Should an Author Have a Blog? Author Marketing 101

Most businesses today are using blogs as a way to promote their products and connect with their customers. So does the same hold true for you as an author hoping to market your book? Absolutely!

One of the greatest benefits of blogging as an author is that you have the ability to create a readership for your book… before it’s even released.

If you’re anticipating the release of your debut novel in a few months, you can start blogging on any topic related to your genre now. You may want to blog on how to write a children’s book as a children’s author, or even the ins and outs of the publishing process as a romance novelist. You can also use your blog for pure fiction to provide interested readers with free short stories related to your genre. Yes, it really will work.

But blogging can never reach its fullest potential if you don’t already have a presence in social media. Google views blogs as fresh content, so they’ll often rise to the top of the search results for specific keywords. But you can make it even easier for interested readers to find your blog by automatically syncing your blog to your social media profiles like Twitter and Facebook. This way, your friends and fans can read your new content and pass it around to other friends who may also be interested.

Keep Them Coming Back for More

The key to successful blogging is to use your fresh content as bait. If you’ve written an interesting blog post that has attracted reader traffic to your blog, you can’t just stop there. You need to write more and more interesting, compelling posts that will encourage readers to comment, join in the conversation, and pass links to your blog along to their friends.

In short, as an author with a blog, you are giving a valuable gift to potential readers. You are giving your readers useful content at no charge to help them put their trust in you. This is an effective and virtually free way for readers to get to know you to become part of your loyal audience. And the next time that they’re at a bookstore or browsing on Amazon, they’ll be more likely to remember your name and buy your book.

Bethany Ramos is an author and full-time freelance writer with experience in Internet marketing, social media marketing, and SEO. She is passionate about writing captivating children's books and witty chick lit. For more information, you can visit her blog at http://chicklit-books.com/.