Blog traffic problems?
by Anne R. Allen
Attracting traffic to your author blog is probably the biggest challenge for new author-bloggers. (After actually getting around to starting the thing in the first place and writing some posts.)
The problem is that most of the stuff you read about blogs isn’t terribly useful to authors. Blogging advice is usually aimed at writers who are blogging for its own sake and aiming to monetize their blogs. Author bloggers are in this to bring attention to their books, not “make $12 gazillion dollars a month blogging” or whatever that book on blogging written in 2005 promises. (And do, please, be wary of those things. Very few people are getting rich with blogs these days.)
In Part 1 of this post, I offered 6 tips to bring more traffic to your author blog:
- Comment on other blogs for visibility and networking
- Guest blog
- Learn basic blogging do’s and don’ts
- Learn to write Web content
- Post regularly
- Write grabby, Tweetable headers
And because that got way too long, today I have 7 more tips:
1) Pack Your First Words With Crucial Information
Half a century ago, journalists were taught to “humanize” stories by starting with a human interest line.
“Wendy Writer shouldn’t have a care in the world. She’s a pretty thirty-something freelance writer living in a gorgeous Victorian triplex in Old Town. She’s sitting on the front porch of the house she moved into last month with her cat Hortense. The three-story home was once owned by one Mildred Biggins, who died in 1924…”
The reporter could wait to get to the lead (then known as the “lede” to differentiate from the metal originally used to make type) in the third or fourth sentence, but these days, you’ve got to give us the facts in the first 50-60 characters.
50-60 characters. That’s all Google shows in the search results, so make them work hard.
It’s also what will show in any preview that appears on Facebook, Google Plus or other social media, so you don’t want to save any “good stuff” for later.
Start with a bang: “Wendy Writer’s house may be haunted by the ghost of Mildred Biggins.” Just say it.
2) Use Images and Choose them Wisely
When I started blogging in 2009, images weren’t as important as they are now. My old blog header photo that went out with all the posts was just fine.
Later, the “book of the week” became the featured image.
But that was in the days before Twitter images and the rise of image importance on other social media. These days a blogpost without a sizable, recognizable image is pretty much invisible.
According to social media guru Frances Caballo, colored visuals increased people’s willingness to read a piece of content by 80% and content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images.
Also it’s good to know that WordPress favors a horizontal image at least 675 wide and 375 high. Twitter also likes horizontal (landscape). Facebook and LinkedIn like square and Pinterest and Google+ favor portrait.
I discovered the importance of images recently when I was called for interviews by two prestigious magazines—one a women’s fashion magazine and the other a prestigious journal for lawyers.
The interviews were on very different topics—book reviews and fears of becoming homeless—but the reason I was called in both instances was that my blogpost was the first entry that came up on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) that was accompanied by an image. I got the interviews—and the chance to pimp my books—because my picture was there on the SERP.
But do make sure you use copyright-free images. Some bloggers do a quick Google search and use an image without making sure it’s free to use. Six months later they get a nasty surprise bill from the copyright holder. Not fun.
Choose images from WikiCommons, Wikimedia, Pixabay , Unsplash, Morguefile or one of the other free photo sharing sites (or take your own.)
3) Social Media is Your Best Source of Blog Traffic
Most of the traffic to a new blog comes from social media and other blogs.
This is why you need those Tweetable headers I talked about in Part 1. You also really need Google Plus.
Google Plus:
You know how I said my blogposts were the first to come up in a SERP in many subjects? Well, it wasn’t actually my blog. It was the announcement of the blog posts on Google Plus.
Google Plus is your most effective medium for driving search engine traffic to your blog.
And Google Plus rewards wordiness, so post a couple of paragraphs as well as the link.
Twitter:
I usually tweet the post a couple of times a day all week, with different hashtags. Hashtags make a big difference with Twitter. I’m told they do with Pinterest, as well, although I haven’t really got the hang of Pinterest yet.
With my new book blog, I use the hashtags #mystery #crime, #poisons and #gardening. To find out what you want to use, Google “Twitter hashtags” for your subject matter.
