I sent this in response to a post by David Farland called “Nobody Wants to Read Your Blog”. Farland runs an e-mail list which is simply awesome and highly recommended (Comment if you want info on how to subscribe to his list). This is a list of helpful tips for writers looking to draw people to their blogs

Anyways, here it is:

I’ve studied blogs fairly extensively because I create them in my night job as a webdesigner. Here’s a brief list of things that I tell clients.

• Write regularly. Not everyone subscribes to your blog via e-mail or a feedreader. If you publish content, publish it on a specific day of the week (say, Friday). That way people will know when to look for new content. It’s a truism that the more articles you write, the more your blog will get read. All the top blogs (Boing Boing, Whatever, Engaget) post upwards of five times a day. You don’t have to write that much. Aim for once a week, and then gradually aim for more.
  
• Become an authority. Concentrate on a few topics, and become a resource for them. For example, on my blog www.withoutreallytrying.com, I’ve added a page which centralizes all of the important Writers of the Future related articles and resources I could find on the web, and I am doing the same thing for Clarion West. When people search for these topics, I show up on page three of a google search (and climbing).
• Have a hook. A hook is something that will draw people to your site (for me, it’s a win in Writers of the Future, but it could be anything that separates you from the herd). People just don’t want to read about your recent rejections, or even your semi-pro sales–more specifically, it’s not that they don’t want to read about it, it’s just that there’s so many places they can already read about rejection, that they don’t need to go to your blog.
• Become part of a community. Go to well read blogs like Whatever or Jeff Vandermeer’s blog, or even Mamatas’ Nihilistic Kid and make intelligent comments on a regular basis. People will click on your name and follow it back to your site if they like what you have to say on these blogs.
• SEO your blog (and make it look appealing).
  • No ugly colours, and at least one picture with every article.
  • Exchange links with every author friend you know.
  • Make it easy to subscribe to your blog with a “Call to Action” right out front (a subscribe button for instance).
  • Get listed on Technorati and other big directories like DMoz. Make sure Google and Yahoo can find your blog.
  • Enlist a site designer to create a sitemap and add meta tags with keywords you want to target, as well as making sure your blog is pinging the right directories.
  • If you’re on WordPress, you can add widgets that rebroadcast your content to your LiveJournal, Facebook, and even twitter accounts.
  • Set up some Google Alerts (they’re free) on your name, and your blog’s name so that you’ll be notified immediately when someone posts about you, so that you can respond professionally and courteously (that’s key. Flame wars kill reputations and sometimes careers).

Now, it’s important to note that if your blog takes away from your writing time, DON’T BLOG. Always remember that the goal is to have your blog work for you, not the other way around. If you’re not writing, you’re not getting paid. This is the reason I haven’t done an all out push on my own blog. I’m too busy writing a book!

Tags: blogging

Alright. Welcome to the blog (again).

EDIT: As you can tell, I’ve managed to recover the old content of the blog (minus the pictures). Thank goodness for multiple backups!

I had to move servers, and predictably, I downloaded all the files from my server, but forgot to backup the database. So, we’re starting fresh.

One of the reasons that I stopped blogging is that I’m not convinced that beginning author should keep a blog. Frankly, it seems like if you’re going to be writing, you should be writing fiction, i.e. work that will be increasing your reputation. Writers may point to prolific bloggers like John Scalzi or Diablo Cody who have been discovered through their blogs, but not only does the exception NOT prove the rule, but these bloggers also had other “hooks” to draw people to their blogs. Scalzi was a pro-blogger for AOL in the stone age when no one was blogging, and Diablo Cody was a stripper and that’s what her blog was about.

Unless you have a “hook”, it’s better off, in my opinion, not to join the teeming millions on Live Journal, or WordPress, or Blogger–writers whose blogs have one or two readers, and generally poor content. People just aren’t interested in reading about the local coffee hut. If you are currently one of these writers, be honest with yourself. How is this helping your writing career. No cheats now, nothing ephemeral like, “It’s getting my name out there”. List concrete things that your blog will do for you. If you can’t, take the time you used to use for blogging, and use it to write more fiction.

So, why am I blogging now? I have a hook.

I recently won first place in Writers of the Future. Much of this blog will be devoted to my participation in that contest and my thoughts on winning it. If you’re not familiar with Writers of the Future, I’ll cover the contest in a later post. For now, I’ll simply direct you to the website of award-winning writer David D Levine, whose Writers of the Future page is one of the best resources on the contest that I’ve seen.

Right now, I’m a writer at the cusp of going pro. Hopefully, I can share with you, my gentle readers, how I plan to take my next steps into the markets.

EDIT: This topic was generating quite the discussion, so I’ve elaborated on my thoughts on blogging for new writers here.

Tags: blogging, David D Levine, Diablo Cody, john scalzi, Writers of the Future

Greetings!

Welcome to my mind for the first time. If you’re reading this, my thanks for subscribing to this site while it’s still in its infancy.

What is this blog going to be about? Well I write genre fiction so obviously there’s going to be a focus on that, but I’m going to avoid sharing every excruciating detail of my own career because I’m sure you have your own life to worry about. Instead I’m going to focus on some of the issues that are important in the field, share market information for places I think are cool, introduce you to some really cool writers, and forward some interesting posts.

That said, I welcome comments and I will do my best to respond to e-mail within a couple of days so feel free to drop me a line. You’ll notice the little RSS feed in the bottom right corner of the blog. Click on that and you’ll be redirected to a page that contains an “RSS Feed”. This allows you to get automatic updates on the blog through a FeedReader program like Google’s Blog Reader (the program I use). Give it a shot, I’m sure you’ll like it!

Until next time!

Tags: blogging