Cultivate Your Readership with Your Blog

cultivate your readership with your blogWherever you are in the process as an author (fiction or nonfiction), whether you have published your book or are just beginning to outline it, there are tremendous benefits to having a blog. They include:

  • Regular communication with your readers or prospective readers
  • Establishing a personal connection with readers
  • The opportunity to get feedback from your readers on your ideas, characters, what they want to read next
  • Exposure to media outlets such as online magazines, radio and TV shows, literary agents & publishers
  • Building a mailing list of people looking forward to your book – and your next book! Readers can subscribe to your blog and sign up for your mailing list and be the first to know when your book comes out.

Media outlets, literary agents, and publishers will expect you to have a solid online presence, including a blog. Other opportunities such as getting online interviews and podcast interviews are much more likely when you have an established online presence. That’s not just a blog. A solid social media presence is needed as well.

Your blog is your marketing foundation. From it all the social media stuff, Facebook, Twitter, etc., just comes from what you’ve posted at your blog.

Think of your blog like the trunk of a tree and your social media as the branches coming from that one trunk. The foliage is the result of all your hard work – sales of your book! And to get the best foliage, you must cultivate.

So what do you blog about? You could write about the details of the research you are doing for your book, your character development, any of those milestone moments when you’ve finished another chapter. Include short book excerpts to engage your readers into wanting the whole book.

It’s never too early to start marketing your book. Even if you’re just getting started, NOW is the time to start blogging and cultivating your readership.

If you’d like help with social media, we specialize in helping authors manage their social media presence. Contact Sue now for a consultation.

What do you think?