Pinterest:
Post photos from your blog to your Pinterest boards. You can tag your blog photos with hashtags to snag Pinterest users (thanks for that tip, Tam Francis) and use keywords in the photo description.
Facebook:
Don’t just post to your Facebook author page or personal page. You can get a big boost in traffic by posting to relevant groups you belong to as well, (but don’t overdo it. I once got reported for spam by some creep I was trying to help with a link to a post that answered his question and got put in FB jail for a week, with a CAPTCHA on all my links for a year.)
And don’t forget other social media like LinkedIn, Reddit and StumbleUpon, or wherever you have a presence.
A link to this blog somebody put on StumbleUpon last January got us 5555 hits in one day.
4) Learn to Use and Format Subheaders
I touched on subheaders in Part 1 and promised some more in-depth info.
Subheaders are essential for drawing traffic and keeping it. They have three jobs:
- Emphasize your important points.
- Draw the eye through the piece.
- Include keywords and signal your topics to search engines.
So if you’re writing about Mildred Biggins, you want to use subheaders that contain words like “ghost”, “haunted”, and “poltergeist”, rather than “Flappers in the Night” or “Mildred or Hortense…who’s Flushing the Toilet at 3 AM?”.
IMPORTANT: Be sure to use the “header” and “subheader” mode in your blog program, and not the “normal” or “paragraph” setting.
For Blogger users, the subheader menu is on the left-hand side of the toolbar, where you see the word “normal”. That window has a menu, where you can choose Heading, Subheading, or Minor Heading.
For WordPress users, it’s in the menu where you see “paragraph” as the default setting. You can choose “Headings” from 1 down to 6.
5) Choose Strong Anchor Text for Hyperlinks
Hyperlinks are all-important in blogging.
What are hyperlinks? It’s okay to ask. I had no idea how to make a hyperlink for the first six months I blogged.
You make a hyperlink when you turn an ugly url like this https://selfpublishingsites.com/beware-bogus-literary-agents/ into a live bit of text that you can click on. Like this link to one of my very first blogposts: Beware Bogus Literary Agents.
You make a hyperlink by selecting the text (called “anchor text”) that you want people to click on. Then you go to the icon that looks like two links of chain up there on the menu bar. Or in Blogger it is cleverly identified with the word “Link”.
See how I didn’t make the link above with the word “here” or “this link”? That’s because the words “here” and “this link” don’t mean anything to the Google spiders (the reason these robot/algorithm things are called “spiders” is they “crawl” around the Interwebz looking for content.)
Those algorithms only notice links with identifying text. So either use the title of the piece as I did above, or say something about it, like “the time agent Janet Reid visited my clueless-newbie blog.”
That means somebody searching for info on Janet Reid might run into my post. Also searches for “clueless”, “newbie” and “blog”.
Also, one of the ways a website “ranks” with search engines is with “backlinks” or “sites linking in.” Those are sites that link to your blog, which are a very good thing.
So if I stop by your blog and like something you say—or even dislike it—as long as I mention it and link to it from this blog, that’s a huge boost for you. So you want people to talk about you (as long as they get your url right!)
6) Tags Attract Blog Traffic, Too
The “tags” or “labels” you put on the end of your post look as if they’re for helping you organize your archives. And of course that’s their primary purpose. But they’re also noticed by those all-important spiders. So use as many tags as possible, including all your keywords, plus the names of people you’re quoting or writing about.
If they’re tagged, those people may get a Google alert that you’ve mentioned them. That means they may grace your blog with their presence, which is what happened to me with Janet Reid, on my fifth blogpost ever.
I had twelve followers, but there was the QueryShark herself, telling me I had a “nicely written post.” Oh, how I basked! (But she rejected my query anyway, alas.)
7) Some SEO Tips
I know SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of those jargon expressions that makes most writers’ eyes glaze over. A lot of people think it means repeating the same words over and over.
But search engines actually favor using regular speech these days, so you don’t usually need to do anything strange to “optimize” for a search engine. All you need to do is use simple keywords to help Google and other search engines find you with those algorithmic spider thingies.
