We were talking about creating character blogs on Saturday, and I received a comment from a wonderful author named Frances Lynn that I'd like to share with you because I want to show you two fine examples of author blogs that really impressed me. They were nothing fancy, no impressive header or graphics, but what it did have was the content I would be looking for in a good author/book blog.Frances writes, "Hi Dorothy, my two novels, CRUSHED (a YA book) and FRANTIC ('70s' nostalgia) were simultaneously published (by Eiworth Publishing) in October. I'm currently writing a blog for each book. Any tips would be very welcome."
How can you mess with perfection? Granted, both blogs are badly in need of some good optimization tools, but this girl has done a bang-up job promoting her books through these two blogs and I'll tell you why.
I discovered what I like about author blogs is when the author talks about his/her life in the same theme of their books. Let me explain.
Crushed is a YA. In Frances' posts, she talks about things in her past that deal with what someone of that age group would like to hear about. Excellent book promotion, Francis!
For her book, Frantic, she takes it up a beat and focuses on her audience, her market, those who would be interested in buying her book, which would be the boomer generation, more than likely.
Excellent, excellent.
When you blog about your book, keep this in mind. I'm not sure what kind of hits Francis gets, but I'm pretty darn sure about 80% of the visitors who go to each blog are of different age groups, unless it's from visitors who are fans of all ages.
She asked for tips, so this is what I think she should do on both.
For starters, she needs to put up a sitemeter (www.sitemeter.com), if she doesn't already have one and I can't see it. I'll explain in a future lesson how you can use sitemeter to your advantage, but the #1 reason for doing so is so she can keep track of what people are putting in the search engines to find her blog.
The second thing I would suggest is go to www.feedblitz.com and sign up for their feed broadcaster. This is a newsletter of sorts where when people sign up, your posts are delivered right to their email box. More on this promotional tool later, but it is very important to have.
Frances' content is great, but she also wants to keep in mind to use her key search words throughout her blog. Not just in one place, in many places. But, the great thing about her blog is that she has enough content that even words that she didn't think about using will still bring visitors to her blog. But, she needs a sitemeter to determine that.
Another thing she needs or tag words, but I'm getting ahead of myself. That will be discussed shortly.
Overall, I give Frances a big thumbs up!
Tags: Blogging about Books, How to Pump UP Your Blog to Sell More Books, boomer generation, promote your books, Frances Lynn
13 comments:
Gosh Dorothy, thanks for the encouragement - you have inspired me to keep my blogs updated. Also, thanks for your invaluable tips, especially the SiteMeter one. Btw - I noticed that in your tags - you put 'Francis' Lynn. It should be FrancesLynn
Cheers, and thanks again.
Frances
Grrrr! In my previous comment, I note that I signed off wrong (the link was incorrect!).
It should have been Frances
Dorothy, on second thoughts I shan't put a sitemeter on my site as I do have sitemeter facilities on my site's ISP, which tracks everything for me.
Cheers,
Frances
The Sitemeter is really not for you, is it Dorothy?
People like to know who else comes to your blog and the sitemeter gives them a kind of message that this site is visited.
I oftencheck other sitemeters to see their traffic and stay when it's growing after my second visit because I want to see what the author says that gets people interested.
Just my take on it.
Sylvia - I just put a Sitemeter on Crushed Diaries and Seventies Nostalgia.
Cheers,
Frances
Oh goodness...Frances with an E? Man, sorry girlfriend...I'll go fix that pronto.
Hi Sylvia, not sure what you meant...I LOVE sitemeter. I have tracking capabilities on my ISP, too, but sitemeter is easier to keep track of visitors. Just click and I'm there, although if you already have tracking capabilities and can tell what search words that people are using to get to your site, that's all you need.
Dorothy,
thank you sooo much for such simple technical "how to's". You have no idea how difficult it's been to get this same information from other sources. I was finally able to add the feed blitz to my blog!
Thaaaanks!!
Sandra
www.financialfreedomat40.blogspot.com
Cheers Dorothy!
Frances
So in keeping with Frances' theme of setting up separate blogs for her two books, I was thinking about doing the same for MY first two books. You said "I discovered what I like about author blogs is when the author talks about his/her life in the same theme of their books".
I was wondering, how would I go about doing that for my books? To get an idea of what they're about: (www.geminimojpress.com/secrets.html) and (www.geminimojopress.com/djp.html). There's only so much I could write about--personally--so maybe you might have some suggestions. Thanks.
Oops. That's supposed to be www.geminimojopress.com/secrets.html. I misspelled the name of my press in that link.
Celise, girlfriend, you are making my job so easy. I'll be back with the answer in tomorrow's blog post. ;o)
Dorothy, I'm afraid I haven't totally got to grips with FeedBlitz yet. Yes, I've subscribed (and also to your very helpful Pumping Up .... blog as well), but did you write about the ins and outs of Feedblitz in one of your blogs? If you did, I would love the relevant link.
Cheers.
Frances
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