A great way to connect with your readers is to give them more readily available content, to capture their attention. This can be done in a number of ways, but this can be achieved via blogging. Blogging also helps with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) as it creates fresh content regularly, keeps your website active, and introduces keywords in context. Blogging is about creating enticing content for your fans and not always “selling” your work.
Not sure where to start?
Don’t worry, we have some great ideas below to get you started on your blogging journey. Remember our blog post on “Top Ten Marketing Tips For New Authors” point number five was “Don’t just try to sell your books” your readers want to connect with you on a personal level, they want to trust everything you stand for so use your blog to truly identify and engage with your fans. Yes, your ultimate goal is to sell books, but people are more likely to invest in the person behind the story.
Something to always remember before you start your blog post is to consider the keywords. You can use Google Adwords in order to search for the competition of the keywords. Ideally, you want keywords that are low in competition and are high in search volume to maximise your chances to rank higher on the search engines.
Categories
Break your blog posts into categories so that people can easily identify what they are looking for, as an example, we will use three categories with a range of blogging ideas in each to showcase exactly what you can do and how you can break it down further.
In this example, we are going to use; behind the scenes, reviews, and all about my books.
If you write under different names or genres, you could also include those as subcategories. When blogging we must always remember to include images and title each image accordingly, if you have used a source, be sure to indicate that in your title of the image; below in my own blog post you can see that I have placed SOURCE : KATENTEO by doing this you give credit to the original post.
Another important tip is always to include backlinks when mentioning someone or even referring to an earlier blog post this will go a long way to helping with SEO. Again in the image below you can see the backlinks are all changed to red indicating that they will give you access to the relevant source.
I have previously mentioned using Kanteneo as a great resource for me when it comes to blogging and SEO. They have an insightful article on backlinks, what they are, why they are important and effective ways to gain your own backlinks. “How to get easy backlinks the right way”
Behind The Scenes
This could be an amazing category where you can really showcase who you are as a person, and how your writing career and personality interconnect. Even if you write under a pseudonym, it doesn’t matter because your readers are connecting you to your persona. These posts need to be more “personal”. It is highly recommended that these are written in 1st person, so your reader feels like they are talking with you directly.
Some ideas for this category are as follows:
Daily Life as an author.
How you stay organised.
Fun engaging facts about yourself.
Things about your background that inspired your love of writing.
How / Where you write, include pictures of your reading nook or writing corner.
Write about people who may have inspired your passion for words.
Talk about writer’s block and how you personally deal with it.
Talk about your long-term and short-term goals. Where do you see yourself in the future?
Talk about mistakes you have made when writing and poor decisions.
Include blog posts about how you outline your book and plot out your character’s journey.
Even introduce your family, friends, and pets.
All these ideas allow your followers to connect with you on a deeper level. You never know, you may even just inspire someone else to take the plunge and begin to write.
Reviews
This section is a great way for you to share your own personal feelings and views on different books, etc. In addition, it shows your own interests. This can include a wide variety of reviews. It doesn’t just have to be books, it could be movies, TV series, restaurants, anything. However, bonus points if you can connect it to your own writing, it’s about using your wording to entice the reader to connect with you and your story. A great example of this is the TV program "Teen Wolf", maybe your leading character reminds you of "Scott McCall". This helps you to gain backlinks, you can review an author’s book and they review yours linking back to your website and vice versa. Google loves these backlinks and they are so important when it comes to SEO.
Some ideas for this category are as follows:
Book reviews for fun or for other authors you have connected with.
You could review different reading apps, which ones are your favourite and why.
Talk about the favourite blogs you follow or connect with and why, what do they offer to you that draws you in (Remember to link to these).
Another possibility is to interview bloggers, finding out what inspired them to blog, what books they connect with, who their favourite author is etc. There are lots of topics you can talk about during this interview. Again, remember to link to their website.
You could interview readers, why they like your books, which of your books is their favourite, who their favourite characters are and why. Again, this is a great way of really getting to know your fans and engaging with them.
Talk about your favourite authors and why you like them.
You can speak about different signings you have attended and what you liked about each of them, including pictures of any you have attended.
Consider doing an interview swap with other authors that are relevant in your genre.
My Books
This is where you focus your selling attention but again it doesn’t have to be all about selling, number eight on our Top Ten Marketing Tips for new authors was GIVE GIVE GIVE, so in this category, you can really make your mark with this tip. A huge tip with these pages is to include purchase links be that through your own online shop or other selling platforms like Amazon, you can also include links for your mailing list to help on building the number of readers signed up to receive your weekly or monthly newsletter, remember to offer free content for your newsletter this will entice the right people in who are likely to stay around.
Some examples of what you can include in this category are as follows:
Interviewing your characters.
Include bonus scenes or chapters.
Talk about possible story ideas for the future and ask which your readers prefer or would like you to work on next.
Create a dream cast of actors, who you would shortlist for the role if your book was turned into a movie or TV series.
Post background info about your characters, where did they start off before this latest novel.
Share trailers and teasers of your book, you could even share fan-made trailers or teasers. You could ask in these posts if your fans have made any to share them with you.
Post your cover reveals, sales, releases, and pre-orders.
Post your blog tours, including the backlinks to blogs that are partaking in your tour. Include reviews from the tours.
Try a giveaway on your website, you can use things such as rafflecopter, which can also help you to build your social media following and your mailing list.
You could even let your characters take over your blog one day a week where they write about their lives.
Remember, some of this is purely focussed on sales, but there is also a lot of content here that you are giving to your fans which will help them to better understand your books and hopefully go on to purchase them.
Blogging takes time, but overall it will benefit you in the long run. Be that through connecting with your current fans or helping you to reach a new audience.
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