Using keywords means using the most basic (and unfortunately least interesting) words about your topic. So when you’re writing your copy or header, think of what words somebody might put into a search engine on the topic you’re writing about. Can you tell which would work better for SEO?
#1 My Cat Hortense is a Genius
#2 Can Your Cat Learn to Use the Toilet?”
If you’re catching onto this keyword/SEO/header thing, you chose #2. A person looking for information on cat hygiene is more likely to type “cat use toilet” into Google than “Hortense” and “genius.”
So if you want somebody to read your piece about how Hortense learned to flush the toilet, leading you to believe there was a poltergeist in the bathroom of your new apartment, use a header that the Googler might think up if she had an interest in toilet-flushing cats.
The best thing to do is check after you write your post to see if you have keywords in the following:
- Headline
- First paragraph
- Subheaders
- Anchor text for hyperlinks.
- Tags
And don’t worry a lot if you can’t cram them all in there. Treat the list as helpful guidelines, but don’t obsess, or your prose will sound stilted and boring.
***
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) August 7, 2016
How about you, scriveners? How do you drive traffic to your author blog? Did you try any of my tips from Part 1? Do you use subheaders and tags? Do you have any further tips for fellow bloggers?
Remember we don’t monetize here, and the only way we get paid is if you buy our books, so do check out my book page. And if you like something you get free or on sale, a review will help other readers find the book. (Don’t feel you have to restrict your reviews to Amazon. Reviews are useful at B & N, iTunes, Kobo, or wherever you shop.)
NEWS: We’ve been named to another Top 100 Websites for Writers. Thanks Feedspot!
This week on her book blog Ruth Harris talks about getting older and/or maybe not better. And Anne is still poisoning people, this week with Antifreeze, over at her book blog.
Coming up: Next week we have a visit from a Golden Globe winning screenwriter of over 40 feature films! Gerald Di Pego will be telling us how to build compelling, unforgettable characters.
BOOKS OF THE WEEK
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HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE
Everything you wanted to know about contemporary publishing (traditional or indie) but were afraid to ask: from your first draft to that movie deal: blogging, social media, marketing, platform building, querying, dealing with reviews and rejection and internet trolls. It’s all in there!
co-written with Amazon million-seller Catherine Ryan Hyde
From August 5-August 12 it will be only 99c at Amazon.com and Amazon UK
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Humorous portraits of rebellious women at various stages of their lives. From aging Betty Jo, who feels so invisible she contemplates robbing a bank, to neglected 10-year-old Maude, who turns to a fantasy Elvis for the love she’s denied by her patrician family, to a bloodthirsty, Valley-Girl version of Madame Defarge, these women—young and old—are all rebelling against the stereotypes and traditional roles that hold them back. Which is, of course, why Grandma bought that car…
Narrated by C.S. Perryess and Claire Vogel
***
OPPORTUNITY ALERTS
Please note: I try to vet all the contests and opportunities I list here, but I may miss something, so always read the fine print, especially when it comes to copyright. Don’t enter a contest that takes rights for non-winning submissions, or asks for ALL rights, rather than first rights. More on this at Writer Beware.…Anne
THE SUNDAY TIMES SHORT STORY AWARD NO ENTRY FEE Any story under 6,000 words. Five shortlisted runners-up get £1,000. First prize worth £30,000. The Society of Authors is the sponsor. Author must have previous publications in the UK or Eire. Deadline September 29, 2016.
Bartleby Snopes Dialogue-Only Story Contest. $10 FEE for unlimited entries. Write a story under 2000 words, using only dialogue–no tags. No other restrictions. Prize: minimum of $300, more with more entries. All fees go into the prize pot. Deadline September 15th.
Call for anthology submissions! Wising Up Press is accepting submissions of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction for their “Kindness of Strangers” anthology. Prose: 5,000 words or fewer. Poets may submit up to five poems. They accept simultaneous submissions and previously published work. Deadline Sept. 1st
Verbolatry Laugh-a-Riot Contest 2016 Win £50 and publication, no fee. Seeking Humorous essays and cartoons about writing/publishing. Two categories, free and paid. (Pay £5, win £100) Judged by Moira Allen, Leigh Anne Jasheway and Geoff Tristram. Sponsored by Anam Cara Writer’s and Artist’s Retreat. Deadline 31 August 2016.
