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Showing posts with label CAPTCHA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CAPTCHA. Show all posts

Top 10 Self-Sabotaging Mistakes of Author-Bloggers

Posted by Unknown On Sunday, September 23, 2012 0 comments


Aspiring writers are told we should all be blogging. If you're willing to make the commitment, I do think it's the best way to start building platform and getting your name out there.

If you have no Web presence, agents, reviewers and readers are a lot less likely to take you seriously.  The quickest, cheapest, and most reliable way to get that presence is to blog.

Before I started blogging, if you Googled my name, you'd find no mention of me until maybe page five. (I strongly suggest all authors Google themselves regularly to see what's happening to your name. It's not vain; it's more like checking in the mirror to see if there's any spinach on your teeth.)  These days,If you Google "Anne R. Allen" you have to go the bottom of page 12 before you find an entry for somebody else. (Carrie-Anne R. Allen, I apologize.) Almost all those entries relate to my blog.

So blogging does work. Not as a direct sales tool, but as a way of building platform.

But you have to do it right.

That means you need to keep your goal in mind.  If you are blogging to make a name for yourself as an author, then please, people, tell us what it is! I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but there are so many writers hiding behind cutsie monikers, I assume they're following somebody's bad advice. Don't listen to it!  If you want to become a professional writer, DO NOT bop around the Interwebz pretending to be one of your characters, an anonymous pundit, or your dog.

Unless you're planning to publish your books under the pen name "Fido" or "Anonymous Snarkisaurus" you're going to be wasting your time.

On the other hand, if your real name is Marilyn Manson or Stephen King, choose yourself a good pseudonym NOW and blog with that name. Otherwise everything you do online is going to be promoting Mr. Manson or Mr. King and not you.

Here are some of the other ways I see new authors sabotaging themselves:

#1 NO BIO 

Post a full ABOUT ME PAGE on the blog with a nice peppy bio and a good photo of yourself. Need help in writing your bio?  Read my post on how to write an author bio here.

And for goodness' sake, put your name prominently on the blog, preferably in the header. I’ve visited writing blogs where I can’t even find the author’s name mentioned.

Do NOT expect people to know that “Scribblings on Sand” is written by Susie S. Sands, paranormal romance author. You're blogging to promote yourself as an author--not beach scribbling. So give the Google spiders a fighting chance at finding you.

When people want a Stephen King novel, they don't Google "horror novels set in Maine,"or "scary clowns." They Google his name.

Make your own name Googleable. That's the whole point.

REMEMBER: YOUR NAME IS YOUR BRAND!!!

#2 NO CONTACT INFO

I’d say at least 75% of writers do this. You don’t know how much time I’ve wasted combing blogs for your email address so I can contact you to ask a question about your blog, ask you to guest blog, or ask you to participate in something that might help you with book promotion.

Opportunity knocked and nobody was home.

There is no point in blogging if people can’t reach you!! If you want to be anonymous, write in your basement with a kerosene lamp and a #2 pencil. Nothing wrong with that. But if you want to be taken seriously as a professional author in the 21st century, offer your professional contact  information.

The best place for your contact information is on your “ABOUT ME” PAGE.

#3 NO INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR BOOKS

Have books for sale? Tell us about them. List each book, give a synopsis, some review quotes and links so we can buy them. Your blog shouldn’t be one non-stop sales pitch for your books, but don’t go overboard the other way and neglect to mention them at all. Even if you have a separate website, you want to mention your books on your blog, too.

Contemporary consumers want things to be easy. This is why Amazon is so successful as a retailer. The one-click purchase is genius. So make it as easy as possible for people to buy your books.

I suggest all published authors have  a book page on your blog or a link to your website's book page.  If you want examples of book pages here's Ruth's Book Page and mine.

#4 TOO MANY BLOGS

How many is too many? For most writers, two is too many, because you end up neglecting one or the other 50% of the time. As Kristen Lamb says : "When do writers need multiple blogs? Um, never."

Unless you write erotica or extreme political stuff that’s not suitable for all readers, put all the stuff on one blog. Don’t make your readers jump through hoops to find your author blog.

If you want to blog about recipes AND zombies AND collecting floaty pens, use your pages. Blogger has 20 of them. Until you fill them all up, you do not need a second blog.

If you write books under different names, have a page for each. Ruth Harris and I share a blog. We don’t even write in the same genre. I write rom-com mysteries and she writes womens’ fiction and thrillers. But we are able to co-habit. We have a page for Ruth’s books and a page for Anne’s. We also have an About Ruth page and an About Anne page. And we still leave much of the blog unused.

