By Kelly A. Lowe
(originally published online; CMA, August 2009)
People want to hear what you have to say…they just don’t know it yet. With attention spans as short as they are these days and information being served up fast from every possible angle you have to be smart, quick, funny, and familiar in an instant to try to gain a new readers’ interest. Blogs allow readers to get a sample of you and of your work in a few hundred words or less. They can be a useful tool for an author to promote their latest published work or a new writer to find followers to support their entry into the industry.
Here are some simple rules to live by when you decide it’s time to start your own wildly entertaining, not-to-be-missed, personal online saga relaying your lifelong dream of becoming a professional full time writer; your blog:
1) First and most importantly, add links to an online location where a sample of your work may be read, links for reviews of your work, and links for where the book may be purchased. You may also support your post with links to web pages that give contextual background information or source data for your writing.2) Remember, this is not your novel. The blog is a venue to promote your novel. Give readers the most information using the least amount of words that you possibly can. Decide on a limit before you begin writing. Two hundred-fifty to three hundred words (ok, we’re all writers here, so five hundred at the outside) should be enough to get your point across and, frankly, if you haven’t captured their attention in the first paragraph they probably won’t read the second one. Very short attention spans abound these days.
3) Consider using a headline for your blog. Keep it short and snappy. A blog headline should be like a hook or a log line; long enough to let them know what you’ve written about but with an angle to keep them reading. If you want to know how it’s done check out any national newspaper. They know something about raising readers’ interests.
4) Bullet points are not just for your resume. They can be useful in a blog, especially if you want to get across more information than you really should in this format. Bullets may be use to break up content into more easily digestible portions.
5) If you choose to go for a longer blog try to add occasional subheadings so that readers can scan your post and read the parts they want to instead of becoming overwhelmed and skipping it altogether.
6) Keep your style consistent. Write in the same voice for your blog that you use in your novel. Readers need to know what to expect. If you feel creative and want to write a blog in the voice of your edgy bloodthirsty Victorian age female pirate character, be sure to let readers know that before they are invested. Once they buy the book, they’ll love your pirate but may not understand why her book is written in a much more passive voice.
7) Don’t forget to edit your post and read it through once before you put it on your blog.
Check out the link below to read Forbes’ reviews on eleven of the most popular blog sites on the web today. http://www.forbes.com/bow/b2c/category.jhtml?id=311
Links to the reviews can be found at the bottom of the article.
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