MYSTERY AUTHORS! We found a list of 15 small presses that specialize in mysteries and do not require an agent for submissions. It’s compiled by Authors Publish Newsletter.
ROMANCE AUTHORS! Here’s a list of 31 small presses that specialize in romance and do not require an agent for submissions. Also compiled by the Authors Publish Newsletter.
25 PUBLISHERS YOU CAN SUBMIT TO WITHOUT AN AGENT. These are respected, mostly independent publishing houses–vetted by the great people at Authors Publish. Do check out their newsletter.
Great post as always Anne. I’m slowly getting the hang of SEO, tags etc in my blog. I’m trying to get into a routine with each post I make, and hopefully it’ll make a positive difference. There’s so much conflicting information elsewhere but your advice is simple to follow and implement. Thank you.
Mark–You make good use of social media to get the word out about your blog. That’s how I found you. (It helps that you say nice things about us. 🙂 ) Setting up a routine makes it easier, so thanks for that tip!
You’re right that there is lots of conflicting information. I always say follow the money! If the person giving advice is going to make money from the hoops they’re telling you to jump through…ignore and delete. 🙂
Hey Anne – all so intriguing. I just don’t think like the folks who set things up. Normal vs Heading / SubHeading? As though the distinction makes any sense at all… Thanks again for giving my digital understanding of things a good slap in the head.
csperryess–You have to think as if you’re outlining, rather than writing regular prose. Writing for the Web is writing for the skimmer-reader. So if you give each topic a subheader, and each paragraph a minor header, and then bullet your sentences, you’ve got the ideal skimmable post. Obviously I don’t do that completely, but that’s what they’re pushing for.
Subheads – didn’t know about that feature in Blogger. Thanks!
Also didn’t know Google+ likes more words. I’ll start adding some.
I’ve always been careful with images. They are my own, my guest’s, or a movie/album/book cover. (And I’m sure the latter group doesn’t mind the free advertising.
Alex–That subheader category can make a big difference in formatting your posts and also in getting your posts onto those SERPs. And I’d never have known about Google plus if I hadn’t stumbled on a Google plus tips page. (Wouldn’t it be nice if these things came with a nice, easy to find and read “how-to” instruction page?)
In Blogger, a book cover or guest’s head shot makes a fine image–and Blogger likes that size and shape.. No copyright problems and it’s great advertising. It also ads authority to the Google entry. When they author’s picture comes up with the post, Google rewards that. And yes, we all love the advertising when our book cover comes up. 🙂
This is going to be very hard for me Anne. I never doubt the right-ness of what you say, but just sigh is all. You named at least four social media sites I’m not touching and don’t think I ever will. I see what you say about making the hypertext links on interesting words and I like it, I can do that. But the headers? I’m still just writing here. I don’t think I can break away from what the header needs to be in the context of this post. I love love LOVE my blog, but it’s just me writing about stuff that interests me for other folks who might be interested. Drive traffic, yeah I know we’re supposed to…
One more technical annoyance. I find that when I see the link to my blog on social media, that 50-word limit you mentioned applies: and WordPress COUNTS THE TAGS, which is often almost all the words you see. This is quite disappointing, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to drop the tags to the bottom of the post, as I’ve seen elsewhere. Not really understanding what’s under the hood on my site, I guess.
Will–These are all just suggestions. They help if you want to do them, but you don’t have to. But if you can hold your nose, you don’t have to do anything on Google plus but use it to plug your blogposts. You can refuse any notifications and do no interacting and it will do huge things for your SEO. But you don’t have to if you can’t bear it.
As far as subheaders, some pieces lend themselves to subcategories and some don’t. My short pieces on poisons generally don’t, but they’ve been slowly climbing in the search engines anyway. But subheaders make it happen faster. This week I used subheaders, and found they worked pretty well. But it’s a longer piece than usual. You might want to compare it with the week before and see what I did. It’s mostly just telling what the topic is. Like a topic sentence.