If you write SciFi under the name Brad Goodyear and sweet romance under the name Beryl Goodwife, find a neutral color scheme and let Brad and Beryl share. Everybody who is trying to find you will be grateful.

#5 NOT LINKING YOUR BLOG TO YOUR WEBSITE AND OTHER PUBLISHED WORK

I don’t think most new authors actually need a separate website. If you have a professional-looking blog, it can provide all the information the media, publishers, agents and readers need. That way they don’t have to jump through extra hoops. Every time you make the reader click through to another site, you lose a goodly percentage of them.

I know not all people agree with me, but this is what I see when an author has a website as well as a blog:  “Look, I have a fancy, expensive website. It duplicates all the information on my blog, but hey, I spent money on it so I’m a REAL writer.”

So Ruth Harris and I aren’t real writers? Neither is Nathan Bransford?

But if you do have both, for goodness' sake put a link prominently on both sites. It is amazing how many times I've read a blogpost and come to the end and discovered there's no way to find out anything about the person who wrote it except to leave the blog and Google the author's name. How many people are going to do that?

This is also true of your published work. Have you guest posted on other blogs? Give us a link. Have you published short stories, essays, or done interviews for online zines? Let us know. Don't make us go on a scavenger hunt to find out who you are.

#6 MAKING COMMENTING DIFFICULT

Moderating comments on new posts is a big barrier to commenters. So is the CAPTCHA (that word verification thing that proves you’re not a robot.)

Yes, when you’re well established, you may get a lot of trolls and spambots and have to turn on CAPTCHA and moderate more closely, but until you do, make it as easy as possible for people to comment. The CAPTCHA these days is often so difficult it can take 5 or 6 tries to get it right. Guess how many people are going to stick around that long? Three tries is my limit, people, no matter how good your post is.

I realize most new bloggers don’t even know the CAPTCHA is there, and you should be warned that even after you turn it off, the Blogger elves may turn it back on.  So if your comments start falling off, ask a good friend to check for you to see if that sneaky CAPTCHA is back on your blog.

In Blogger, the place to turn off the CAPTCHA is in the “privacy” menu on the dashboard.

We're popular enough that we get a lot of spammers here, but I still have the CAPTCHA disabled and delete the spam by hand. Yes, it's a bit time consuming—but it's consuming MY time, not my readers'.  I think that's one of the reasons people keep coming back.

#7 MESSY, CROWDED, UNREADABLE BLOGS

I usually won’t read a blog that’s “monetized” with a lot of flashy ads. Unless the content is spectacular and unique, it’s not worth the annoyance. And if you’re not making any money from it, why crowd your blog with a lot of detritus? Don't use loud, quarreling colors or lots of flashy graphics.

Also note that many of your readers, especially those of us over forty, find a light font on a dark background difficult to read.

(I am so grateful to my readers who pointed out that a too-light color for the links is an annoyance too. You can change the colors and fonts in the "advanced" section of your design template. I discovered it's pretty easy, and if you don't like it, you can change it back to the default design.)

Yes, I know Blogger offers that cool Goth-looking template, but realize that a dark blog with light lettering will drive away a good deal of your possible audience.

# 8 SLOW LOAD TIME

Yeah, that video of your cat trying to kill the garden hose may be really cute--but if it takes so long to load that you lose ¾ of your visitors before they read your content, it’s not going to be building platform for you.

If you're a writer, you want to showcase your writing, not your video-making skills.

Any kind of animation slows your load time. People like me who check out dozens of blogs a day are out of there before we can see all your cute stuff.  I used to follow one writer’s blog regularly. He had great things to say. I’m sure he still does, but when he added animation, I had to drop him. We are all pressed for time.

Also, it’s good to be aware that Alexa rates blogs by loading time as well as number of hits.

#9 NOT BLOGGING TO A SCHEDULE

When people come back looking for a new post and don’t find one for a month, they’ll write it off as a dead blog.

But if you put a notice “Updated monthly” you eliminate the problem. You now have a schedule.

As most of you know, I advocate Slow Blogging (once a week or less: quality over quantity.) But of course daily blogs get popular faster and attract the Google spiders, so if you want to blog three days a week or more, go for it—just make sure you love blogging enough to make a long-term commitment to keep to that schedule.

The problem arises when you blog every day for a month, then leave the blog hanging for three. People stop coming back. But if you say initially that you’re going to blog once a week, nobody will be disappointed.

“No, No!” you say, raising hand to feverish forehead. “I’m not the kind of person who can be chained to an arbitrary schedule. I’m CREATIVE!”

