Advice for promoting a blog

L

Locrian

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First off, this post is about asking for advice, not spamming the forum.
Second, if this is in the wrong place I'm happy to delete it.

I'm currently posting my WIP a chapter at a time on my blog, which I have just been promoting by posting a facebook status about it. I've decided that I want to step up promotion and get a wider readership, but I don't really know where to start, though I worked out for myself that posting "HaY guIse, rEed ma Blooog1!" in youtube comments isn't a good way to do it. Does anybody have any experience in promoting a fiction (or any kind of) blog?
 
From what I understand, even more important than promoting a blog is to post in it regularly, so that the people who do read it continue to read it and (the same as with books) create interest among others via word of mouth.


(P.S. There is nothing wrong with this thread, so you're fine. But you can't delete your posts here, and only edit them for a limited time. However, we are happy to move things if necessary. On the other hand, if you suspect something might be regarded as spam, it's better to ask a moderator in advance.)
 
Many folks would promote it via Twitter, although its a very, very crowded place for writers, especially those trying to promote something.
 
Promoting through twitter can work but it requires a lot of followers who won't get annoyed by your posts and stop following.

The same goes for most of the social venue. If you have a lot of followers for whatever reason then you have a greater chance of promoting.

Having a website to promote the book only works if you find a way to get a following.(I don't mean buying followers.) This is why social media work well for people who are famous and already have a following.

If you know of someone who has a blog site that hosts other writers to guest blog that is probably the best way if they are in your genre and already have a following.

Outside of that you could buy ad space on their blog if you are confident that there are followers in his group interested in your work-genre.

Facebook you can make a book or story page(and buy followers ;( ) And link to the blog from there.
 
Teresa Edgerton said:
(P.S. There is nothing wrong with this thread, so you're fine. But you can't delete your posts here, and only edit them for a limited time. However, we are happy to move things if necessary. On the other hand, if you suspect something might be regarded as spam, it's better to ask a moderator in advance.)
Click to expand...

Ok, thanks I'll ask first if I'm unsure next time :)
 
I've started a twitter today and got a few more hits on the page already, we're only talking about five but it's better than nothing. I think I need to hunt out a few more relevant blogs, and you're definitely right about posting regularly. I'll make an effort to do so more often. I'm trying to do a chapter a month at the moment and I think I'm going to do a few more traditional style blog posts as well to keep it active. Thanks everyone, this has been really useful to me so far.
 
What you have to watch with Twitter (and other social media) is the bounce rate, I've found that promoting the site through forums and other areas like this people go into the site and read more than one post. Visitors from social media tend to hit the page linked, read briefly then bog off :(

I suppose one or two of them might bookmark the site for further reading but it doesn't look good on the analytics 85% bounce rate from social media, 37% bounce rate from the rest of the internet
 
You should definitely check out the podcasts entitled 'the self publishing podcast' by Johnny b Truant, David E Wright and Sean Platt. Recently they have been specifically looking at blogging, and promoting via YouTube.

The episodes are free and labeled by theme so you doing have to download irrelevant ones. They're really an excellent resource and even tho' I'm not going down the SP route, I've learnt loads from these guys.

pH
 
Pictures can work well. Also, label them properly. I had a crazy number (for me) of hits on a Skyrim preview I wrote which had a picture of a Khajiit and Orc, entitled something like Skyrim Khajiit Orc Preview. I'm reasonably sure that the picture was high up (for some reason) on search results, which drove the page views.
 
Promoting a blog:

I have some experience in this, having started a genre/nerd blog in 2012 that now has a fair share of regular readers (and more occasional ones).

1. As Theresa said, posting frequently is really important. It doesn't have to be everyday, and you have to balance quantity with quality, but readers simply won't return if they can't expect new content. Our solution has been to expand our stable of writers, which allows us to consistently publish new stories 5 days a week. There are, however, other genre blogs that are equally or more successful than we are and yet only have 1 or 2 writers. Even these blogs, though, publish at least 3 times/week. Publish or perish, basically.

2. Twitter is, in my experience, the most effective place to promote your blog. You need to put in some time, though, building a following, interacting with people and marketing your product. And twitter is not a silver bullet--some stories go viral, but others don't get much attention. You just have to keep at it.

3. Facebook has not been very successful for us.


Promoting a blog about your WIP:

I don't know that much about this, but my twitter feed is full of self-promoting writers. Among the aspiring authors that (I find) use twitter most effectively are ones who initiate discussions about writing. Here's a writer I consistently find interesting. I think if you used your blog to discuss problems and solutions for writing, it could then draw attention to your WIP.
 
thaddeus6th said:
Pictures can work well. Also, label them properly. I had a crazy number (for me) of hits on a Skyrim preview I wrote which had a picture of a Khajiit and Orc, entitled something like Skyrim Khajiit Orc Preview. I'm reasonably sure that the picture was high up (for some reason) on search results, which drove the page views.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah! We had tons of hits for our COD: Black Ops II review, largely because we included map illustrations and people frequently google those.
 
I've been blogging in my industry for about 9 years on my blog whizzbangsblog.com. Here is a few things that I've found:
1. Regularly blogging is absolutely key to readership retention.
2. Quality good content is what readers want.....don't repeat what other writers have written.
3. Write on topics that matter to readers and don't be afraid to be a little controversial.
4. I have a regular weekly article called "Saturday Musings" that talks about life and allows people to get to know me. This is something that I stumbled upon and it is really, really important for readership retention.
5. Respond immediately to all comments/emails
6. Once you have a following you will receive advertising offers.

In terms of promoting my blog.....I speak at a lot of the industry conferences and have been doing it for so long now that as soon as I publish an article it is read by around 250 people within 15 minutes. This sounds great until you realise the responsibility that this then means in maintaining the quality of each article.
 
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