How annoying if your tags make up those 50 characters! Yikes. Tags in WP are kind of a mystery to me, too because they vary by theme. So you’ll have to look that up and see what WP experts have to say about your particular theme..
I hear your pain about the CAPTCHA. You’re lucky that yours lasted for a year. Mine is still going on four years and counting, for my Blogger book blog. Got so fed up with the CAPTCHA and FB giving me the cold shoulder about it that I created another book blog, this time on Tumblr, for the express purpose of not doing the CAPTCHA.
One piece of advice about blogging: be very careful if you decide to switch blogs. In 2013, I have roughly 140+ subscribers to my blog. Then I decided to start all over from scratch, which in turn effectively killed my subscriber base.
G. B.–I wrote to Facebook and asked for them to take off the CAPTCHA. I don’t know if that helped or not. Maybe it did. I can see why you figured you’d just start a new blog. It was incredibly frustrating.
But yes, starting over means you lose all your subscribers. When we moved to WordPress from Blogger last December we lost the 3000+ readers who followed us through the Blogger rss feed. My “web expert” said it wouldn’t matter and they would automatically follow. This did NOT happen. They read the blog in the Blogger rss feed, so they simply didn’t see the blog anymore. HUGE drop off in readership. So I relate.
With MailChimp, we’ll have to pay to have that many subscribers, so losing that aspect of Blogger was a major loss.
More than likely they had your blog in the feed but weren’t reading it. I used to see people on Twitter who would follow me. They’d still be a follower, but drop off the face of the earth.
Linda–Not all 3000 of them. I still run into former readers. They ask what happened to our blog, because it just disappeared from Blogger’s feed. Many people prefer to read in an rss feed and don’t care to subscribe. Some readers did figure out we’d moved, but they didn’t want to subscribe because they don’t want to clog up their inboxes. I do relate. The email glut has got pretty overwhelming lately.
You’ve given some excellent advice here that applies to any blogger that needs more traffic, not just author bloggers. I did want to point out to you however, that you’re not optimized very well for Pinterest. You did warn us…
Lots of authors and aspiring authors go to Pinterest for writing ideas, guidance, marketing advice, and so much more. An image is essential, to start with. When I tried to pin this post, the image that you chose to lead off with did not populate as one of my choices to pin and I find that’s often the case with the images you chose to start your posts. It must be something in the way your setting them up. Instead, I get a choice of images that are from elsewhere on the page that don’t fit the post at all.
If I might be so bold, I have a pin board, ‘Pinterest for Authors’ with about 3 dozen pins on it that are directed at writers. A good one to look at is “How and Why Writer’s Should Use Pinterest.’ There are others about marketing your writing on Pinterest there as well. Here’s a link to my board: https://www.pinterest.com/annehaganauthor/pinterest-for-authors/. Happy pinning!
Anne–Thanks so much! I’m still learning to do a lot of this stuff on WordPress after 7 happy years on Blogger, so that’s a big help. Everything on Blogger is spelled out for you, so even the technomoron like me can figure it out. I’ll definitely check out your board. Thanks a bunch!
Thanks for the shout out! That was fun! And thanks for reminding me of some of the things, like tags, I’ve gotten lazy about. Gotta go fix some 😉
An EXTRA TIP about pictures: SEO likes when you have at least one photo with the keyword. I have a Yoast SEO plug in that tells me what I’ve missed in the list of SEO, and that’s one most people forget about.
For example, I recently did a post on my summer (vintage era) reading list picks and made sure I included “summer reading” (my keyword), in the picture description. It’s easiest to save them under that name, but you can add words (names) to pictures when you insert them in posts! Woo hoo!
Tam–Thanks for the reminder! I have Yoast SEO on this blog, but I have yet to figure out how to put a description on a picture. One of these days I’ll get to that part of my WP course.