Yeah, yeah, so are the rest of us.  Write the posts when your blogmuse is in residence, and save up the posts to post on a schedule.

#10 NO TWITTER HANDLE ON YOUR BLOG

Don’t make people click through your tweety bird icon to go to Twitter and find it out. It should be right there on the page. In fact, we should all get in the habit of posting our Twitter handle along with our byline so people can tweet the post and give us credit for it. Porter Anderson wrote a great piece for Rachelle Gardner on the subject that’s a must-read.


Do I say all authors should blog? No. Some authors aren't suited to it. Writing a nonfiction piece every week can be tedious, especially when you're in the middle of writing a novel. Some people can't come up with enough ideas, or they're not quite sure what their genre or author "brand" is going to be.

That doesn't have to keep you from participating in the blogosphere. You can build a simple website landing page as your home base (which makes you searchable) and comment on other people's blogs. (Wix offers a simple free website that looks easy to use and Google-friendly.) Commenting on popular blogs is a great way to get your name known in the blogging community.

But that means you want to comment under your OWN NAME. I'm going to say it one more time: YOUR NAME IS YOUR BRAND. Anything you do on social media needs to be branded with whatever name you write under, or you might as well be in that basement with the kerosene lamp.

What about you, scriveners? What annoys you about author blogs? Do you blog under your own name? Do you have your name in your blog header? Do you think CAPTCHA is offensive to the robot community? Is your real name Marilyn Manson?

Attention Email Subscribers! Feedburner has apparently had a meltdown and is no longer sending emails to many people subscribed to this blog. This seems to be happening all over the blogosphere. Many bloggers are switching to other email programs, but since I'm a cybermoron, it's going to take time, sweat and copious tears to figure out how to switch to MailChimp  (Plus I'd lose the subscribers who ARE still getting emails. It does work some of the time.) So if you'd like to get notifications of new blogposts, and Feedburner has let you down, just send me an email at annerallen at yahoo dot com. I will put you on my list of personal blogfriends and send you a notice when the Sunday blogpost is up. (I promise not to spam you with anything else.)

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How to Blog Part V: 12 Dos and Don’ts for Author-Bloggers

Posted by Unknown On Sunday, February 19, 2012 0 comments


This is the 200th post on this blog. Since I started it on Friday the 13th  in March of 2009, I’ve learned an awful lot. (The first thing I learned was that you have to actually post stuff. My second post wasn’t until late June.)

Another thing I’ve learned is there’s no wrong way to blog—BUT if you’re an author who wants to get published, you need to be professional about it. If you want to be taken seriously in the industry—and we have to remember it is an industry—you need to create a helpful, reader-friendly place that’s an easy-to-navigate hub for your online presence as a writer.

For the other parts of this series, check Part I: How to Blog, Part II: How not to Blog, Part III: What to Blog About, Part IV, Difficult Blog Visitors. 

Here are some more dos and don’ts I’ve learned along the way that might make your job easier:

1) DO post your Twitter handle somewhere prominent on your home page if you tweet. Don’t just use one of those birdy icons. Make sure you put your whole @twittername up there. I spend way too much time using Twitter’s iffy search engine (why is it so useless?) trying to find the handle for somebody I’m quoting or want to reach. If it’s right up there on your blog home page, people are much more likely to be able to tweet you or follow.

2) DO post a Facebook link, (or “badge,” or “Like” button) so people can join you on Facebook. (Unless you’ve managed to resist the pressure to venture into Zuckerland. For which I applaud all three of you.)

3) DO provide an email address. I don’t know how many blogs I visit and find no contact information. The place most people will look is on your “about me” page. So that’s a good place to put it. If you’re afraid of spambots picking it up, write it this way : “myname (at) gmail (dot) com” –but do it! Imagine an agent or editor reads that short story that won the online contest and loves it. She wants to find out if you’ve got any full length fiction (yes, this does happen) so she Googles you, finds your blog, and…no contact information. Opportunity is knocking and nobody’s home.  

4) DO post your blog schedule. Here we say “This blog is updated Sundays, usually”—six simple words that keep us disciplined and keep readers coming back. We’ve never missed a post, but if we do, that “usually” covers our derrieres—we’re not running a boot camp here. On the other hand, it’s very important to remember it’s your professional profile. When you’re trying to get published, you’re basically applying for a job. You don’t want a sloppy blog any more than you  want to show up late for an interview, wearing stained sweats and smelling like last night’s party.  

