Archive
Hosting Guests on Your Blog
If you either are set up to regularly host guests on your blog OR you are thinking of doing it to fill-in around your content, there are some things you should know and consider.
#1 Although it sounds easy because you won’t have to be coming up with the content on your own, sometimes this strategy can be really difficult. You are working with other people, and other people make mistakes. They don’t get things in on time. They don’t send everything you need. There is often a lot of need for prodding and then follow up. Sometimes things they send don’t work (like photos or covers). So know going in that this path can be a headache.
#2 Be very clear about what you will need from them. Having done a lot of these, I now know to send: a bio, a cover, my photo, the blog post, and links. You will want to ask for these up front from your guests.
#3 If you have a word count, be clear about that as well. There is nothing more frustrating than thinking I have a guest post ready only to find the blogger wants 100 words cut out. When you are clear, the author can make the changes prior to sending. And yes, it’s your site, but never edit unless it is clearly wrong. If it is more than a misspelling, I would send it back to the author to correct.
#4 YOU are responsible for promoing the blog. Yes, you would like the author to help, and to facilitate that, you should send them a link as soon as you can. But most authors assume it’s your blog and thus your audience. They will assume you will be putting out the word. Don’t let them down.
#5 ALWAYS include links if they give them to you. That is the author’s payment for appearing on your blog.
#6 If you do giveaways, follow up with the author and the winners to make sure they received their book. You will do more damage by not getting a prize to a winner than by not having the giveaway in the first place.
#7 Going back to #1, be kind and courteous no matter what. Problems are going to happen. Just know that and have a back-up plan in case someone doesn’t come through for you.
#8 Schedule. Schedule. Schedule. Don’t rely on your memory. You won’t remember who was scheduled for what date. WRITE IT DOWN!
#9 If you say you will review, do it. I hear this complaint all the time from authors who are part of a blog tour that the bloggers were supposed to review the books… they don’t review the books! Why? I don’t know. They run out of time, overschedule and overpromise? No clue. But don’t be that blogger.
#10 Interviews are fun, but mix it up a little. Have 10 questions and ask your interviewees to answer their favorite 5, or have 3 different sets of questions and send them to new authors. Then personalize the interview when you get it in. Make it sound like you are talking with the author, not just listing five questions for them to answer.
#11 To find guest bloggers, join a group like G&F and put call-outs for spots you have open. Many authors are looking for spots, and you will probably get quite a few takers. Just be sure you have time to deal with those you get, or only take a few and then close the opportunity.
Good luck with hosting guests on your blog! You get to meet a lot of cool people like that!
Promoting Blog Posts
So you’ve got a great blog post with terrific keywords and a jump tag at the end.
Great start!
Now you’ve got to promote it. Remember this graphic from earlier?
Now that you have your Content (that wonderful blog post, which is Pulling audiences in) and your jump tag to your book page, which is the Push, now we’re going to jump down to the PROMO part of the equation.
In short, you have to TELL people about the blog post.
For many years I put up post after post and sometimes I would stumble upon new subscribers, or they would stumble upon me. But that wasn’t very strategic. To be strategic, you must identify all the places you can get the word out about your post.
These can include but are not limited to:
Facebook Profile
Facebook Page
Stumble Upon
Linked In
Amazon Author Central Page
Google +
The “Space” Sites (MySpace, HisSpace, etc.)
Basically, anywhere that you have an account and can post about the article is a good promo spot.
So do it! Don’t go to all the trouble to set up a great blog post and leave it there to collect cyber-dust.
Ride the wave you’ve created by promoing the article.
To do so, you probably want to write at least 3 different tweets or promos for it. Put these on a Word doc that you can pull from in two weeks and again in six weeks and again a year from now (you did make that blog post timeless, right?!). This is a classic pull-push campaign that once set up and be run over and over again indefinitely.
Just don’t make the mistake, like I did, of thinking if you build it, they will automatically show up in droves. They won’t unless you INVITE them!
We will talk more about writing Twitter posts later, but for now, ANY promo is better than none. Good luck! See you next time!
Doing Guest Blogs
Technically there are several types of guest blogs including reviews and interviews. However, today I want to talk a bit about writing actual blog posts for someone else’s site.
When I first started marketing on the ‘net in early 2001, I found that although I had a website, no one was showing up to it like I thought they would. What to do? What to do?
I was told about article marketing (there were no such things as blogs back then), and I decided to try it.
Article marketing is basically writing an article (blog post) that is generic enough to be used on a site that is not yours. So you would write something about an insight about the Holy Spirit and then offer another site that content. The payment was a linkback to your site.
This actually worked phenomenally well for me at the time.
First, I’m very good at crafting blog posts due to early training in writing quickly and succinctly. Second, on my blog, although I write about things that happen in my life, they are not me-centric. They are everyday things that have happened that pointed me to God.
At the time email newsletters were huge, and I happened to get an article placed on a very large newsletter. I so remember that Friday morning. I went to my email account (and I was doing subscriptions to my newsletter by hand — well before the CAN-SPAM laws hit). I had 50 people wanting to subscribe, and they just kept pouring in. I could literally watch as the sun came up around the world as each new batch would be from a different country.