Excellent! And – sob – I admit I signed up for Google Plus and haven’t been back in a mule’s age (joke about that in my next book.) You’ve just convinced me to smarten up and use all the tools, Anne. (says she, eyes glazing over, stuffing her face with birthday cake – yup, THAT day 🙂
Melodie–HAPPY BIRTHDAY! What are you doing here instead of stuffing your face and drinking too much bubbly? Haha. The secret is… you don’t have to use Google Plus for anything but announcements of your blogposts to get the benefit. Five minutes a week, tops. And you’re already there, so it’s a, um, piece of cake. Have a fantastic celebration!
I’ve learned, from your blog, to share my blog postings at Twitter, Google +, on my FB author page, as well as visit blogs that interest me and comment in an authentic way. I can’t tell you how crazy it makes me to see almost all the ‘increase your traffic’ advice on the web to be of little use to authors. So I always breathe a sigh of relief to come here and get sound, useful advice. Thanks!
Carol–I’m so glad you’ve found my advice useful. Most of the blog advice isn’t useful to authors because it’s out of date and it only applies to blogs that are basically pyramid schemes–blogging for bloggers to teach them how to make big bux scamming other wannabe bloggers. I think that whole vicious circle/cycle is pretty much done. This advice is just about reaching out to find people who might like to read what you write. Not to scam them, but to entertain them and make friends.
Well, worth the wait. Thank you, Anne. Now if you will excuse me I have to go and change ‘click this link’ to ‘Margaret Atwood’.
Leanne–It took me about three years to learn that one. And it’s all trial and error. There’s no instruction book. I simply observed that the bloggers with the most traffic did it that way. Good luck. (And any link to Margaret Atwood gets my traffic. 🙂 )
Another great post Anne!
Did not know that about subheadings… duh!! And I’ve been doing my writing craft and marketing weekly roundup for eight years! I must sharpen up on Google plus I tend to ignore it and just post to FB groups I’m involved with and Twitter. (So I am doing something right… heheh)
Maureen–I stumbled onto the subheader thing myself about 4 years ago and I think it may have been followed by the single biggest jump in hits on the blog ever. I don’t know if that was direct cause and effect, but it was kind of amazing.
FB and Twitter will generate a whole lot more direct traffic, but those Google plus posts that seem to be speaking only to the crickets end up speaking to Google spiders, who are the most important of all when it comes to getting you on that all important search engine results page!
I’ve been blogging for some time but still have much to learn. So that’s why you shouldn’t use HERE as a link…penny has finally dropped. Now shall I go back and edit old posts? In a perfect world I would. (You know the one, it’s where diswashers unload automatically and books leap off shelves into the grateful arms of readers). Thank you for a shed full of good advice
Bridget–I don’t edit old posts. (Except what I had to do when we moved from Blogger and all the formatting got discombobulated) I figure if I start changing things I wrote in 2010 I’ll tamper with the fabric of the space/time continuum and Dr. Who will show up and tell me I’ve messed up something and now London has disappeared and Wales is overrun with alien Slithereens. 🙂
Also, an amazing number of marketers ask me to rewrite old posts to add links to their products, so having a “no editing old posts policy” saves me a huge amount of time. So I’d say don’t bother.
But you can do it in the future and maybe you’ll get more blog traffic!
Thank you for another great post. Now I have all the information in place to start a blog an drive traffic to it. If I had none, well, still thinking about that and running out of excuses.
There’s just one thing I don’t quite understand. Why wouldn’t you use snippets in Yoast SEO? With the snippets feature you can tell Google, and pretty much every other search engine, exactly what to show no matter how your post starts. Write a 50-60 word synopsys of your post and put it into the Meta Description box. The same goes for the title. This works in other SEO plugins as well.
And regarding keywords for pictures: The keywords should go in the Alternative Text box in the edit function of the picture. The same edit function were you would add a link when want the picture to link to somewhere. Yoast SEO just analyses your whole post and will tell you when you haven’t done that. You can’t use it for keywording a picture as such.
I hope this helps and thanks again for the huge amount of information on this blog.