5) DO learn to write 21st century prose. Writing for the Interwebz is very, very different from what you learned in school. It’s light, punchy, and easy to skim. The vast majority of online readers are skimmers. They want:
  • lists
  • major points highlighted
  • bullet points
  • Bolding
  • lots of white space 
See where your eye went? There are a couple of important publishing industry blogs I hardly ever read because they’re written in the dense, repetitive prose of the old paid-by-the-word, pre-electronic era. I wait for somebody else to post excerpts or summarize those posts, because sweetie, I have things to do….

6) DON’T let yourself get pressured into too many blogfests and bloghops and blog awards and other blogmania. Just because somebody gives you an award doesn’t mean you have to drop your WIP and spend a day visiting 80 blogs to tell them all the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done with a book or whatever today’s game is. Thank them politely, tell them you’re honored and do as much as you have time for. Same with invitations to blogfests. No matter how much fun it sounds, just gathering a lot of blog followers isn’t as important as getting that novel written!

7) DON’T die intestate. No matter how young and healthy and immortal you feel, appoint a blog executor. Make sure somebody besides you has the passwords to your blog so if anything dire should happen, they can attend to it and/or take it down. Yes, it’s kind of icky to think of, but stuff happens. Not just kicking the bucket. You could get in a parasailing accident while you’re on that vacation in Mazatlan. Or get stuck without power for 2 weeks in darkest Connecticut. Be attacked by angry bees. You don’t want your blog hanging unattended in cyberspace as it collects Ukranian porn and fake Viagra ads.

8) DON’T neglect your “About Me” page. Keep it updated (speaking to myself here. I’d let mine get sloppy.) Make sure it’s friendly but professional. You don’t want a resume/curriculum vitae snoozefest. But you also don’t want to use it to post pix of yourself after your tenth margarita at Señor Frog’s or photos of your puppy learning to go potty outdoors. This is about you, the author. Even if you aren’t published, you want this to be about your writer-self. Give a short bio, a list of what writing organizations you belong to, your genre if you’ve settled on one, plus links to any short pieces you’ve published, or contests you’ve won—and anything else that relates to you as a writer. Make sure you include links to all your social media pages, especially book-related ones like Goodreads, AuthorsDen or RedRoom. You can talk about your favorite books, your philosophy, or your life goals as long as it’s short and not preachy. You can mention your family, but even if you’re a devoted stay-at-home parent, don’t make this all about the kids. This is for you.

9) DON’T try to maintain too many blogs. OK, I’m kind of hammering people about this, but I see a lot of misinformation about this circulating. To me, two is too many. If you don’t have a day job, and you aren’t in a hurry to finish that WIP, maybe you can handle two—especially if the second is a group blog. Or if one is the blog for your XXX-rated erotica and the other is for your sweet Christian romances. But please, don’t try to do any more. Multiple blogs don’t only take too much of your time—they also fracture your follower count and really annoy people trying to reach you.

Do you think it’s more impressive to an editor that you have 60 followers on your Sweetie Snookums, Vampire Slayer blog, 90 on Susie’s Scribblings, 43 on Sassy Susitude and 50 on Storytime Snippets—or 243 people reading Susie Smith, Scrivener? Do you think followers want to hop around to all those blogs?? Do you think we’re going to keep searching your blogs after we’ve landed on the one that hasn’t been updated since you posted that rant about Fox canceling Firefly in 2003???

Sorry. Got carried away. As I have said many times before, a Blogger blog has 20 pages. Count them: twenty. You can have one for your vampire stories, one for your musings and scribblings, one for giving yourself pep talks, and one for writing about being a storyteller—and still have 16 to go. So don’t start another blog until you’ve filled them all, OK?

10) DON’T make commenting difficult. This is another thing I’ve been hammering on about but it’s important. I just read a new study of customer habits and discovered the #1 motivation for the contemporary customer is ease of use. They’re not so worried about fancy or special. They want things to be easy. That’s why Amazon is so successful. First they invented a way to buy books with a couple of clicks and then they offered us a way to publish them with a few more. “Quick and Easy” wins the day, hands down.

So remember those CAPTCHA word verification things do NOT make it easy to comment. You can remove robo-spam yourself if it gets through the spam filter, which is a little harder for you and a lot easier for your potential customers. And as for insisting on moderating all new comments—especially if you don’t get around to them for days—that’s pretty much saying, “I don’t need no stinking comments/customers.” Try being open to comments on new posts for a while. If you get a troll attack, by all means go back to moderating, but with a small blog following, it’s very unlikely you’ll get a troll unless you blog about politics or religion. If you moderate (I moderate older comments myself, because that’s where the spam shows up) DO check many times during the day so you don’t send people away mad. These are your potential customers. Saying "just sit there until I have time to decide if you're special enough to buy my books," isn’t going to make the sale.