By the end of the day I had over 300 new subscribers! It was incredible.
Although I’ve never had a day quite like that one, I do attribute my early ebook sales success in August of 2011 to article marketing. In July I sold 2 ebooks. In August I hired a lady to go out and find places for me to post guest blogs. I sold 63 ebooks in August due entirely to those posts.
So this type of marketing works.
However, I do have to say it is a lot of work. You have to find a blog, pitch to the blog author, write the article, submit it with your bio, picture, cover, jump tag. Then when it comes out, you have to promo it and show up on that blog to answer questions. Sometimes there are no questions. Sometimes there are LOTS of questions.
If you are going to do guest blogging, I suggest you start small with a couple a month and see how it goes. If you enjoy it, you can do more the next month. If it is just too much pressure, maybe it’s not for you.
But of everything I’ve ever done marketing-wise (except Twitter which is more promo than content), guest blogging is hands down the most rewarding if you hit the right blog with just the right article.
Repurposing Old Blogs
If you’ve done the work on a blog post to make it truly wonderful and timeless, the last thing you want to do is run it once and let it sit there doing nothing for the rest of eternity. That’s where repurposing comes in.
There are several ways to repurpose blog articles. Here are a few:
1) Use old articles as guest blogs elsewhere. Don’t spend all your time on guest blogs trying to come up with something new. It is perfectly acceptable to use old blog posts as new guest blogs. Keep in mind that the article should be timeless, so it doesn’t appear dated on the new site AND it should be older than about 6 months old.
2) Retweet and promo old articles from your blog. This is especially helpful if you’ve done your jump tag at the bottom correctly as your blog post will act as an extended advertisement–pulling first and then pushing your books. Also, articles are great ways to legitimately use a diverse range of hashtags. If you normally write romance, but you have an article about what divorce does to children, you can use the hashtag #divorce for the article, which you would obviously not use for any of your books. (We will discuss hashtags extensively later on.)
3) Use in short story collections. These can be either by you if you have enough articles (my books Reflections on Life I and II came from doing just this). Or you can submit these to larger collections that do not require originals. These types of books abound now with the success of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books.
4) Use them as landing pages for your guest blogs. Guest blog somewhere and then use your jump to land the person on a second article about the same topic.
5) You can also go backwards and write guest blogs that you then post as articles to your own blog. This works particularly well if you are not a prolific blogger. It will give you a deadline– for someone else and thus accountability, and it can take the pressure off of creating something new for each post on your blog. You can also link to other blog posts you’ve done such as reviews and/or interviews.
The bottom line is, don’t think “Post and Done” on your blog entries. They should be workers out there finding you new audience members all the time.
Jump Tags for Blog Posts
By now you should have several landing pages ready to go for your jumps. Remember the Promo Chain:
As you will recall, the goal is to take a potential customer through the Promo Chain and then get them to JUMP to a landing page that will continue the relationship. With a blog post, you have probably already used the promo chain to get the person TO the blog. Now it’s time to take the next step and get them to jump to a new landing page–info about your books!
So how do you write that Jump Tag that will say, “Hey! Come take a look and see if you want to buy something from me!”
Well, first it depends on the landing page to which you are sending them. That could be your website where they might be able to see many things about you and your writing, or it could be to a specific page such as your book buying page.
My best advice is to give a small variety of options. Many of my post-blog jump tags look like this:
“Romance, faith, forgiveness, and reconciliation,
DEEP IN THE HEART has them all.”
Buy “Deep in the Heart” on Amazon Kindle here.
Buy “Deep in the Heart on B&N Nook here.
Read the first chapter for FREE!
Notice how on this jump tag, the picture itself is also a clickable jump.
You can also do word-only jump tags like this:
Looking for even more inspiration? Check out Staci’s new short story collection full of wisdom and insights: Reflections on Life II
Or…
Love Christian Romance? This site has it all! First chapters, excerpts, and reviews: EbookRomanceStories.com Fall in love all over again!
The idea is to entice the reader to continue the relationship. Remember, these are especially important when you do guest blogs and interviews. ALWAYS give readers the info they will need to find you again!
Marathon or Sprint Blog
This topic was touched on before, but I wanted to spend a little time talking about it a bit more so you can design your blog scheduling for maximum success–for what you want it to do.
The basic idea is that in track, some runners are sprinters and some are marathoners. Very, VERY rarely is a track person both.
It’s the same with a blog.
Some blogs are sprint blogs, some are marathon blogs, and you need to know the difference as you’re designing.
A sprint blog acts more like a website. It is designed to be set up and then promo’ed, rather than updated frequently. Not that you can’t update a sprint blog, but if you do, it won’t be as often as you update a marathon blog.
An example of a sprint blog is my Ebook Romance Stories blog. http://ebookromancestories.com
I crafted this blog literally in about a week. Each post is cross-referenced on the pages rather than standing alone. So I have a page for First Chapters… each of the entries on the list link to a post that contains a first chapter of one of my books. Excerpts and reviews each have their own page. This blog was designed as a website so that I can send readers there to read about each book. I only update it if I either have some new information–new covers for example, or if I have a new novel come out.