WTG. I was trying to figure out how to post a picture of the edit box, but you explained it nicely. I always tweak my snippet to make sure I include my keyword! It’s a GREAT download and has helped my SEO amazingly!
AV–This isn’t a post aimed only at tech savvy people who use WordPress. (There are plenty of blogs out there for techies who use WordPress.)
I’m aiming this at ALL author-bloggers.
Yoast SEO is a very specialised tool that can be purchased for WordPress. People who use Blogger or other blogging platforms wouldn’t have a clue what you’re talking about.
I’m just beginning to figure out the Yoast program myself–I’ve only had it about a month. Most of it goes way over my head. (Which is why I don’t “just” use it–same reason I don’t ‘just” fly a helicopter into town instead of driving my car.)
This is a post for author bloggers who aren’t necessarily tech-savvy and need to learn the basics. Obviously you know all about the technical stuff so you don’t need my info. If I ever find the secret to opening the Yoast window and putting stuff in there, I’ll try to use some of those tricks. If anybody ever invented a tech program that came with instructions, they could change the world!
Soooo NOT tech savvy. Still learning and sharing what I know. I think AV explained it really well.
I hate that as authors we even HAVE to know this stuff. I just want to write, but alas, that’s not our reality. Please keep the tips coming. I love your site (and Kristin’s–among others). I’ve learned so much from you and from your readers. I’m a comment reader and learn a lot from the collective. Woo hoo!
Thanks for giving us these opportunities to share and learn! You’re the best.
Swiveltam–You commenters often know more than I do. So thanks for all the tips!
I have always sucked at titles for my books and my blog posts are no better. I can do all the anchor link stuff, and even manage to use headers and sub-headers, but my titles–I wouldn’t know a good keyword if it smacked me in the face.
However, I’m game for anything with a new book coming out, so I guess I should find some good hashtags. Watch out Twitter.
Anne–Great to see you here! And congrats on having a new book. I think you’ve been using your time more productively than I have 🙂
I’m not going to pretend that titles are easy. I usually keep tweaking my titles until the last minute before I hit “publish.” Then after the post is up, somebody Tweets my post and changes the wording and I go….OMG, that’s the title I should have used. (Molly Greene is great at that.)
All we can do is keep trying. 🙂
So many thoughts jumbling through my mind. First, I really appreciate the author-oriented tips – I’m one of Kristen Lamb’s WANAs, but these days I seem to be surrounded by articles geared to monetized blogs. So I”m glad you added to the original 6 Tips.
I’m good with posting to FB and Twitter, and I’ve known about linking to searchable words for quite a while. I need to remember to post to other places on FB, and to include more than the automatic send-out from WordPress to Google+, so thanks for the reminder. Not so good with headings (or even, for that matter, with blogging regularly lately). And the subtlety of pictures throws me.
I usually have 2-3 photos (my own or Creative Commons) in each post – yes, I spend too much time looking for the perfect ones! But I can’t seem to tell FB which one to use. Sometimes FB lets me scroll through and choose, and sometimes it only offers one image, and sometimes only a useless image from my sidebar. Is there a secret I don’t know?
Jennifer–Sometimes I think Kristen and I are the only two people on the Interwebz who know there’s a difference between an author blog and a “Make a gazillion dollars a week blogging” blog. She’s one of my heroes.
As far as the photos–I feel your pain. I try not to let the search for photos take too much time. After all, we’re here to showcase our writing, right? But it does take over sometimes.
And there is NO way to tell what Facebook and Google Plus are going to do in terms of choosing a photo. My Facebook profile page and author page sometimes take different photos from the same link. No way to predict. It’s nutso.
And Google Plus is really, really annoying, because they often take the smallest photo from a page. This means if I announce a sale of my book HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE on G+ they will not share the cover art of the book. They will only show the “also boughts” from the Amazon buy page. So they almost always show Kristen’s book THE RISE OF THE MACHINES when I announce a sale on my book. I wonder if when Kristen shares her book, mine comes up? Haha. 🙂
We’ll have to ask her! And maybe I’ll drop to one large picture and one small one, and G+ and FB can fight it out. 🙂
Some great ideas that I did not know and some I have ignored (Shame on me!) Thanks for being there for us, Anne!
rxena–No shame involved. It’s not like blogs come with an instruction manual. And most of the “blog rules” don’t apply to authors. Or they’re just plain stupid. The only way to learn is by trial and error, or from people like me who have boldly bumbled before you . 🙂
Good post! All good, basic information on building and increasing followings. I do miss when I had the time-budget to blog more regularly.