Note: Blogger loves to play Big Brother. It often turns your CAPTCHA back on after you’ve turned it off. It’s happened to me. So ask a good friend to let you know if it’s on.

11) Don’t delete a blog you’ve neglected. Bring it back to life by giving it your own name (you can’t change the url, but you can change the header very easily) and post a blog schedule and keep to it.

Yes: this is a total reversal on what I used to say, but I was educated by a savvy reader,Camille LeGuire, the Daring Novelist  who left a comment letting me know the older a blog is, the higher its rating with search engines. So remember that nine-year old Firefly blog? You can delete content and change the title, but keep the url and you’ll have much better SEO.

But: if you have 42 blogs, delete all but one or two of the oldest. Seriously. Did I mention people find multiple blogs annoying?

12) Don’t let yourself be pressured into letting somebody guest blog just because they asked. Good guest posts are informative and target your audience. Somebody with a book or service to sell may approach you with what is essentially an advertisement. Even if you’re just starting out, remember your blog is about presenting yourself to the world, and if something doesn’t work with your audience, politely decline. Good guest bloggers should already have relationship with you: they should have been by to comment a few times, or know you from other blogs.

I’ll talk more about guest blog etiquette in another post.

What about you, scriveners? Do you have any other tips to add? Have you learned any of these things the hard way like I did?

Valentine Blog Hop peeps: Our winner is Elizabeth Hyatt, aka the Book Attict. Congrats, Elizabeth! Let us know which of our books you want as your prizes. You get one of Ruth's and one of Anne's. Check the BookLuvin'Babes site for the name of the big grand prize winner.

Blog news: Ruth Harris and I now have pages on this blog for our books. Ruth’s is here and mine is here. We’ve got synopses, quotes from reviews and all the links you need to browse our extensive oeuvres. (And they’re all remarkably cheap. Even my paper books are a deal—under $10 bucks.)

Next week Ruth is going to blog on creating fiction based on factual events. And she’ll be doing a giveaway of DECADES, her own novel that is based on real incidents and historical fact.

Today, my mystery SHERWOOD, LTD. will be featured on Saffina Desforges "no bullshit" Sunday series on her SaffiScribe blog. You can find out how much of that book is fiction and how much was based on actual personal misadventures

Next Friday, Catherine Ryan Hyde will be posting an in-depth interview with me on her blog. If you haven’t stopped by her great new interview series , she runs them every Friday on her blog.

Indie Chicks: This week’s inspirational story is from Christine DeMaio-Rice. A fun one. Check it out here. 

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HOW TO BLOG: A Beginner's Guide for Authors

Posted by Unknown On Sunday, December 4, 2011 0 comments

FIRST, AN ANNOUNCEMENT!  My second Camilla Randall mystery, SHERWOOD LTD., went live on Amazon.com and the UK Amazon site this morning.  It’s a sequel to GHOSTWRITERS IN THE SKY that involves mysterious doings at a wildly unorthodox publishing company in the English Midlands, near Nottingham. It was inspired by my wacky experiences getting my first book published in the UK back in the early ’oughties. It’s full of writerly humor as well as fun stuff for Robin Hood fans and Anglophiliacs everywhere. Etiquette expert Camilla Randall's good manners get her into more dangerous scrapes--and this time the charming hero may be trying to kill her. (Nook owners, The Gatsby Game, Ghostwriters in the Sky and Sherwood, Ltd. should be available on B & N by Christmas!)

A year ago I ran a series on how to blog that went viral and got mentions on a lot of prestigious blogs. I went on to teach blogging and social media at the Central Coast Writers’Conference. The following is an overview of part one of my beginning blogger course. Next week, I’ll run part two: “HOW NOT TO BLOG.”

NOTE: please don’t take anything I say here as dogma. As a certified Old Hippie Chick and life-long Authority-Questioner, when I step in a pile of dogma, all I want is to scrape it off my shoe.

Which is probably why I ran afoul of the Amazon Review Taliban in the last couple of weeks. Boy, howdy did I learn my lesson, (although my little incident of stepping in it also got me a sympathetic mention on Porter Anderson’s must-read publishing industry round-up Writing on the Ether this week.) 

So please note:

I do not now—nor will I ever—dictate what anyone must blog, read, write, think, review, smoke, or wear.

(Really. I think you look fabulous in that evening gown, Mark.)