The sprint blog is put together all at the same time and then left (except for promo’ing).
A marathon blog is quite different. It will require more of your time and will need to be updated as long as you want the blog to run. This is more of what people think of when they think “blog.” Marathon blogs contain posts written about topics as extemporaneous or editorials. I have several marathon blogs. The one that’s been in existence for the longest is: http://spiritlightbooks.wordpress.com I have been posting to that blog since 2008 or so.
This marketing blog is kind of a cross between a sprint and a marathon. My goal is to post like a marathon blog, but when I run out of relevant topics, I will stop posting and just direct traffic (G&F members) here to learn about marketing. So why would I have a blog that’s not a marathon blog on marketing? In short, I was spending great amounts of time walking people through these concepts. I decided it would be easier to think them through and get them all written down in one place than to rewrite them each time a new person asked.
So think about the purpose of your blog. Are you envisioning a sprint blog–something more akin to a website? Or marathon blog, which will require much more information and time commitment that will not have a finite ending?
Next time we’ll talk about Comments and getting people to participate on your blog.
Blogging
We’ve spoken now about blog elements. I want to turn our attention to the actual effort of blogging.
Blogging sounds very easy especially if you’re a writer. You write something, post it, and thousands of people come and love what you wrote… right?
Yeah, not so fast.
First, you have to figure out WHAT you’re going to write about. You should have been doing some of this as you came up with the name of your blog and your keywords, etc. But let’s look a minute at:
CONTENT: What are you going to write about? Don’t take this lightly because if you scatter-shot your blog posts, posting about random things, you will attract a random audience if you attract anyone at all. Think about it. Let’s say you find a blog that talks about gardening, but you don’t garden. Are you going to stick around for their random blog posts about raising kids, or about how to shop with coupons? Now all of these could fit nicely in a blog about being a mom, but it needs to be set up that way.
To get people to return, you need at least semi-regular content that is pertinent to their lives. I once heard this referred to as “bleeding neck” posts. The more critical you make your posts to your readers’ lives, the more loyal they will be. I should mention here if you write a blog post about yourself, don’t make it you-centric. Talk about how what you learned can help THEM. If all you talk about is you, you’re probably wasting your time.
HOW OFTEN: A big question when starting a blog is, “How often do I post?” My answer: “As often as you have material for.” I know some people who post only once in a long while and then promo the post extensively. I know others who post every day and promo some, relying on a subscriber base to carry their blogs and make posting worthwhile. You have to decide what works for you. Because what works for you might not be what works for someone else. For example, when I started blogging, I co-blogged with a friend of mine. I took Mondays and Thursdays, he took Tuesdays and Wednesdays. It worked out very well as if one of us was gone, the other would pick up our days.
Then my co-blogger passed away, and I had to decide if I was going to try to blog every day, four days a week. I decided I could not keep up with that schedule, nor did I have that much to say. For awhile, I filled in his days with other things I had to post, but eventually, I had to be honest with my readers that it was getting to be too much. I dropped back to Mondays and Thursdays, and I’ve been doing that for nearly 5 years now.
Another consideration is how many other things you have to write and how long one post takes you. For me, I can write a post in 20-30 minutes if I don’t get interrupted. However, I know some people who agonize for days over a post. So look at your writing personality as well and don’t sign up for something you can’t deliver. If you can only do one post every other week, then do that. But remember, this is not a month-long and it’s done in most cases. So do what you can do for the long haul.
TYPES OF CONTENT: If you are content-challenged, consider offering a day of guest blogs or interviews or reviews. As an author, all of these could be gold mines of other authors sending their traffic your way. However, some authors are better at this than others, so don’t assume that they will make your blog a success. In fact, many authors are counting on YOUR audience to help THEM, not the other way around, so be prepared.
GIVEAWAYS: I have done many contests and giveaways for other blogs. Just be careful as these can become a much bigger headache than they are worth. Yes, they do allow you a way to get people to comment and participate, but realize that each giveaway will take after-post work from you as well. Choosing the winner, notifying them and them and the author, following up. It all takes valuable time you may or may not have to devote to the blog.
I advise you to have at least a couple months worth of material if you are doing an on-going blog before you ever start. You will be amazed at how quickly days, weeks, and even whole months go by. If you don’t have enough content, consider instead guest blogging on others’ sites and sending them to your Amazon page, book page, bookshelf, or website. Just know that an on-going blog will take a lot of on-going effort and be prepared or you will find yourself missing deadlines and letting the blog slide, which is not a professional thing to do.
Grace & Faith Marketing 
Blog Comments
I do, however, know someone who is GREAT at getting comments. Her name is Penny Zeller. She gets LOTS of comments! Check out her blog here: http://pennyzeller.wordpress.com/
I can tell you one thing that Penny does better than nearly anyone else I’ve ever seen… she responds! To every commenter. I’ll be honest I’m not sure how she does it.
You can also host giveaways to encourage people to comment.
If you have great ideas for getting people to comment, please share them in comments to this article (that was tricky, huh?). But seriously. If you have a great way to encourage people to come and participate on blogs, let us know!
See, told you I wasn’t very good at this one.