John–I hear you about the time. Blogging is eating into my writing time more and more. Not so much the actual blog, but the email I get from people who don’t read the blog, or my books (of course), but want me to do stuff for them because I have a big name blog. 100s a day. They’re making me crazy. And very, very cranky. 🙁 Blogging can be rewarding, but it can be a time suck. Do what you can. Any blogging helps keep your name out there.
Your advice these last two weeks has been particularly useful to me (even though it made me want to go hang myself) since I suspect my blog is the weakest part of my author platform. I’m over the moon learning there’s a way to do subheads, which I’ve coveted, but been unable to bastardize. But I have some questions:
Several months back, you advised against abandoning an old blog and starting a new one, even if you have few followers (in my case just 69). I’ve since made some attempts to change the focus of my blog (GalGumshoe) since there obviously weren’t that many readers interested in the niche of women P.I.’s. Your last two posts included the idea of adding the author name to the blog name in the header. Does that mean the “title” that always appears at the top of the blog? It would be lovely to think that helped SEO since the url of the blog can’t be changed.
Also, does your advice apply to a blog that’s simply a blog as well as to those which serve as the author’s website? My blog feeds into my website, which uses my name as its url. Thank you so much!
Ruth–I’m sorry this all seems daunting. It’s actually easier than it sounds. There are no plug-ins to buy or complicated techy things to learn. It’s all right there in your dashboard.
It may not be that people aren’t interested in women PIs but that the ones who are might not be finding your blog, so you might branch out into some other topics, like your setting or other related topics. A lot of people will read detective stories set in one particular area, but not others. Or they only like bakery cozies or older sleuths or whatever. You’ll find your niche readers eventually.
And yes, you can change everything about your blog except the url, and that includes the blog name. I always use the example of Kristen Lamb’s Blog, which she originally called Warrior Writers and that’s still the url, but it’s now Kristen Lamb’s Blog. You can change your blog name from GalGumshoe to M. Ruth Meyers’ Gal Gumshoe or M. Ruth Meyers Mysteries or M. Ruth Myers lol catz and dead bodiez. 🙂 Whatever you want.
This applies to all author blogs. Do make sure your website and blog are linked, and it makes sense for them to look similar for the sake of branding, but you can be as creative as you like with content. Your blog is an expression of who you are as an author, so anything goes that might be of interest to your potential reader. .
Thanks so much! You’re as speedy as you are generous with your time.
I am drawn to the Katz & Dead Bodies option. 🙂
Ruth–It could work. 🙂
Anne,
Thanks again for a great post on blogs. I’m still working on mine and things like this are great. I printed them all out!
Stanley–I’ve got to put these posts together in a book. Save you guys some ink! 🙂 I’m glad the advice helps.
Fantabulous post Anne. That’s my word and I’m sticking to it. 🙂
Debby–That’s a great word! I’m sure Shakespeare used it! 🙂
A lot of good stuff here. I think I’m going to copy and paste this to a document for easy future reference. Of course I have to start staying on top of blogging. lol.
Jesse–I promise I’ll gather it all in a book that will be cheap and easy to reference. I think you can keep a fine author blog if you only blog once a month. Just keep it up on a regular basis. Write four or five in a day, then you’re good for months. 🙂
So so so good!
Nina–Thanks! 🙂
WordPress is no longer notifying me of new comments, so I have to subscribe to each post like other commenters. I apologize if I’ve missed anybody
Really good info, Anne. I’m going to subscribe to your blog. 🙂
Marlene–I’m glad you find it useful! I’m working on putting all my blog advice together into an ebook. Thanks for subscribing!