These are my own observations of what seems to be working right now. But creative people are always finding ways to get around rules. It’s one of the things creativity is for. If you hate blogging, please--go find a more interesting way to promote yourself and come back and tell me about it. I’d love to feature your experiences here.

So: do you absolutely need to have a blog if you want to sell books? 

Nope. But it just might help..

Even a couple of years ago, only nonfiction writers needed “platforms,” but that’s changed. Even the Big Six publishers expect authors to do most of our own publicity.

And what is a platform?

It’s the network of people who know you well enough that they might buy your book. All social networking sites contribute to it. So joining RedRoom, Goodreads, Kindleboards, Absolute Write, She Writes—or any of the smorgasbord of writer schmooze-rooms—will help build platform. So pick a few and join up. But not too many: remember this is about promoting your writing, not keeping you from it.

The point is to get your name out there where the Google spiders can find you.

Why? Here’s a quote from Oak Tree Press acquisitions editor Sunny Frazier  that might answer your question:

“I don't read the query (sorry aspiring writers!) I look for two things:  genre and word count. I then Google the author. I'm looking for the number of times the writer's name appears on the Internet. I'm searching for a website or any attempt to build a platform.”

Yup. She checks your presence on the Interwebz before she looks at your writing. Sad but true.

Before I started blogging, if anybody Googled me, they'd find me on maybe page 20 in the endless string of Anne Allens. If you Google me now, you’ll get 20 pages of mostly me. And I’ve only been blogging a little over two years.

The three major pillars of most writing platforms are Facebook, Twitter and your Blog.

The greatest of these is your blog. This is where you get to be 100% yourself however many characters it takes.

Here’s what publishing guru Jane Friedman says: “All serious writers need this kind of hub so they can start learning more about their readers and formalizing a connection with them. Facebook, Twitter, and other sites help you find readers and connect, but those connections can disappear at any moment, or gradually over time–but with a blog, they can always find you.”

That’s why a website you have to pay somebody to update for you isn’t as useful. People want to connect with you—not your web designer. The difference between a website and a blog is the difference between putting an ad in the Yellow Pages or personally giving somebody your phone number. Blogs are friendly. And if you have a blog, you don’t need an expensive website. Here’s what Nathan Bransford said about formal websites:

“The thing about author websites is pretty simple, in my mind. They're expensive. Are they worth the return on investment? I don't know. I can't think of a time I've ever bought a book based on a visit to an author's website. But I have definitely bought books based on author blogs. I know I may not be the average reader, but I still have a hard time seeing how it's worth the investment unless the website is really spectacular.”

Does a blog sell books?

Not directly. But it helps in lots of indirect ways. I found my publishers through my blog. I got to know Ruth Harris through my blog—and most of the people who are hosting my blog tour. Networking pays off.

A lot of blogging advice is for professional bloggers who are looking to make money selling ads on the actual blog. That’s not what you want as an author. You want a fun, inviting place where people can visit and get to know you—a home rather than a storefront.

I had to learn blogging by trial and error—lots of error. So here’s the stuff I wish somebody had told me.

20 Steps To Starting Your Own Blog:

1) If you don’t do it yet, spend a couple of weeks reading a bunch of writing and publishing blogs before you jump in and create your own. See what you like and don’t like. Agent blogs and some of the popular indie-publishing blogs are good for meeting people at all stages of their careers. I especially recommend Nathan Bransford’s blog  because he’s a publishing insider and a social media guru as well as a successful MG author. He’s also a smart, classy guy. Plus his blog has forums where you can get to know people.

2) Comment and interact with other commenters. You only have to say a few words of agreement or disagreement, or offer your own experience about the topic. Lots of writers have a “blogroll” in their sidebar with a list of other great writing blogs. Start clicking around. If you like what somebody says, click on their name in the comments and you’ll get their profile and you can go visit their blog. Comment there and Bingo, you’ve got a potential follower.

3) It’s easier to comment if you have an online profile, so I suggest you sign up at Gravatar.com. This gives you an online profile that’s compatible with all blogging platforms. Upload a picture—a smiley one of yourself is best. There’s room for a short bio and your contact info. Make sure you post an email address. That’s why you’re doing this—so people can find you. If you’re on Facebook, Goodreads, Google + or whatever, post the link. If you’re on Google + (which I like, because it’s kind of quiet and low-key) you’ll already have a Google profile, but it’s helpful to have a Gravatar profile, too, because it’s compatible with all blogs.

