From Blog to Book from Author Marketing Experts' Penny Sansevieri
In the past
few months, I’ve come in contact with numerous bloggers who are ready to take
their work from blog to book. Maybe it’s the influence of movies like Julie and Julia, it’s hard to tell, but
suffice it to say the idea of selling your blog to a publisher is very
appealing to a good many bloggers. But what does it really take to get your
blog noticed? Here are some tips if you’re trying to raise the bar on your blog
and get it noticed by a publisher:
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| Penny C. Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts |
Ironically,
many of the rules of good blogging apply to this article and the first is: Blog often. If you’re a serious blogger
you are likely posting daily, if you’re not, then you probably don’t have much
to say. If you want to get your blog noticed, you need to be blogging daily.
Why? Because it’ll not only help you look massively articulate, but it’ll
really help with your traffic and search ranking, and let’s face it: If no one
is finding you how do you expect a publisher to.
Write great blog posts: OK, I know this is probably another
“duh” tip, but here’s the deal: if you’re blogging every day you need to keep
your writing strong. Not all your blog posts will be worthy of front page news,
but your writing must remain consistently good and your blog posts should be
unique, helpful, enlightening, or whatever your goal for the blog is.
Be consistent in your message: in other words, don’t change horses
mid-race. If you start a blog on, let’s say, dogs, don’t start talking about
guinea pigs three posts into it. You’ll have a boatload of dog people going
“huh?” Keep it topical and on message always.
Educate yourself in publishing: if you’re going to compete in this
market (meaning publishing) you’re going to want to get to know the industry.
Go to (writers) conferences, read some of the trade publications (like
Publishers Weekly) and dig into this market. If you find that what you’re
blogging on is super-hot, you might want to ramp up the promotion of your blog.
See who’s buying what: there’s a site I highly recommend
called publishersmarketplace.com. You can register there for either their free
or paid Publishers Lunch newsletter, and with that you’ll also get Lunch Weekly,
which shows you who is signing and what they’re buying. If you get a membership
on the site you can also dig in and find Editors and Agents that might be
interested in your topic.
Telling people you have a blog: do you have a signature file on your
email? If you don’t you should, this is the first and one of the best places to
promote a blog. Second, get business cards and make sure your blog address is
listed there.
Get a unique URL: if you’re going to be a serious
blogger get a serious domain name. Yes, you can get sallyauthor.blogspot.com
but that’s not your own property. Meaning that Google still owns this. If you’re
going to be a real blogger, do you really want someone else owning your blog? I
don’t think so. Buy a domain name and make sure your blog is hosted there.
Brand yourself: when you’re ready and you have the
budget, find someone who can turn your blog into a custom site. They’re great
and super easy to do (read: not that expensive) and make a fantastic first
impression.
Do some social networking on blogs: get to know your space, meaning get
to know who else is doing what you’re doing and make friends. Unless you’re
sitting on the most original idea on the planet, I don’t believe in
competition. Get to know who else is out there and start commenting on their
blog posts so they know you. There’s a great way to find out the top people in
your market. Go to a blog search site like Google blog search, type in your
keyword and start following the top five bloggers in your market. See what they
do, learn from the pros and then thank them for their knowledge by posting
helpful comments on their blog (bloggers
love comments, by the way). I have a whole article on social networking on
blogs that you can read here: http://amarketingexpert.com/ameblog/marketing/social-networking-on-blogs/.
Many of the tips will be helpful to you as you continue to cyber-schmooze online.
Market your blog: now that you have a unique URL and
branding, you’re going to want to start marketing it. You can do this by
getting a Twitter page and feeding your blog through your account (you can use
Twitterfeed.com to do this). You should also consider getting a Facebook
Fanpage (again branded to your blog) and feed your blog through that as well.
Why do you want to do this? Well it’s important to get as many access points as
possible, right? Social networking sites are feeder sites. Use the content on
these sites to help you dig deeper into your markets and gather new readers for
your blog.
Make your blog shareable: Make sure that folks can share your
blog posts to sites like Twitter, Facebook, and all the social bookmarking sites.
It’s an easy widget to add and most blogs come with this pre-installed.
Social bookmarking: it’s good to social bookmark all your
posts. Yes, and I do mean all of them. You should bookmark on the major sites
like Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, and Social Poster. You can add more to this
list but those are the majors.
Keep good track of your stats: this is another reason why you want
to have your own site: so you can keep track of your traffic, which you can’t
do if someone else owns your domain. You’ll want to keep a close eye on your
blog traffic and learn how to read the site analytics (which is a lot easier
than it sounds).
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