include character development, understanding people, improving communication, etc.

Look at other blogs on your topic. What are they saying? Do you see something missing from the conversation? Once you establish your main topics (you can always add more later), start brainstorming talking points related to each.

As you are brainstorming, consider ways you can group and dissect topics while you are writing them. For example, you can pull bits from a larger work and share them as a series of posts. You can also take short bits of information from those posts and use those for tweets. Publishers call this process “content chunking,” and it’s a tremendous time-saver. While you are developing one big work (like a book or article), you can simultaneously create small blog posts, tweets, and Facebook posts. This saves you from doubling up on your efforts.

Unfortunately, not all publishers let you chunk sections from your book into posts, but some publishers, like Greenleaf Book Group, actually include content chunking as part of the publishing service. (Full disclosure: This blog is the creative outlet of Greenleaf Book Group.) Other publishers actually forbid any content chunking due to infringement laws (since the publisher may own the publication rights to the original work). Check with your publisher before you blog any content from your book to avoid potential legal hassles.

In terms of what a blog post should look like, they are relatively short—anywhere from 250 to 1000 words, depending on the topic and the nature of the post. Generally they fall into the 250–500-word category, which is roughly one to three paragraphs (unlike this post). Posts aren’t limited to text either. Pictures and video are great items to share, as long as they are relevant to your overall message. Also, here is an excellent article for building credibility in your posts.

You’ll also want to be professional, but use a conversational tone to engage readers. It’s a good idea to post questions and invite feedback at the end of a post. The purpose is to engage readers, so above all, let your personality shine through, be genuine, provide information, and stay on target with your message.

In our next post, we’ll cover ways to manage your blog so it doesn’t manage you.