4) Choose a blogging platform. The biggest free blogging platforms are WordPress, Tumblr, LiveJournal & Blogger. Tumblr is a platform for short posts, videos and pictures—something between a blog and Twitter.  You can also have a blog on your personal website, or on a writer’s forum like RedRoom. But these aren’t as likely to be picked up by search engine spiders, so if your goal is to be more Googleable, I suggest using a more popular platform.

I use Blogger (owned by Google, with addresses that read “blogspot.com”) because it’s the easiest to set up and use—and has some really pretty templates. But Blogger does have some drawbacks. Whole continents get blocked periodically—probably by Blogger’s fierce spamblockers. And for a while there, we were all losing our follower widgets, and some people couldn’t get into their own blogs. But the glitches eventually get ironed out.

People who are more tech-savvy love WordPress. You can get step by step instructions here. Jane Friedman loves WordPress. And it has the advantage of being easily translated into an ebook. Very cool.

4) Decide on a focus and tone for your blog. Blog gurus will tell you to address a niche, but I’m not sure any more if that’s the best way to start. I think the most important thing is to develop a strong personal voice and be flexible. And don't plan to blog about writing all the time. There are an awful lot of us out here doing just that and you want to provide something fresh.

Roni Loren—a fabulous romance author and popular blogger who is going to be visiting us on December 18th—has written some of the best posts on blogging I’ve read. She's pointed out she’d never have the following she does if she’d started with a niche blog. She started out as a YA writer and switched to erotic romance. Yeah, a tough switch.

Beginning author-bloggers form a wonderful community. That community can help you in hundreds of ways, so don’t worry too much about seeming like a ‘professional” blogger right away. Be real, flexible, open and friendly and you can ease into your niche later.

Remember the most successful blogs reveal the writer’s personality and provide something useful at the same time. Even if you choose to be a niche blogger like me, keep flexible.

Don’t focus on one book or lock yourself into one genre, especially if you‘re a newbie.

Zombies could invade the second draft of what started out as a cozy mystery. Or a Victorian romance could veer into steampunk. Romance writer Rosa Lee Hawkins might decide to become dark, brooding R. L. Hawk. She doesn’t want to be stuck with that pink, lacy blog—or betray her romance-loving followers. You can always add stuff, but it’s harder to take it away.

5) Think of a title and subheader. Don’t get too creative here.

Make sure you put your own name in the title. Your name is your brand.

Yes, I know most blogs you see have names like “Musing, Meandering and Muttering,” but this really isn’t a good idea.

Anywhere you go online, you want to promote your brand, or you’re wasting time (time you could be writing that opus that’s the reason for all this, remember?) It’s OK to be unimaginative like me and call it YOUR NAME’s blog—maybe reducing the ho-hum factor with something like “Susie Smith, Scrivener.” The advantage to using your own name is—

    1. When somebody Googles you, your blog will come up, instead of that old MySpace page you haven’t bothered to delete, or the picture of you on Spring Break in Cabo in 2006. Yeah. That one. 
    1. You don’t get boxed into one genre. (I strongly advise against starting different blogs for different books. One blog is hard enough to maintain.) 
If you need to be convinced of the “your name is your brand” thing, read social media maven Kristen Lamb, whose wonderful books Are You There Blog?It’s Me Writer and We are Not Alone, the Writer’s Guide to Social Media are must-reads.

6). Choose a couple of photos from your files to decorate the blog. Usually one of yourself for your profile, and another to set the tone. And of course your book covers if you have them for sale. Try to keep with the same color scheme and tone.

On Tone:

If you write MG humor, you don’t want your blog looking all dark and Goth, and cheery colors will give the wrong message for that serial killer thriller. Romance sites don’t have to be pink, but they should be warm, inviting and a little sexy or girly.

Also, if you have a website or Twitter page, aim to echo the tone and color in order to establish a personal “brand” look.

7) Prepare a bio for your “About Me” page. This is the most important part of the blog. Make it intriguing and funny without giving TMI. You can add some more pics—maybe of your dog or your funky car. Keep family out unless it’s a family blog. Pseudonyms for kids are a smart idea for protecting their privacy.. 

8) Go to a friend’s blog. If they use Blogger or Wordpress, there will be a link at the top that says “create blog.”

9) Click on “create blog.” Follow directions in the window. They’re easy. In Blogger anyway.

10) Choose a template. Don’t mess with the design too much, except in terms of color—a busy blog isn’t a place people want to linger. And don’t add animation really big files or anything that takes too long to load. Keep with your color scheme and tone.

11) Pick your “gadgets.” There are lots. But again, keep it simple. I suggest just choosing the basics like about me, followers, subscribe, share and search this blog. Share is the thing so people can Tweet or FB or + your post. You want this to happen.

You can go back and add anything you want later. Later you’ll want your archives and most popular posts. Just go to your “design” tab to find more. If you Tweet, get a twitter button. (Google “Twitter buttons”) Don’t choose an animated one, though—they’re cute but they slow your load time.

In a little while, you’ll want to install the gadget that posts links to your most popular posts. That makes people want to move around the site and not leave after they’ve read one thing.

I don’t recommend putting your stats on the front page “so many hits” or whatever. It will only advertise that you’re a newbie and might make you sad. Do keep track of your stats on your own dashboard, but remember it takes about a year to get a blog going at full stride. So don’t obsess. Yes, you will have weeks when you have two hits. My blog had five in its first three months.

But checking stats is actually a good idea because you can see where your traffic is coming from. If you suddenly get 40 hits from one address—go check it out. Somebody’s posted a link to you. You may have a new friend you didn’t even know about.

12) Set up privacy settings. I suggest making no restrictions on new posts. Don’t make every comment wait for your approval before it goes live. You won’t get a discussion going that way. Monitor your blog yourself instead. I’ve personally found that 99% of commenters are friendly.

Also, I suggest turning off the “Captcha.” word verification thingy. Spambot programmers are learning to get around them and they don’t screen out most spam. (That’s done by the spamblocker, which will work just fine without Captcha.) But the two or three extra steps annoy people and keep them from commenting.

But DO have every comment over a week old sent to you for approval. Old posts attract spam and trolls.

13) Sign up for email notification of new comments so you can respond to them in a timely way. If commenters give an email address in their profile (always smart) you can respond to them via email, but I prefer to respond in the comment thread to stimulate discussion.

14) Upload those photos. But not too many. One per post is good. This is a WRITING blog. And NO MUSIC. People read blogs at work. And on their phones. Even though you’re sure everybody on the planet adores the classics of the Abba catalogue, some of us don’t. Trust me on this.

It’s that easy. But don’t forget to:

15) BOOKMARK your blog, or you may never find it again. You’d be amazed how many people set up a blog only to have it disappear forever into cyberspace.

16) When you go back to your blog, click “sign in” and then “new post” to get inside the blog. What they call the “back” of the blog.

17) Keep to a schedule. Decide how often you want to blog—I suggest once a week to start—then do it. Preferably on the same day each week. Most blog gurus will tell you to blog more often, but I have a pretty highly rated blog and have never blogged more than twice in one week.

I follow something called SLOW BLOGGING. It’s like the slow food movement. Quality over quantity.

Joining the Slow Blog movement is simple. Start a blog and announce you’re planning to post on alternate Tuesdays, or every full moon, or whenever. Or if you already have a blog, next time you miss a few days, tell yourself you didn’t FAIL to blog; you SUCCEEDED in joining the Slow Bloggers. All you have to do is skip those boring apologies, and you’re in.

18) Write your first blogpost.

So how do you write for a blog?

  • A post should be 600-1200 words presented in short, punchy paragraphs. (Do as I say, not as I do—This is one long-ass post. Sorry.)
  • Bulleting, numbering and bolding are your friends. Make a point and present it in a way that’s easy to grasp.
  • Offer information and interesting observations, not navel-gazing. Direct your focus outward, not inward. (And keep to nonfiction. Blogging your fiction isn't a great idea for a number of reasons, which I'll go into next week.)
  • If you have more to say than fits into a few paragraphs—great! You have material for next time.
  • Keep to one topic, because that stimulates conversation more effectively. If you have dozens of short things to say—Tweet them.
  • Always ask a question of your readers at the end. It makes people feel involved and stimulates discussion.
19) Go tell those blogfriends you’ve made that you’ve got a blog. Hopefully, a few will follow. Don’t despair if you don’t get a lot of followers right away. I had maybe ten for my first six months—consisting of my critique group and my mom.

20) Congratulations. You are now a blogger.
Really. It’s that easy.
*******

What about you, scriveners? Do any of you regular bloggers have suggestions for newbies? Newbies, do you have any questions? We’ll be glad to help.

This week I’ll be making two blogtour stops. I’ll be visiting Roni Loren’s legendary blog, Fiction Groupie  on Monday, December 4th, talking about that scary question of whether that first novel can find a publisher.

I’m doing an interview with Canadian author and knitting maven, Leanne Dyck at her blog on Friday, December 9th.

For the weekly installment of the Indie Chicks Anthology stories--this week's from paranormal author Linda Welch-- click here or on the Indie Chicks page link above. Linda's story is an inspiration for Boomers writers like me. It's never too late!

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